Users Bet on Celebrity Assassinations on Augur Prediction Markets

Publicly launched on July 9, 2018, Augur prediction markets are using Ethereum smart contracts to allow users to bet on almost anything.

Taking it to the extreme, Augur users created the first assassination prediction markets prediction on the platform.

A decentralized prediction market, Augur's open-source protocol gives users complete control over which markets they create and trade on - letting people bet on anything from weather predictions and election outcomes to the life expectancy of the current U.S. president.

Assassination markets are inevitable on a platform with uncensored flexibility.

Augur users are gambling on whether U.S. Senator John McCain and actress Betty White will survive until 2019 - stirring legal and ethical controversy around the unregulated prediction market platform.

The obvious danger in illegal assassination markets is that users could bet on the death of a public figure and go on to instigate or actually murder that person for profit.

A few decentralized application browsers are removing search results for markets related to celebrity deaths, but the decentralized nature of Augur's mainnet makes it impossible to truly remove these markets from the network.

With the removal of the centralized kill switch, some question whether Augur is avoiding liability for the potential illegal outcomes of assassination prediction markets among other illicit betting schemes.

Foreseeing the possibility of such behavior on the network, Augur has enabled users, called "Reporters," to flag specific markets deemed unethical and prevent further betting on them.

Reporters can be penalized for flagging markets as unethical if done so incorrectly.