hey bill what do you know about the book prophet exchange?
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I heard about this site a few weeks ago for the first time from a SBR poster but haven't had the chance to look at it in detail. It looks like you are unlikely to score more than $10 for a win.
<<What if I want to win more than $10?
Every contract pays $10. If you want to win more than $10, you must buy more contracts. You can buy as many contracts as you want, provided that someone can be found to buy the opposite side of those contracts>>
I am curious about where you found this site. An exchange is extremely hard to get off the ground because it takes players to get players. At this point it looks like the house it trying to attract business by offering a bunch of $10 wagers and will be willing to buy more if the odds are in its favor. I would also be leery of any gaming site that asks you to contact them through Yahoo messenger and doesn't have a phone number or an email address. I will contact them later in the week to find out more.
Have you tried it out?Last edited by Bill Dozer; 08-28-05, 02:55 AM.Comment -
Hello everyone, I am the primary administrator for Prophet Exchange. I contacted Bill via IM and he suggested that I post my answers to his concerns here in the forum for everyone to see. The following are my comments on the points that Bill has raised:
>>It looks like you are unlikely to score more than $10 for a win.<<
At this exact point, that is mostly true. Most of the current contracts on The Exchange have quantities of "1", meaning that the owners of each side are limited to $10 wins. This is a symptom of the fact that we are a brand new site. There is nothing on the site that overtly limits any player from winning $50, $100, or $1000. However, market forces ultimately determine what a player can win or lose and at this point our market is admittedly small.
But this is not an absolute limit. Players have the ability to clone contracts. Even if there is only 1 contract available, a player can attempt to clone, say, 50 copies of an existing contract. Once a player clones a copy of an existing contract, he will actually own those contracts once someone can be found to take the opposite side. Market forces ultimately determine the number of contracts available for trade.
Players can also create their own contracts - in any quantity they desire. So there is nothing stopping a player from placing a $1000 bet by creating 100 $10 contracts. Of course, those contracts will only be accepted once someone can be found to take the other side, so again, market forces ultimately determine the amount of money that can be won.
>>An exchange is extremely hard to get off the ground because it takes players to get players.<<
Very true.
>>At this point it looks like the house it trying to attract business by offering a bunch of $10 wagers and will be willing to buy more if the odds are in its favor.<<
Not true. Obviously, it would look quite bleak to have an exchange with 0 contracts on the market. Additionally, we needed to do testing on our software before launch. So we found a series of beta testers. For these beta testers, we funded their accounts and allowed them to create any contracts they desired based on the funds we had given them. For whatever reason, the majority of them all chose to create single contracts.
It should be noted that these beta testers are not Prophet Exchange employees. After we funded their accounts, we had no say in what they did on The Exchange. In fact, to be frank, we have been rather frustrated that some of the individuals who volunteered to beta test have not even bothered to use the site(?), but we are working through that issue. Since we launched with our beta testers, we have since gained more public players, but the beta testers are still a significant presence.
>>I would also be leery of any gaming site that asks you to contact them through Yahoo messenger and doesn't have a phone number or an email address.<<
First, we do have numerous email addresses. If you go to the Contact Us page there is a feedback form and the results are emailed to "feedback" AT "prophetexchange.com". We could just post the email address on the page, but the fact is that it leads to copious amounts of spam from marketers who have no intention of ever using the site.
Registered users are also given a separate support email address once they log in. Obviously, we don't post this address on the public pages because it is really only meant for use by our players.
As for posting a phone number - you're right, we don't. We don't post a phone number because we are not (and do not claim to be) a 24-hour shop. Prophet Exchange is run by a couple of owners (who have almost no involvement in day-to-day operations), a handful of support staff (who respond to communications on a part time basis), and me - the primary administrator.
I realize that most of our competitors claim to have 500 telephone operators standing by 24/7, but we have a drastically different business model.
You have already pointed out that a betting exchange is very difficult to get off the ground because the concept requires a certain "critical mass" of bettors. So most new betting exchanges have an astronomical "burn rate" - meaning that they are eating through all of their start-up capital as they desperately attempt to gain new players (deposits). If they don't grab a LOT of new players in a very SHORT period of time - look out, you have another scam artist on your hands.
We are exactly the opposite. We have a "burn rate" of almost zero. We have paid for our servers 10 years in advance. Our staffing costs are basically nil. Our day-to-day operations cost us almost nothing. The site is almost entirely automated. It basically runs itself. This means that we can afford to sit out here for YEARS while we build a reputation and slowly gather clients. So, while I would love to post a 24-hour 800 number on the site, the fact is that the infrastructure to support this functionality would actually put the business in a precarious position. Under our current model, we don't have to worry about running out of operating funds - and this ultimately means that the whole business is much more stable and tenable over the long haul.
One more note: We are currently offering a fairly large (20%) deposit bonus. This bonus will not be around for long. It is merely an incentive that represents the money that the owners are willing to spend on our initial promotions. Rather than pay out money to an advertising company, they decided to put this money back in the hands of players via a deposit bonus. However, we could not sustain our business model for long if we chose to hand out deposit bonuses forever. The fact is that with a 1% commission on trades, we will, in the near future, be ending ALL deposit bonuses. We cannot continue to hand people 20% deposit bonuses AND keep commissions at 1%.
If anyone has ANY questions about Prophet Exchange, please do not hesitate to contact me. The easiest way to reach me is "feedback" AT "prophetexchange.com". I would be glad to answer ANY questions that you may have.
Adam
Prophet Exchange
Bet on ANYTHING
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the next pinny?
I am curious about where you found this site. An exchange is extremely hard to get off the ground because it takes players to get players. At this point it looks like the house it trying to attract business by offering a bunch of $10 wagers and will be willing to buy more if the odds are in its favor. I would also be leery of any gaming site that asks you to contact them through Yahoo messenger and doesn't have a phone number or an email address. I will contact them later in the week to find out more.
Have you tried it out?[/QUOTE]
Let us know what you find out bill but your right ya may need to put out another contract .....
on the guy when you can't find him.
Was the other brilliant letter you posted earlier from this same outfit course the spelling is a little better.
smackem,
sq
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I get the sense he is telling the truth and that is the reason Im not signing up.
Once Prohet turns a profit and has a full staff and some exchangers he should let us know. Books showing the alpha and beta versions is like a good looking girl showing me how she looked when she was fat. I dont want to see where the cellulite was.
Let me know whe you are done with your extreme makeover and then show me what you got.Comment
