How this industry works
Every other page here answers “which tool”. These answer the questions that decide whether the answer is usable at all — what an exchange charges for its own prices, who owns the identifier on a security, what an index licence covers. Reference pages, corrected in place rather than dated, each one cited.
How accurate a prediction market's price actually is
What research establishes about reading 73 cents as a 73% chance — where market prices are calibrated, the deviations that recur, and what the horizon does.
Next to ForecastingUpdated
How money gets back out
The rail that funded an account is usually not the rail that empties it. Same-source rules, clearing holds, jurisdiction locks, and what a bridge takes.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Scientific and government forecast hubs
Public-health agencies run open, scored forecast hubs anyone can join. The unit of submission is a model, not a person, and nothing there is a personal record.
Next to ForecastingUpdated
What running a bot does not solve
A bot fixes speed and consistency. Rate limits, a missing rehearsal, a field that stops arriving, a partial fill and a paused market are not coding problems.
Next to Clients & BotsUpdated
What a forecasting platform's score actually measures
Proper rules, the two Brier conventions that differ by a factor of two, crowd-relative scores that do not travel between sites, and why profit is not accuracy.
Next to ForecastingUpdated
What a prediction market is, and how one works
A contract that pays one dollar if a stated event happens. What you buy, who takes the other side, who decides, and when the cents stop meaning a probability.
Next to VenuesUpdated
What a temperature market actually settles on
One named station, a day running midnight to midnight local standard time, and a number the government itself calls preliminary. Not the forecast you watched.
Next to VenuesUpdated
What an AI weather model gives you, and what it does not
The named models are public, cheap and openly licensed. What they output is a gridded value at fixed hours, which is not what a contract measures.
Next to ForecastingUpdated
What wallet tracking shows, and what it cannot
A Polymarket fill is a public transaction and a regulated exchange position is not, so wallet analytics exist on one venue and not the other.
Next to AnalyticsUpdated
What you have to prove about yourself to trade
A connected wallet is not an identity check. Which venues ask for what, at which step of the way in, and what you give up on the ones that never ask.
Next to VenuesUpdated
What your money does between the trade and the resolution
An event contract is fully collateralised, so the position is the cash. What that cash does while you wait, who earns interest on it, and how to annualise it.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Where the liquidity comes from, and who is on the other side
Order book, automated market maker or pool — what each means for the price you get, and why the number on a thin market is not a probability.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Where weather data comes from and what you may do with it
Observations, model output and archives are three products with three licences. The forecast is the cheap half; a clean observation history is not.
Next to Data APIsUpdated
Where your key lives when software trades for you
Four different credentials are all called a key, and they differ in what a copy permits. What the clients in this catalogue ask for, and what to ask them back.
Next to Clients & BotsUpdated
Who decides how a prediction market resolves
Four different parties resolve these markets, each against a document named in the rules rather than in the title. Who decides, from what source, and by when.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Who sends you a tax form, and who sends nothing
Four cards in this catalogue claim tax reporting, and the documents behind that flag are not the same document. What each venue's own writing says it issues.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Why the same contract costs two different prices on two venues
Two venues quoting one outcome are quoting two contracts. What the gap between the prices is made of - rules, fallbacks, fees, collateral, exits, eligibility.
Next to Data APIsUpdated
What a trade actually costs on a prediction market
Venues publish trading fees in four incompatible units, so 3.00% on one can be cheaper than 1.75% on another. How to convert them, and what else takes a cut.
Next to Data APIsUpdated
Event contract or swap, and why the label decides the case
Whether an event contract is a swap under the Commodity Exchange Act decides whether a state may regulate it. Two circuits read the definition oppositely.
Next to VenuesUpdated
Why a venue is unavailable where you are
One phrase covers four unrelated restrictions, and the federal question underneath them is split between two appellate courts. What the documents actually say.
Next to VenuesUpdated