Will models like Augur replace Betfair?
Back during the dot-com boom in the year 2000 disintermediation was a keyword that was floating around.
If you used word disintermediation in a sentence along with the words dot-com, it was highly likely that you’d be able to secure funding for your project the matter how much money you asked for, or how stupid the idea was. Disintermediation was the posh word for what is now known to become as peer-to-peer engagement. Basically two people trading services or goods without the need for middlemen.
Out of the many thousands of models that were proposed, it was always likely that only a few would make it. As we now know Betfair was one of those companies. Its reputation and status was built on the peer-to-peer model. Now of course it’s a much more complicated beast and is no longer the Bastion of peer-to-peer models.
Economics has a habit of creating opportunity through people moving away from their core business. As businesses seek ultimate profitability they tend to open the door to new entrants who don’t carry any baggage, it’s an age-old business issue.
I recently became aware of a new start-up called Augur, that promises to revolutionise the peer-to-peer prediction markets. Its proposition is eerily reminiscent to that of ‘flutter’ which was a company that Betfair bought way back in the early days. Flutter’s early model was pretty simple, you would post up an idea, such as Manchester city to win and other people could take on the other side of the bet. But it wasn’t limited to sports, it was limited to pretty much anything you care.
Augur plans to do exactly the same thing, but take advantage of modern technology to allow people to do it in a much better way. Their ‘mission statement’ is ‘An Open-Source, Decentralized, Peer-to-Peer Prediction Market Platform’. I think it’s an interesting model and it’s one that is at ground level at the moment, so if you want to invest in the next big peer-to-peer exchange that is exactly what you can do at this stage. Because it’s emanating from a deeply technology driven US venture capital model, if it takes off it could grow very quickly. If it doesn’t take off then I’d imagine another one will be along to replace it in short time.
Peer-to-peer is the future. Uber, Air B&B and various other models are gaining significant traction around the world. The interesting thing is that all of these disruptive businesses are causing people to have knee-jerk reactions and generally failed to get the point! The fact is it’s a much better way of doing business and therefore in the long term it will succeed, regardless of politics or vested interests. That’s how life works!
As long as there is innovation, the future is always bright.
Here is some more information on Augur: –
The concept
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yegyih591Jo&feature=youtu.be
The site
https://www.augur.net/blog/the-augur-alpha-is-now-available-to-download
The article
https://reason.com/blog/2015/08/11/augur-gambling-prediction-ethereum
https://twitter.com/augurproject
Funding
Category: Alternative markets, Betfair
