Augur blockchain platform allows betting on deaths of personalities

Betting platform Augur now allows users to bet on when certain world-renowned personalities will die.

One of the top pools predicts that US President Donald Trump, 72, will pass away this year. It has recorded dozens of trades, according to Motherboard. Tasteless bets on the deaths of Betty White, 96, Jeff Bezos, 54, and Warren Buffet, 87, are also now open.

The so-called Augur protocol was launched on the Ethereum network by the non-profit Forecast Foundation in a bid to make public the first blockchain-powered betting platform.

Forecast claims on its website to be “a group of developers and other technology professionals who are passionate about the potential of decentralised applications.”

It also says “it does not own or lead Augur, but rather supports and develops the free, open-source protocol that is Augur”.

Those interested in these kinds of controversial bets must download the free Augur app and link it to an Ethereum wallet after which they can create their prediction. The outcome of a prediction is reported by users who hold Augur REP tokens, which means the platform is entirely decentralised.

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This is known as the “assassination market” because, according to Motherboard, it “arguably incentivises someone to guarantee a win by offing the person themselves”.

The concept was first introduced in the mid-1990s by crypto-anarchist Jim Bell, who wrote a paper stating that the anonymity provided by modern encryption techniques and the emergence of digital currency would allow for political assassinations to be incentivised and carried out anonymously.

Other types of bets are also possible on Augur, including weather predictions, political forecasting, electoral results, hedging against natural disasters, political upheavals and market crashings as well as company forecasting.