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Comment by akrolsmir | Hacker News Reader

Great question! Right now, Manifold Dollars (M$) is just internet currency. The reasons for doing this were:

- Much faster for testing out new market systems

- Lower barrier to entry for new users signing up

- Less regulatory risk for everyone involved

But we're actively looking at both the crypto space (for stablecoins), actual fiat like USD, and alternative withdrawal mechanisms (e.g. sending your Manifold balance to 501c3 charities). Attaching real value to these bets is very much something we're interested in!

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I'm not sure I understand. I pay you guys money, and get points that do nothing except for allow me to gamble for more points?

Just to be clear I'm not trying to shit on your product. In fact, if your platform allowed me to participate with real money I would 100% use it.

What do I get for buying access to the service?

A lot of online gaming and mobile gaming works like that. I would say to me this is more interesting (but still doesnt pass my threshold to buy it)

Yup, right now "free-to-play game currency" is a good way to think about Manifold dollars. We'd love to support a real-money equivalent at some point though; stay tuned for updates on this front (https://manifoldmarkets.substack.com/)

No money this is alpha. They supply 1k for you to play with

Um, aren't prediction markets backed by real money flat out illegal in the US, except for a few specific exceptions like political races? I hear there's a prediction market that allows you to use real money in the EU but not in the US for this reason.

I love the idea of playing for charity. I’m pretty unmotivated by play money but I would absolutely play for charity if I thought that there was a good chance that my choice of charity would be much better than the average persons.

That's good to hear! Harsimony floated the idea in this post https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/d43f6HCWawNSazZqb/... , and I think it's quite an interesting idea, especially because regulators may look more favorably upon this kind of system if the proceeds go to charity; think of donor lotteries and charity poker nights.

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