[Photo: Augur logo. Source: augur.net]
Augur (REP) promises to predict the outcome of real life world events. These include events such as the win by Donald Trump in the last American general election; or the Eagles win at the Superbowl; or even the next time the Cryptocurrency markets will collapse.
One is left to wonder had the Augur (REP) platform been live in December, if it would have been able to give us a glimpse into the current events of the Cryptocurrency crash. Perhaps if the events from the addition of Bitcoin Futures on December 18th, to the current imminent ban of Crypto in China, were somehow calculated as possible outcomes and presented to us, then maybe we’d have been able to cash out early or even buy into an ICO as an alternative.
So what exactly is Augur (REP)?
According to wikipedia, Augur was founded in 2014 by Jack Peterson and Joey Krug to develop a decentralized oracle and prediction market platform on the blockchain that could be deployed by anyone as open-source software. The alpha version of Augur was released on the Ethereum-testnet on June 16, 2015. The first beta version was released in March 2016. A main network release of the first official Augur trading market (the bounty market) is currently planned for early 2018 (with the full Augur platform released for deployment in stages following the successful resolution of this inaugural market).
With this information, one is hopeful that Augur (REP) will be live by the end of Q1, 2018. We can be hopeful that once Augur is live, we will have some warning or ‘insider information’ to probably safeguard against the next cryptocurrency crash.
The good thing about the Augur (REP) platform is that it will also allow anyone to place bets on the future of the markets it predicts. It allows users to buy shares that are linked to the result of an event. For example, you can buy shares that the cryptocurrency market will rise back up in March. The price of the shares range from zero to one as is the norm in any probability calculation. The more certain the event, the higher it is in the range of zero to one. If the event happens, you get paid one full dollar per share of the event. This means that if you bought a share at $0.80, and the event happens, your profits are $0.20 per share since you will be paid a full dollar per share.
The inverse is also true. Were the event not to occur as predicted, then you lose every share bought relating to that event at the price bought. You can call it calculated gambling on real life events.
All this is welcome news for the statisticians, mathematicians, gamblers and crypto and stock traders.
In addition, the developers at Augur have a bounty system for anyone who can hack its software for the future Augur (REP) platform. This is intended to make the platform safe in an nontraditional way, by allowing hacks aimed at identifying weaknesses in the code so they can work on it and make it more secure.
What about the current price and number of coins in circulation?
Augur (REP) only has 11 Million tokens in circulation. This means they are relatively few when compared to Ripple (XRP) with 39 Billion and Stellar (XLM) with 18.431 Billion tokens in circulation. This relatively low supply might be the reason the token is currently trading at $34.93 even during the current dip in the cryptocurrency market.
At its peak, Augur (REP) was trading at $107 on January 12th. This is less than a month ago. The current price is a staggering 67.4% drop from this value.
The future of the coin might be bright once the cryptocurrencies market stabilize. Only the release of a live version of the prediction market platform will tell if Augur (REP) is a Moon Landing Contender for this year.
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