How can they be THIS good?

[psztorc]

Observe this interesting forum post: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=4645.msg95512#msg95512

The correct answer is "around August 20th", until someone trades otherwise.

https://www.fairlay.com/event/category/bitcoin/released-date/

Unless those who say otherwise have some other way of proving that they aren't lying. (I'm all ears).

It appears BitAssets will be launched the 22th of August.

I'm impressed.

At the time, back in early June, this forecast seemed pretty extreme (nearly 3 months?! many were predicting that BitsharesX would be released much earlier). My comment back on June 4 (above) was to interpret Fairlay's markets in a way that would be relevant to the Bitshares community, but it was also -at least as much, if not more- to encourage skeptics to get in and make a trade.

The standing PM-forecast turned out to be staggeringly accurate. BtsX was released with relative functionality in a sort of ongoing process from around August 20th to today, August 25th.

The forecast appeared, in my reading, to be driven essentially by only two or three traders. How is it possible that two people, likely neither of them Dan L, or his teammates, managed to outperform the popular opinions held and expressed by so many other people?

One answer is meta-knowledge, knowledge about your knowledge:
1. The "talk is cheap" effect (people who didn't know were silenced by the PM).
2. Project Management - Specific vs General (some people know about delays, human nature, interpreting of a CEO's claims, even if they don't really know anything about the specific project that the CEO is doing).

In the end, even my 'challenge' to the BTS community likely substantially improved the forecast: I challenged people to prove their confidence in the release date with a bet, but no one rose to the challenge. This favored a forecast later.

[koeppelmann]

Interesting observation!

What about starting an PM on the release date of truthcoin?

I would personally start "funding" it with a 0.5BTC prediction against it. Maybe 3 markets - in 3 month - in 6 month - in 9 month?

[psztorc]

I'm all for it.