Augur Bet Total Hits $1.4m As REP Token Price Surges
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The total amount staked on the decentralized predictions market, Augur (REP), has reached an all-time high.
Data collected by Predictions.Global, an aggregator powered by the Augur network, found there was more than 7,000 Ether (ETH), currently being used in bets on the predictions platform. With each ETH presently trading at around $200, this would make the total amount staked worth approximately $1.4m at current prices.
Augur is a decentralized platform that enables users to make and place bets on whatever they want. Wagers are made between two parties, with funds held in escrow in a smart contract. Originally released on the Ethereum network back in 2014, the dApp was finally released in July. It was the most popular application in the immediate honeymoon period; the native Reputation, or REP, token spiked up to $40.
Since then Augur has come under fire, with some users suggesting that the platform is no longer popular, making it difficult to justify its multi-million dollar total cap. As Crypto Briefing reported in early September, the network at one point had 38 active users in the space of 24 hours.
Take an Augur bet?
The value of REP tokens have been rising in today’s trading; opening Wednesday at around $13.50 but surged rapidly in the small hours to a high of $15.65. The coin has been subjected to a price correction and is currently hovering at around the $14 mark. Nonetheless, it is still one of the best market performers midweek; its cap is currently $6m up from where it was at the beginning of the day.
Mainstream media hyperbole were quick to predict Augur would become the go-to place for macabre death predictions on high-profile figures, including a certain US president, in particular. But the vast majority of bets on the platform have been crypto price predictions.
Augur presently has a wager on whether Ether will exceed $500 by the end of 2018. There is currently more than $500,000 worth of ETH staked on this: more than a third of the platform’s total bet amount. This makes it the single largest bet on the Augur platform.
Other large bets on crypto include one on whether the REP token will ever trade at above $32, which closes on January 1st and currently has $250,000 of Ether. Another one wagers on whether Ethereum will have a larger market cap than Bitcoin (BTC) by the end of 2019.
Only two of the ten largest bets are on something other than crypto price predictions. The third largest wager is on which political party will have a majority in the House following the US midterm elections this November; the tenth largest is on whether Donald Trump, the US president, will win a Nobel Peace Prize during his first four-year term in office.
The odds are overwhelmingly against this: currently, it’s a 6% chance.
The author is invested in BTC and ETH, which is mentioned in this article.
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