Great article! I hadn't really thought about this, but my knee-jerk is to wonder if Polymarket is less efficient than Manifold so that even if a higher volume of people are willing to make risky bets on Manifold the other participants "correct" them before they can move the market much.
Thanks Jonathan! Yeah that's an interesting idea. Another thought I had was that maybe Manifold and Polymarket attract a different type of bettor. Like maybe since Manifold doesn't involve real money, it attracts people who are actually in it for genuine curiousity / intellectual reasons, whereas maybe Polymarket has more people who are just regular gamblers.
Although I also want to caveat everything I'm saying since I don't even know for sure yet if Polymarket will be consistently more volatile than Manifold, or if that was just a coincidence in this comparison that won't broadly replicate. I'm hoping to try out some more comparisons in the future and see if it's a general trend.
It sounds like there's an API in this case, but I'd also point you to Web Plot Digitizer for extracting approximate data from a wide variety of plots. https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/
as you are likely aware, the "price" that can be seen on a typical Polymarket chart is actually a midpoint between the best bid and best ask. Some orders are getting filled at prices much lower than it can be guessed from the chart and vice versa if traders cancel their bids the price сan "crash" with no trades actually taking place.
Hi Mike,
You can totally use our API to download all the price data, including every single bet that was made.
Here's the docs for the /bets endpoint: https://docs.manifold.markets/api#get-v0bets
Cheers,
James
(Manifold cofounder)
Ah I see, thanks! Yeah I was looking in the wrong place for it -- /v0/market rather than /v0/bets.
Also, super cool article! Love to read about how we compare to other prediction market sites.
Great article! I hadn't really thought about this, but my knee-jerk is to wonder if Polymarket is less efficient than Manifold so that even if a higher volume of people are willing to make risky bets on Manifold the other participants "correct" them before they can move the market much.
Thanks Jonathan! Yeah that's an interesting idea. Another thought I had was that maybe Manifold and Polymarket attract a different type of bettor. Like maybe since Manifold doesn't involve real money, it attracts people who are actually in it for genuine curiousity / intellectual reasons, whereas maybe Polymarket has more people who are just regular gamblers.
Although I also want to caveat everything I'm saying since I don't even know for sure yet if Polymarket will be consistently more volatile than Manifold, or if that was just a coincidence in this comparison that won't broadly replicate. I'm hoping to try out some more comparisons in the future and see if it's a general trend.
It sounds like there's an API in this case, but I'd also point you to Web Plot Digitizer for extracting approximate data from a wide variety of plots. https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/
Thanks, I'll check it out!
as you are likely aware, the "price" that can be seen on a typical Polymarket chart is actually a midpoint between the best bid and best ask. Some orders are getting filled at prices much lower than it can be guessed from the chart and vice versa if traders cancel their bids the price сan "crash" with no trades actually taking place.