Manifest was a spectacular gathering that featured no less than pantomime, live betting on wrestling between attendees, orgy markets and deep insights into the future of prediction markets, geopolitics, AI and human fertility.
Some of the group were spending an extended period of time at the "Lighthaven Campus" in Berkeley, CA as part of a "Summer Camp" program.
If not working in AI safety or at Jane St, the participants were professional or casual prediction market traders, or academics curious about the forecasting space. Some of the participants had even advised 10 Downing Street during the Cummings era and moved on to creating strategic option memos for world leaders. Others had first proposed research on prediction markets 35 years ago, or fought for years with the CFTC to keep their business alive. A lot of the community were part of the play money trading games on Manifold, with opportunities to meet MANA whales.
Even still, the majority of the crowd was certainly united around the idea of betting on elections. In fact, it's been a hot topic in the United States for many decades. People simply want to bet on election results. Some people even want to approach election markets with the professional rigor high frequency traders approach the traditional financial markets... I met one such trader who makes enough money trading on election night alone to sustain themselves for the following 4-5 year election cycle.
Kalshi continues to barter with the CFTC day by day to guarantee such regulated products exist in the US market. Every single market proposed must be individually considered & approved by the CFTC in order for trading to commence. Election markets are still considered illegal.
Polymarket has amassed an enormous share of US election betting volume. It's a US VC funded legal arbitrage, and despite Polymarket being fined already, I'm interested to see how this one plays out. I believe it's no coincidence that they start to create & promote more markets around other industries.
We had the enormous pleasure of meeting Professor Robin Hanson, who was indeed a special guest & an absolute legend of the space. We discussed at the depth different market mechanisms, touched on the "free-rider problem" faced by unsubsidized public markets and explored the potential to quantify academics impact on society in simulated PvP Elo ranking games. He went on to deliver an insightful talk about fertility risks humanity is facing.
I proposed a similar idea to the Elo rating of academics in the context of social media engagement metrics a few months ago in an internal memo, intending to shift collateral around a system based on the scoring mechanism to impact the floor price of personas.
Overall, Manifest was an incredibly insightful & productive weekend. Usually, when I ask people in the "real world" if they like prediction markets, they look at me blankly and ask for an explanation. At Manifest, 100% of people I asked that question answered yes.
We collectively remembered events that happened along the way; PredictIt's long standing battle with the CFTC, FTX's leveraged Japanese olympics market that resulted in heavy manipulation & user refunds, how social media activity / engagement related markets led to Andrew Yang's team receiving death threats in the past.
We look forward to the future of prediction markets and how they continue to be built out and achieve adoption.
Here's to futarchy! 
