Blockchains could breathe new life into prediction markets

WILL a Democrat win America’s next presidential election? Will Tesla file for bankruptcy by the end of 2019? Punters now have a new option for such bets: Augur, an online prediction market. Whether it takes off will be a gauge of the viability not only of such markets but of decentralised applications built on blockchains, the databases underlying crypto-currencies.

Augur is not the first online service that allows people to buy and sell predictions like shares. Since 1988 it has been possible to bet on American elections via Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM), run by the University of Iowa. PredictIt, a site based in New Zealand but with a largely American audience, and Betfair Exchange, a British service, also let users bet on political events. Some firms run such markets internally, for instance to predict demand for a product. All have the same goal: to gain insights into the future by giving those who hold useful information an incentive to reveal it.

But legal barriers have long...