Bobby Allyn

So the idea of prediction markets, the first early instance of them was in Iowa in the 1980s during the 1988 presidential election, the George H.W.

Bush election, because these political scientists thought, OK, we have punditry, we have traditional polls, we have the mainstream media.

But what if people put their money where their mouth is and take wagers on the presidential election?

And the result was so promising and it was more accurate than any poll at the time that this became a thing that political scientists have really been interested in and have tried to replicate in a sort of academic ivory tower kind of setting.

And that's where it has remained until very, very recently.

So jump ahead.

until right before the 2016 election.

And Tarek Mansour, who at the time was a Goldman Sachs trader, was getting calls from wealthy clients who said, look, if Trump loses, this could be bad for my investment portfolio.

If Trump wins, this could be bad for my investment portfolio.

How do I get exposure to this?

Like, how can I short this?

Or how can I make money on this?

What can I do?

And there was no way to really do it.

Tarek Mansour likes talking about how

There was ways to like invest in like a proxy.

So you could invest in like the whole S&P 500 or invest in other things that might go up or down if Trump wins or loses.

But there was no way to directly bet on the outcome of is Trump going to win or lose?

And that was his kind of –

light bulb moment where he thought, I think there is demand here to allow people to just bet on outcomes.