Vitalik:

One of the Ethereum applications that has always excited me the most are prediction markets. I wrote about futarchy, a model of prediction-based governance conceived by Robin Hanson, in 2014. I was an active user and supporter of Augur back in 2015 (look, mommy, my name is in the Wikipedia article!). I earned $58,000 betting on the election in 2020. And this year, I have been a close supporter and follower of Polymarket.

To many people, prediction markets are about betting on elections, and betting on elections is gambling – nice if it helps people enjoy themselves, but fundamentally not more interesting than buying random coins on pump.fun. From this perspective, my interest in prediction markets may seem confusing. And so in this post I aim to explain what it is about the concept that excites me. In short, I believe that (i) prediction markets even as they exist today are a very useful tool for the world, but furthermore (ii) prediction markets are only one example of a much larger incredibly powerful category, with potential to create better implementations of social media, science, news, governance, and other fields. I shall label this category “info finance“

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No other country in the world treats their citizens living abroad this way.