Hey Alistair — Thanks for including us in your review and for the (mostly) kind words. :) I think either we did a bad job conveying or you just missed experiencing how our platform works.

It is indeed a prediction market, but we have two interfaces a user can choose from, and perhaps you only experienced one of them: “easy” mode, where you’re simply selecting a probability and providing a rationale. But behind that selection of a probability, a trade is made. There’s also “geek” mode which is a true trader interface. And behind the UX is Hanson’s MSR. So I promise, it’s a legit prediction market. To see this in action, try signing up on our public site AlphaCast: https://alphacast.cultivateforecasts.com, or if you were trying TinyCast, go in to your settings and enable geek mode and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Where we’ve actually strayed a bit from prediction markets is also building opinion poll mechanisms, where we do simply collect probabilities. We did this to support Tetlock’s Good Judgment project, and continue to work with Good Judgment supporting their open tournament and some client relationships.

If you’re going to start trying this in Australia, would love to chat. We have several clients there now and I’d be happy to share some of our lessons learned and successes and pitfalls if you decide to get in to this space.