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A betting exchange is a stock exchange. Same thing. Let's say that there is a football game Liverpool vs Manchester. One client puts £5 that liverpool will wi

A betting exchange is a stock exchange. Same thing. Let's say that there is a football game Liverpool vs Manchester. One client puts £5 that liverpool will win. The exchange takes the money and adds it to the order book. Another client puts £5 that manchester will win. The exchange takes the money. It's matched with the opposite order and frozen. The money will be redistributed to the winner at the end of the game, minus a fee. It's exactly like buying and selling in a normal exchange. You can do real time trading during the game and arbitrage between exchanges. Disclaimer: I worked in betting before I moved to finance. Erlang is super weird and hard to recruit for. When used right, it's not faster or more productive than C++ or Java. I wouldn't advise anyone to use Erlang for anything.

zeusk 9y ago
It isn't that simple is it? What about payoffs and probabilities? A financial firm can buy/sell in open market (often with market making privileges) to remain delta neutral but what does a betting exchange do?
- user5994461 9y ago
  Not sure what you mean by payoff. In a normal exchange, you see the price and it goes up and down. In betting, you see the probability going up and down. It's also the multiplier on what you will win. In the previous example, they would bet £5 at 50/50.
- bostik 9y ago
  A betting exchange is a financial escrow service. A user bets on a result of an event, with 20% probability of the event happening. This means that someone (often a market maker) is willing to bet with 80% probability of that same event not happening. User waged £10, and if they win, expect to net £40. That "other" £40 came from the counterparty. A betting exchange facilitates this. It sets aside ("escrows") the funds from both parties' accounts, and once the results of the event are known, settles the trades. Funds from escrow, minus the commission, are credited to winner's account. The basic premise really is that simple. Now, running an exchange is anything BUT simple.
fractallyte 9y ago
> I wouldn't advise anyone to use Erlang for anything. Try concurrency on multiple cores in C++ or Java, and let us know how you get on. I'm quite happy and doing well with my 'super weird' secret weapons, thank you!
- pjmlp 9y ago
  By making use of tasking libraries that took ideas from Erlang, and async/await patterns
- user5994461 9y ago
  #pragma omp parallel for Challenge completed. Took 5 seconds. I wrote C++ and java for a living. I can get on just fine, thank you.
macintux 9y ago
> When used right, it's not faster or more productive than C++ or Java. Certainly, well-written C++, and often Java, will be faster than Erlang. Erlang is never going to be the fastest language around, that's not why it exists. But more productive? It takes significantly less code in Erlang to achieve most tasks in its wheelhouse than C++ or Java. I wish I could remember the numbers, but when I did a very rough LoC comparison of Cassandra vs Riak, I believe Riak was roughly 10% the size of Cassandra.

zeusk 9y ago

It isn't that simple is it? What about payoffs and probabilities? A financial firm can buy/sell in open market (often with market making privileges) to remain delta neutral but what does a betting exchange do?

user5994461 9y ago
Not sure what you mean by payoff. In a normal exchange, you see the price and it goes up and down. In betting, you see the probability going up and down. It's also the multiplier on what you will win. In the previous example, they would bet £5 at 50/50.
bostik 9y ago
A betting exchange is a financial escrow service. A user bets on a result of an event, with 20% probability of the event happening. This means that someone (often a market maker) is willing to bet with 80% probability of that same event not happening. User waged £10, and if they win, expect to net £40. That "other" £40 came from the counterparty. A betting exchange facilitates this. It sets aside ("escrows") the funds from both parties' accounts, and once the results of the event are known, settles the trades. Funds from escrow, minus the commission, are credited to winner's account. The basic premise really is that simple. Now, running an exchange is anything BUT simple.

fractallyte 9y ago

> I wouldn't advise anyone to use Erlang for anything. Try concurrency on multiple cores in C++ or Java, and let us know how you get on. I'm quite happy and doing well with my 'super weird' secret weapons, thank you!

pjmlp 9y ago
By making use of tasking libraries that took ideas from Erlang, and async/await patterns
user5994461 9y ago
#pragma omp parallel for Challenge completed. Took 5 seconds. I wrote C++ and java for a living. I can get on just fine, thank you.

macintux 9y ago

> When used right, it's not faster or more productive than C++ or Java. Certainly, well-written C++, and often Java, will be faster than Erlang. Erlang is never going to be the fastest language around, that's not why it exists. But more productive? It takes significantly less code in Erlang to achieve most tasks in its wheelhouse than C++ or Java. I wish I could remember the numbers, but when I did a very rough LoC comparison of Cassandra vs Riak, I believe Riak was roughly 10% the size of Cassandra.