Intrade Shutdown Hurts Academics 131
Posted
by
timothy
from the odds-are-against-immediate-return dept.
from the odds-are-against-immediate-return dept.
New submitter jader3rd writes "Intrade, a popular Irish website that lets people bet on anything, has shut down. In addition to being used by gamblers, Intrade has been used by academics and pundits to track public sentiment. '"... broad crowds have a lot of information and that markets are an effective way of aggregating that information," says Justin Wolfers, "and they often turn out to be much better than experts."' Being forced to lose their U.S. customers couldn't have helped.
Extremely vague article (Score:5, Informative)
" With sincere regret we must inform you that due to circumstances recently discovered we must immediately cease trading activity on www.intrade.com.
These circumstances require immediate further investigation, and may include financial irregularities which in accordance with Irish law oblige the directors to take the following actions:
Cease exchange trading on the website immediately.
Settle all open positions and calculate the settled account value of all Member accounts immediately.
Cease all banking transactions for all existing Company accounts immediately.
During the upcoming weeks, we will investigate these circumstances further and determine the necessary course of action.
To mitigate any further risk to members’ accounts, we have closed and settled all open contracts at fair market value as of the close of business on March 10, 2013, in accordance with the Terms and Conditions of our customers’ use of the website. You may view your account details and settled account balances by logging into the website.
At this time and until further notice, it is not possible to make any payments to members in accordance with their settled account balance until the investigations have concluded.
The Company will continue the maintenance and technology operations of the exchange system so that all information is preserved properly.
We are not able to provide telephone support or live help services at this time, please contact the company by email at: accountservices@intrade.com
We appreciate your custom and support over the years. We are committed to reporting faithfully the status of things as they are clarified and hope you will bear with us as we do all we can to resume operations as promptly as possible.
Sincerely,
The Board of Directors of Intrade the Prediction Market Limited "
More info (Score:5, Informative)
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/online-betting-site-intrade-halts-operations/ [nytimes.com]
Not the only one around, nor the oldest (Score:5, Informative)
I never understood why Intrade got so much press--the Iowa Electronic Market has been doing the "online futures trading" thing for far longer. They're still up and running at: http://tippie.uiowa.edu/iem/ [uiowa.edu]
And they have approval from the CTFC: http://www.cftc.gov/files/foia/repfoia/foirf0503b004.pdf [cftc.gov]
Re:The question (Score:5, Informative)
Drugs, polygamy, gambling, legal age prostitution, etc., could all be arguably classified under victim-less crimes.
That's not the issue here at all. http://tippie.uiowa.edu/ [uiowa.edu] and other futures markets run without CTFC interference.
It's not gambling that's the issue here. The investigation at hand is about undocumented payments from the company to its (retired) founder and others, and whether there's potential investor fraud--a crime with an actual victim--going on.
Re:The question (Score:4, Informative)
While this is true, nowadays they tend to restrict their raids to organizations where they get evidence or a tip that teenage girls are being 'married' to adult men, and usually charge the perpetrators with statutory rape, sex with a minor, or suchlike (depending on state laws, etc). The organization itself also gets slapped with aiding/abetting and similar.
Your specific cite occurred in 1953, which was probably the last time they could simply tear into a polygamist group just on that one charge alone. (the April 2010 raid was on misuse of public funds, not polygamy).
I suspect nowadays that if they tried making arrests on mere polygamy charges, it would wind up in the Supreme Court, which would likely strike it down (and open a somewhat smallish can of worms). Another part of it is the loopholes (legal marriage versus "spiritual" marriage) that polygamists use to skirt the law. As further evidence I present that stupid 'reality' TV show Sister Wives [wikipedia.org], where that behavior is paraded openly on television.
Re:What difference between gambling and insurance? (Score:5, Informative)
In general terms its called "insurable interest". If you are exposed to a loss and you hedge against it, its insurance. If its not your house (or football team*), its gambling.
*The league has their own regulations prohibiting "insurance" against a loss by those with financial exposure to sporting outcomes like team owners.