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The other problem when you try to censor this is that the illegality and immorality of these contracts actually depends on the intention, which you can't see on
by edmundedgar 12y ago
The other problem when you try to censor this is that the illegality and immorality of these contracts actually depends on the intention, which you can't see on a public network. TruthCoin (or any other anonymous system for doing this) wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a payment to somebody to burn down the lighthouse and an insurance contract to help you rebuild the lighthouse if it burns down.
Likewise, for all you'll know looking at the transactions, a payment conditional on someone's death could be a will, a life insurance policy, a political bet or an assassination contract. These all look the same to the network; What matters is the intention behind them.
- simple_logic 12y agowouldn't be able to tell the difference between a payment to somebody to burn down the lighthouse and an insurance contract A prediction market provides trust that a payment will happen if a specific event happens. But insurance also requires another kind of trust. If you want to insure your goods, the insurer needs to evaluate the moral hazard in order to determine his rate. But here, he doesn't know if the buyer of the contract is the owner of the lighthouse, so there's no way he can do that: maybe the buyer turns out to be someone who won't suffer from the loss of the lighthouse and who can easily commit a crime. Because the moral hazard is huge, the insurer can't provide insurance at competitive rates. Insurance contracts where the buyer of the insurance is anonymous to the insurer don't seem desirable to me. They enable assassination markets but have no real use (except for small amounts that won't create moral hazard, but I'd call that betting rather than insurance).