Before 1 January 2025 (Pacific time), a user must convert a balance of "prize points" (not some other direct, non-prize point credit like partner bonuses) into $1000.00 (USD) or more. By "prize points", I mean whatever name will be given to the currency earned from market resolutions after 1 May 2024. (If other sources can also supply this currency, those also count -- the key is that the market resolution currency is used to generate the money.)
They can post their proof in this market, or someone can provide proof of the event to resolve this yes.
The $1000 can be withdrawn in multiple separate events or all at once.
Resolves No if no proof has been shown in the comment section of this market before the specified date. I may or may not attempt to seek out this proof. If Manifold databases are accessible and can show that someone withdrew $1000, or Manifold staff confirm it, that will be sufficient to resolve Yes.
If "prize points" never exist, or "real money withdrawals" never materialize, this market would resolve No.
Note: If there is a fee applied to withdrawals such that withdrawing an amount of prize points nominally worth $1,000 results in a slightly lower amount of currency in the user's bank account at the end of the transaction, the key factor is the amount of money the end user actually has control of. Someone withdrawing "$1000 worth" of prize points but getting $975 in their bank account would need to get $25 more into their bank account in order for this to resolve Yes.
Anyone on the Manifold staff or otherwise on the Manifold payroll (full or part time), and anyone who is an 'investor' in Manifold-the-company or has some special relationship with them (family, etc.), who reports withdrawing $1000, will NOT resolve this market Yes unless they can sufficiently prove that they had no special treatment and any regular user could have done the same thing. If it appears any special treatment was given to the user, I don't want to count it.
Resolves Yes promptly upon receipt of proof.
There was an announcement today about cash prizes and the sweepstakes model. The announcement indicates that special markets (some already exist) will let you trade a new currency in them, then if you win, you can withdraw it for cash.
Everything about this plan seems to still fit with the spirit of this market. If you think something in the description should be updated for clarity, let me know.
It is also relevant that users who perform a validation are currently eligible for "their entire net worth" of mana to be airdropped in the new currency. That means some users might have over $1000 of the new currency without even paying any money. But it appears they need to bet that currency in a market before they will be able to withdraw it.
@Eliza Some other related thoughts:
I have a general understanding that there is there are reporting requirements if they distribute an amount over $600 to a user in a single year. But I also understand that the site has partnered with a third party who can help with this type of compliance. That was part of the reason for choosing $1000 on this market. I don't think anyone has withdrawn $600 yet so who knows, but it could be possible there might be delays if a user tries to withdraw more than this amount.
Should we have another market like this for a higher threshold? Especially over $5000, there could be other interesting hurdles.
@ElmerFudd The current "prize points" on the site are different from mana in 2 important ways:
You cannot bet on anything with them
You cannot send them to other users, P2P ("no managrams")
You can convert them to mana, 1-to-1.
We were told in the past that these "prize points" might be convertible to other rewards, including "cash" in the future, but there have been rumors circulating more recently that indicate these current "prize points" may never convert to anything but mana because they are "dirty" and must be cleansed in the fires of special new markets before they can be converted to other prizes. There is also speculation that there will be another new currency that will become the actual "prize points" and the current "prize points" will be discontinued.
Note that this market's description will react to any future announced changes to the exact mechanism for any monetary payout. At this time, people seem to still believe that prizes of real money will happen in 2024. (It doesn't matter exactly which currency accomplishes this.)
Note that the detailed criteria of this market may be updated, if the actual structure of the cash payout mechanism changes from the previously speculated system. If there are e.g. additional layers of indirection between a market resolution and a payout, or some other currency is introduced, I will be updating the description to match the spirit of the original question, which is "Will a user get $1000 of real money out of the Manifold system".
@Eliza does "Will a user get $1000 of real money out of the Manifold system" count manifund/other ways to launder mana?
This market is the next step up after @mattyb 's:
/mattyb/the-pivot-will-manifold-ever-give-a
I think that one is interesting, but I think the more interesting thing is if users start generating enough prize points to result in meaningfully large payouts.
I thought about making this one of those multi-option markets where there are options like $1,000, $10,000, and $100,000, but I decided I was significantly more interested in the $1,000 variant and users seem to participate more on binary questions.
@Eliza My understanding is that $1000 would be roughly 1 million mana (or prize points), so very, very few users will start the quest with that much mana. This market should also act as a proxy for mana supply turnover to the new economy, users purchasing mana, etc. -- if five people withdraw $10, that's one thing. If some user manages to get enough action in markets to accumulate $1000 worth of prize points, that's an actual economy functioning with robust markets. Probably. Hopefully.
@Eliza There are already users with 1M mana, and mana should be easy to convert into prize points via near guaranteed markets. What makes you think this won't happen if real money withdrawals do exist?
@ShadowyZephyr I haven't bet yes or no! But now you've convinced me to consider it....
Since mattyb's market already covers "someone withdraws some amount", this one is supposed to gauge whether users will be able to acquire a large enough pool of prize points to make withdrawing $1000 a realistic option.
I don't expect it to be terribly hard for users to be awarded 1 million prize points over time if they can be trivially recycled back to mana. However, to extract $1000, they will need 1 million prize points all at once, or else to extract money for a fee, then pay a new fee to convert that money back into mana to repeat the cycle. (I doubt big action users will want to keep paying those fees, though.)
It seems like the two likeliest ways for someone to acquire 1 million prize points at once are:
Someone wins a long shot bet and wants to cash out.
This would be like if LK-99 resolved Yes and SanghyeonSeo immediately wanted to withdraw all the proceeds (someone else can ask him if he thinks he would be eligible to do so and/or actually do it....).
A million mana on a single long shot bet is quite a lot! It would require users to bet $990 against your $10 at 1%.
I know you can set up contrived situations to make this happen, like a 100-answer random-resolve market, so if the gambling side takes over this is certainly very possible! And the user who wins something like that might indeed be very likely to wish to cash out.
A user with a very large balance and loads of prize points decides they want to take some money out of the system.....
I didn't re-check the data but AFAIK the list of users who currently have an available balance of 1 million mana is "a handful of staff/system accounts". I am going to clarify in the criteria that anyone otherwise on the Manifold payroll withdrawing money would not count for the purpose of this market. I don't really care if they want to do shenanigans like that to claim the system is legit......
Michael Wheatley has been extracting himself from lots of markets and building up a considerable balance, but it seems like he's doing that to prep for a donation rather than trying to maybe extract it as USD in the future.
Beyond those users, there are a small handful who have a net worth of over 1 million mana. It's a small enough group that "new/other user who acquires 1 million mana post-devaluation" is probably just as likely to be one to cash out $1000 than the ones who already have a million mana (imo).
My gut reaction tells me many of the existing users who have acquired 1 million mana will not be very interested in immediately extracting it as USD. (I bet some who have acquired 100,000 mana will, though!) And I also think users who have the ability to extract ~$100 will not be interested in extracting $100 with a 5% withdrawal penalty, then buying $100 of mana with a new fee on the purchase, and repeating that 100 times.
So, to me, it feels like this question requires both "prize points to money works" AND "there is a real, functioning economy that allows for larger amounts of money than a few pennies to change hands".