Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Predictable, predictable predictions. Predict. Predictable predictions.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: Predictable, predicting.
[00:00:05] Speaker C: Predictable.
Okay. Are you delusional?
[00:00:10] Speaker A: What?
[00:00:10] Speaker C: They were. They were two and a half point underdogs. In on neutral versus Minnesota with fucking Carson Wentz's quarterback.
[00:00:17] Speaker A: Predictive Programming Episode 4 well, okay, we disagree about the strength of the Steelers, so let's let the money talk. How'd you do this weekend?
[00:00:28] Speaker C: That was the P. L.
Not good.
Very not good.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Too bad. Yeah.
Yeah. Rough weekend for you.
[00:00:37] Speaker C: Thanks. Thanks, Henry. That's always nice to hear.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: We did pretty good. Oh, yeah, we got. We got Joe coming up in a bit. Me and Chris are going to talk for a minute, then we're going to bring one of our traders. Joe has been looking at some.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: Your traders? Not my trader.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: One of our traders. Joe has been looking at some trading tools this week. So we're gonna have a conversation about that, but we're gonna warm up a little bit.
Yeah, we had a good week, and I think prediction markets, I would say, had a good week. I thought south park was a hit and I thought the Wall Street Journal article was net bullish. What was your opinion? You asked me if both of these things if I believe they were paid shills.
[00:01:14] Speaker C: So. Okay. I heard in a group chat from someone that I'm sure this group chat.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Is full of complete brainiacs too.
[00:01:22] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, you know it.
That's someone's watch. They were watching the south park live and they said, oh, this looks like it paid shill. Because the problem was they looked at the first five minutes where, like, Cartman was just, like, completely, like, describing a prediction market. You can bet on this. And using the Kalshee, like, clear interface, I was like, all right, it does look like a paid shill. Like, that was pretty gross. But then you, like, watch the next 15 minutes of it and you're like.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: I don't think they paid to put.
[00:01:50] Speaker C: I don't think, like. Or maybe they did and just, like, took massive heat. But I don't think you want to make the joke that, like, Don Jr. Is like, everything, because he is everything. And it's kind of true. And, like, south park is right there and you don't want to, like, also hint on the obvious collusion that goes on that is, like, basically illegal and would potentially ruin prediction markets. So, like, I don't think you want that either. So I kind of leaned at the end of it. Is it not being a paid show if it was?
Good job. Because you fooled me.
And then, like, the Wall Street Journal article, I.
I don't know. Anytime I See a Wall Street Journal article, something like a product like that, I just always lean on it to being a paid show.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: I know less about that environment. My understanding is the Wall Street Journal is a reputable newspaper and I don't think anybody paid to get that story planted. But did you think it was bullish for the industry or overly critical? Yeah, it's gotta be, right? Of course. Now let me widen the question because I'm actually going somewhere. Do you think it is possible to write a newspaper article about the prediction market industry that would actually be detrimental to it, or are we still in all press is good press territory?
[00:03:08] Speaker C: All press is good press.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: I kind of feel that way too. Right.
[00:03:11] Speaker C: Because, like, you know, I know we were talking about it with one of our good friends potentially writing a, an article about it, about the prediction market space. And honestly, like, it makes you think, like, I've done some, like, interviews with some people and like, there's someone in the space that was just like, hey, I'm just trying to learn about it. They're like, they're like a hedge fund investor or whatever.
And they were, I was talking about, and I said, like, I, I think Robin Hood is like, very evil. Like, they prey on these people. But I'm not acting like I'm holier than thou. I love them because I make money off the flow and I don't mind being that evil person as long as I get a little bit of the money too. And I think people reading any press are gonna think the same, which is like, oh, this is a little scummy, but I can profit off this scumminess and then they'll hop in. So I just don't think anything, anything you write could kill the industry. It could only help it.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Any other topics you wanted to cover from this weekend, this week?
[00:04:10] Speaker C: What is this roundtable? This, this, this, the CFTC roundtable. It's very funny to see Shane and Tarek sitting far apart and not, not shaking hands. The two giants gonna duke it out?
[00:04:21] Speaker A: I, yeah, the, the explicit goal of the round table. I don't know. I'll be honest.
[00:04:27] Speaker C: All right, so, well, speaking of two giants.
Speaking of two giants, I, I, I.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: Don'T know if you can tell, but I take such a, like, the medium is the message approach to all of this, where there's a roundtable happening and Shane and Tarek are up there and that's good. It doesn't matter what they say or what comes out of it.
[00:04:50] Speaker C: That's fair. And speaking of two giants, I read from A very reputable news source that both Kelshi and Polymarket were interested in. A company called Novig.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: What was.
[00:05:02] Speaker C: Do you have any like thoughts on this matter?
[00:05:03] Speaker A: What was the name of the reputable news source?
[00:05:06] Speaker C: Sports news, I believe.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: Sports news.
[00:05:10] Speaker C: That was.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Hey, how many sports news articles do you read a week?
You're just leafing through it definitely wasn't called sports news.
[00:05:18] Speaker C: What was it? Okay, I sent you the article. What was it called?
[00:05:21] Speaker A: You did send me. I think it was called front Office Sports.
[00:05:23] Speaker C: Oh, Front Office Sports, okay. But that's very reputable. You're dodging the question. I want an answer.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: I. I'm not in communications, so I don't really have anything to say, but.
[00:05:36] Speaker C: Sounds like to me they might have made an offer.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: I don't think Novig is for sale. I don't know why we would sell this company.
This company is ripping.
[00:05:43] Speaker C: Well, okay, I'll make. I'll. I'll be a little negative then for you guys.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: Why would you do that? This company is ripping. That's the takeaway.
[00:05:51] Speaker C: I use Novig. Even if I do get absolutely crushed this past weekend and might have to reevaluate my life choices. But I would make the argument that you need to consider because Paulie and Callous, you're so far ahead and sweepstake is going to get killed state by state eventually. And if you can't get a CFTC license, how do you survive? So sell now and get your profit.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: I mean, I remember a year ago, people were pretending they couldn't pronounce the name of the company.
Like I'm. I'm really not interested in any. In any. Yeah, no, veesh.
In any bearishness about it. Like we're still able to be very nimble and dance around whatever regulatory challenges happen. And I know now is not the time to get scared.
[00:06:44] Speaker C: Fair enough.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Biggest day ever yesterday. That was good. I'm sure. For. Yeah, not for you. I think for just about everybody though.
Everything is ripping everywhere. Again, like, you know, I don't.
I. It'd be crazy to think you're selling the top right now. It's not.
[00:06:58] Speaker C: So. Okay.
When the super bowl happens and everyone like, you know, Kalshee, Paulie, do like a billion plus each on it. Maybe multiple billions. And you guys do what? I mean, what would you put the over under on what you'll do in a Super Bowl?
25 million.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: That's a good question.
25 sounds right.
[00:07:21] Speaker C: And you did three last Super Bowl. Right?
[00:07:23] Speaker A: We. We got to almost four that we set a market on three, and we.
[00:07:26] Speaker C: Got to about four.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: And you're right, it'll probably be 10x.
[00:07:30] Speaker C: What's been your biggest game so far this year?
[00:07:33] Speaker A: They. They write. We have a few games that have done more than super bowl last year. Just random Thursday Night Footballs and stuff. So you know what? It's. It's probably like 30 million would be my guess. And, you know, December's far out too. We're growing and growing and growing. Maybe that's low. I don't know.
[00:07:50] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: It'll be big.
[00:07:52] Speaker C: I guess my try not to get too.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: But you're right, it'll be.
[00:07:55] Speaker C: Would that not be the absolute top? Because, like, okay, what's going to happen from super bowl till next football?
[00:08:01] Speaker A: I mean, I don't want to lay out too many plans, but, you know, I, I think we are pursuing a goal of being the biggest, most important company in the space that we possibly can.
But there, There are a lot of ways that could manifest.
It'll be. And you know, if. If you have a.
If you've been doing volume, having revenue, you can raise some more money. The war chest is 10x. Like it. It'll be a completely different situation. Like. Like all. Everything starts moving so much faster.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: See what I mean?
[00:08:36] Speaker C: Fair enough. Do you want to get Joe?
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Yeah, let's get Joe in here. Let's get Joe Leonard.
We're back. We're back in with Joe Leonard, a trader here at Novig.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: How's it going?
[00:08:46] Speaker A: And a very willing guest. Yeah, Predictive programming. Joe's been doing some research for us this week on some of the.
[00:08:54] Speaker C: Before. Before that. I want to. I want to ask Joe.
Well, first of all, is this your first job out of college?
[00:09:01] Speaker B: Yes, I just graduated in May.
[00:09:03] Speaker C: In May from the very shitty school of University of Virginia, who had a.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Huge W. Fastest field rush in the history of college football.
[00:09:11] Speaker C: Were you down there?
[00:09:12] Speaker B: He's, he's. He was up and walking. It was all good. That's. That's the softest take ever. It's like we're worried about Squirrel White because he's like, in the end zone, like, should have caught the ball.
[00:09:22] Speaker C: All right.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: You don't want to get trampled, catch a touchdown.
[00:09:25] Speaker C: Regardless, I'm going to come a little aggressive here, but I got to ask why. No big.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:09:30] Speaker C: And then follow up with more aggressive, but go on.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Sure. So throughout college, I had a background. I majored in computer science. My background was in sports analytics mainly. So when I first started going to school, I really wanted to Work for like a team, let's say, or like a third party data provider. And I started networking in the space and found out about the sports trader positions at FanDuel. That was my introduction, I guess you could say, to sports trading. I had no idea what it was. I mean, I sports bet throughout college, but I didn't understand profitably or not. Yes, profitability. Profitably. Odds jam guy or no, I was trying to make my own numbers using like basic Google sheets models and I was going up against college bookies that didn't know what they were doing.
[00:10:14] Speaker C: I would say, okay, all right, I question the profitability, but go on.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: It's not great roi, but it's a decent roi, but anyway.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Those college bookies do not know what they're doing.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I found out about the sports trader position at FanDuel and kind of just like dove into like what a sports trader is. I would say my initial thoughts on what a sports trader are at FanDuel is very different from what we do here at Novik simply because we're an exchange and they're a sportsbook.
But that being said, actually.
[00:10:45] Speaker C: Okay, I do have a question. Explain how is that different? To me, it should be the same.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: No, I think that a lot of what we're doing here at Novig, since we are on exchange and we're a liquidity provider is we're sorry, we're on FanDuel. A lot of it is market management. And I would argue that a lot of traders at FanDuel and DraftKings and all these different places don't need to have such immense sports knowledge or such, let's say, I don't know, a technical background as you would do if you were trading on an exchange, same way you trade on an exchange. I would say you're probably sharper than a lot of the traders that are at these places.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: And I think that as you gear more towards Novig Calcian Exchange products, the trading teams on those platforms are probably sharper than the OSPs would disagree.
[00:11:32] Speaker C: I think you're doing yourself a disservice if you think you're sharper than the market and you're trading. But.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: That'S fine.
[00:11:40] Speaker C: You understand what I understand. I understand the point you're trying to make though. All right, fairness. But are you not taking positions on Novig?
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Yes, I am taking positions on Novik.
[00:11:48] Speaker C: How is, how is that, how is that not different than what FanDuel is doing?
[00:11:53] Speaker B: I think that the FanDuel data science team is the one that is making the algorithms and the traders aren't actually. Most of them, I should say, aren't actually involved in the algorithmic process of producing odds of making prices. But.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: Okay, but like you, you write code.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Yes, like I made.
[00:12:11] Speaker C: But I. If, you know, I have a 10% limited FanDuel.
If I were to click FanDuel on some niche markets, they would move off of my click.
If I go and I click some novig props, you guys are gonna move off my click. How is that not the same?
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Well, I think the traders at FanDuel are not in charge of writing the software.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: That's pretty automatic. Yeah.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: Whereas like we have, we have Joe analyzing order, flow and performance and coming up with theories and then writing software for the system to make it behave better, to, you know, keep liquidity higher and all that kind of thing.
[00:12:49] Speaker C: Okay, fair enough. Okay, fair enough.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Not to white knight for him, but, you know, I just know what he does all day is your guy.
[00:12:55] Speaker C: Okay. So is your number. So. Okay. Do you think at FanDuel is the number one priority volume or ROI?
[00:13:03] Speaker B: Volume?
[00:13:04] Speaker A: I would say I, I know some of this. I think they have some metrics other than ROI that they're interested in. I think ROI is always like the byproduct, but they have a sense of certain metrics that are not exactly the same but may be more long term, healthy.
[00:13:24] Speaker C: Okay, and what do you think is your priority and novig ROI or volume?
[00:13:29] Speaker B: My personal priority is roi. So I would say my personal.
[00:13:33] Speaker C: You just said you're liquidity provider. How does that make any sense?
[00:13:36] Speaker B: I still want to have a good roi. I would say it's a trader. Just as you would want to have a good ROI as a trader.
[00:13:43] Speaker C: Yeah, sure. But I think the more important thing.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: Is like, look, just because we're providing liquidity to the market doesn't mean that we're willingly going to take losses.
[00:13:51] Speaker C: Okay, Certainly. But I guess my question, I guess my point would be like, say you had a plus 1% position.
You might. Are you saying you might decline that because it would lower your potential ROI? Say your ROI is sitting at 3%. You don't want to take stuff lower than 3%.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: It's case by case.
[00:14:11] Speaker C: Okay, fair enough, Fair enough. All right. I'm asking. All right. This is hopefully don't take it that condescending, but I would argue that anyone working for any exchange or sportsbook is by definition must be a bad trader because you can make more betting on your own. Do you agree with that sentiment or not?
[00:14:34] Speaker B: I understand why you're saying that, and I understand your point of view.
[00:14:37] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: I think that there's a lot of things to be said for someone's personal bankroll and I think, and the amount of money they have access to and I think. And of course you could build that up.
Right?
And I think that working at a company like Novig or Fanduel, whatever it is, gives a little bit of a different perspective.
And I think that from like a personal trading perspective, like if I were to go trade independently, let's say, or whatever, I would not. There's, I would have probably a fourth of the knowledge I have now when it comes to sports trading and the world.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: I think from what I've heard and experience in interviewing people, most of the sports books struggle to retain their best talent for this very reason. And a lot of people level up over a few years there and then go to them go to their boss and say, this is what I can do now, this is what I'm worth now. And they say we'd rather lose you and replace you in so many words.
And I think it makes sense for the business often because as your people get more capable, your systems are built to support very capable people. And now it becomes very hard. Your labor is no longer fungible. It's very good to have a trading stack where you can just hire 10 recent college grads and you don't have to train them for more than two weeks and they can start operating it. So I think a lot of those shops, I don't, I don't want to speak down on them too much. Those companies have some very smart, very capable people, but like you said, they, they split a lot more into, you know, data science and software engineers and then outright traders. And I think it makes their systems more resilient and sometimes at the expense of maybe talented people, but with more non traditional paths there.
[00:16:38] Speaker C: So is this Joe's. Is you guys saying that Joe's going to quit you guys in a year or two when he finally learns?
[00:16:43] Speaker A: It's, it's, I mean, it's a very realistic scenario and influences like compensation and responsibilities and how we think about people in the trading team and how do we categorize them and what kind of things we want to let them do? Because we do want to keep talented people especially. But I think being a startup, we have a lot more room to say, okay, you're, you're an engineer now. Okay. Actually you have like all these marketing responsibilities or you have these professional relationships with, you know, professionals or whatever it is.
It's easier for us to do that and, and we're more willing to like, own the risk of like giving someone enough responsibility that we go, oh no, I would really hate to lose this person.
[00:17:26] Speaker C: That's fair. All right, one last question then. I know you did some work on prediction markets.
What is your favorite part about trading on an exchange and least favorite part?
[00:17:36] Speaker B: My favorite part started off with my least favorite part.
[00:17:40] Speaker C: All right.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: My least favorite part about trading on an exchange is that it's definitely non traditional. I would say from coming from a sports betting background.
Right. There's definitely a non traditional aspect where I'm not used to seeing order flow the way I'm seeing order flow now. I'm not used to reading an order book the way I do on a normal sports book.
So I think that was something that I had to get used to. But I would say I got used to it pretty quickly. My favorite thing is the competitive nature of an exchange is way more in your face than I would say with a traditional sports book.
[00:18:23] Speaker C: It's. Well, yeah, because you got to compete against other users.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: Right, Exactly. Like it's way easier for me to take a position on something and say my counterparty is wrong than if it were if you were going up against a FanDuel DraftKings or even some PPH count that you have no idea what's going on.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: So I think like that aspect of where, you know, I'm going up against the, let's say peer to peer or whatever, I'm going up against my peer in this bet and I know that this trade and I know that they're completely wrong.
[00:18:49] Speaker C: So. All right. I have one other question though. Henry and I made a side bet this past weekend and I realized how poor my side bet.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: Was it the, was it the one you brought up?
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Yes, it was.
[00:18:59] Speaker C: Yeah, we, I, we bet on where a market would close because I thought, I pride myself in being a top down bettor and being able to read the market. All right, let's get into. You've done some work on prediction markets.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: Let me give a little context. So we see Twitter is full of these projects built on top of mostly Calcium Polymarket right now. But I think other PMs forthcoming and you know, there's this endless Twitter hype circle. But I told Joe, I want you to go look into a half dozen of the new products you saw floating around the Internet and see if any of these are usable, if any of them could replace any of the tools we currently use. If it's Worth us helping them integrate novig data into them. And so he's, he's been working on that.
So, Joe, what did you look at this week?
[00:19:53] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So I looked at a couple of tools. I looked at Verso Trading, Poly M Trade, Polycule Melee Markets, Calceonomics, and then there's a user on Twitter, Calif, who's working on kind of like an API.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: He doesn't have a name for it yet.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: No, I think it's his own personal stuff.
But yeah, I kind of looked at like all these different tools and to be honest, my takeaway from a lot of them was that you could just tell these things are all like early stage and there's not much use cases of these.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: Well, let's start with what software Internal, external do you use when trading? Like, obviously internal software doesn't have a name, but kind of what are you looking at? What is useful to you for trading sports all day long? What matters the most?
[00:20:38] Speaker B: So I mean, internally, obviously the main thing is just like the different code that I'm writing, I would say that outputs prices and then our trading software that we use here at novic, externally I use unabated, kind of just to read the board. I would say that's the most condensed way I intake all the different prices and things like that. And it's pretty quick to grab all the different odds and lines or whatever.
I think that a lot of these tools that I looked at think they're becoming like the optic odds are unabated of prediction markets, but they haven't really grasped the concept that the reason unabated and optic odds works is because they show every single sports book and exchange out there all in one place. Whereas a lot of these tools are for monetary reasons. I totally understand it. But they're partnering with Kalshi, they're partnering with polymarket and kind of completely disregarding like what the full market standpoint is, I guess you could say. Right, so like, for instance, like Polym Trade, like I was taking a look at this and like we could see here, like the Poly Market ones are in blue and then the Kalshi ones are in green. And a lot of the Poly Market ones have a lot of the information.
It's kind of just like regurgitating prices and the graph that you could already see in polymarket.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: We'll get this up on YouTube, by the way. Sorry, everybody listening to a podcast, but Polyum Trade is basically an aggregator of markets across Polymarket and Kalshi and then they have a lot of the price history graphs right. From polymarket integrated and less of the Kalshi stuff.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: None of the couch.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay.
[00:22:19] Speaker B: Yeah. So like essentially, like if I were to go here, like jets out Miami on Calshi, like all it does is bring me to the Kalshi market. Like, I like. Whatever calcinomics.
I think this one has some pretty good like backing. It seems like they're backed by that like new Kalshi ecosystem that got released or whatever.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: That's kind of cool. Are those guys writing checks to these projects?
[00:22:42] Speaker B: Yeah, from what I understand. Essentially like they're.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah, this is like the Kalshi builder something. We should get the name of it. But it's a. It's a good project. It's a smart thing to be doing.
I don't know if they're forcing everybody in it to be Kelsey exclusive or not. That would be detrimental if they did.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: That's what it seems like. Because like, not only are they like. I mean, at least for this product, it's marketed as Cal.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: We're making that up though. I won't put that.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: Who. Who knows? Yeah.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: But anyway, so calcinomics is a. Is an odds monitor and insight tool. Right.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: I think, I think like, honestly the events and market information isn't.
[00:23:25] Speaker C: Which one of these. Can I see if any of them. This is an important question, I think.
Can I see.
Okay, we go to the Miami game right now there's like absurd liquidity on Kalshi.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:23:37] Speaker C: Can I see when it got to look here. Can we pull up real quick how much liquidity on both sides?
[00:23:42] Speaker B: 3 points. Oh, the market is 3.7.
[00:23:49] Speaker C: So there's like, there's like almost 5 million in contracts at a 2 cent wide spread right now.
Can I. Can any of these. Can I use to see when it got to this big. Like I've checked like right now on the.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: Basically when the limits went up. If we were in bank odds world.
[00:24:07] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
[00:24:09] Speaker C: Because that to me is a big tell. Because now I need to know. I want to know what the market makers are doing or. Or also it's really helpful. And this is what I would be doing is I'd be looking at all. All 16 NFL games and going, wait a second, this game, this Sunday game became really big a day earlier. Maybe that was someone taking a position, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:24:30] Speaker B: So the short answer is no. I think that another part to this is kind of like what I was touching on earlier is that.
Well, first off, I think that calcium polymarket and A lot of these developers, first off, are thinking sports in the back of their mind.
[00:24:46] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, why. Why care about the thing that does 90% of your volume?
[00:24:49] Speaker B: I totally agree with you. Right? Yeah. Like. Like, I think that they should be focusing on sports and optimizing.
[00:24:56] Speaker C: Well, also, this also impacts. Because I see these Twitter accounts that are like insider news. Okay, well, like, take this like, halftime, Taylor Swift market that happened yesterday.
It was pretty clear there was insider trading like three days ago. If I had something that shot. Oh, bad budney suddenly got 100k bid.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: That's a good way of framing the question of any. Any of the tools you saw. Do you feel like any of them could have surfaced for you? The bad bunny leak?
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good question, I think.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Because that's really the. That's where the rubber meets the road. Right?
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:28] Speaker C: Yeah. And this doesn't only apply to, like, insider trading. This also applies to like, if. If right now. Like, take this Baltimore Houston game that's.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: Coming next Sunday, the Lamar injury, right.
[00:25:38] Speaker C: If. If all of a sudden Baltimore pops up with a ton of liquidity on Tuesday on one of these things, man, I want to rush to the screen to fucking bet Baltimore everywhere. Right?
[00:25:50] Speaker A: Oh, just got an alert on it. No update. According to ESPN on the mars hamstring.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: So, no, none of them show that. And I think the closest thing that you're looking for is this Verso training, which in my opinion is the best one so far.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: You liked Verso?
[00:26:03] Speaker B: I liked Verso, but. And I think that I think we.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: Can get the guy from Verso on. I talk to him sometimes.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: I think that they're probably in the best spot to like, succeed simply because they have. I mean, like, all of them have these, like, bs, like, coming soon features.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: You think because they have buttons for features he hasn't done yet, they're in the best position.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: No, I think.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: What do you like about him?
[00:26:23] Speaker B: If you click into a market here, let's see now, it's just all sports stuff.
So, like, if you look like, this is what I like, would like to see, like, essentially, like everything that is related to this market is like, right here.
[00:26:38] Speaker C: Right?
[00:26:39] Speaker B: Like, you can check the price history, you can check the key events. I. None of them have what you're saying where, like, I could see, like, when this order was posted and stuff like that, which I.
[00:26:47] Speaker C: That's like the most important.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:49] Speaker B: But the only problem with this is that now we start clicking into the sports events.
I mean, I didn't even See this from before.
[00:26:57] Speaker A: So you're saying that the news for, for politics stuff is pretty good in the integration versa. There's like nothing for sports so far. Yeah. Now. And the interesting thing about news, news on sports for trading has become so optimized that if underdog posts something, the market steams within a second. Right. And we know plenty of people who just sit there refreshing run burner phones that are alerting on all this stuff.
It'll be interesting to watch all these new kinds of markets, like mentioned markets or whatever, accelerate towards that point of pure optimization and see who can actually build a tool that goes from meaningful tweet or data point that would influence one of these brand new market types to actual market impact as fast as possible.
So Verso has some kind of news integration going that you thought was interesting? Did anybody else do news integration in a way that you thought was good? Well, I'm sorry, go ahead, go ahead.
[00:28:00] Speaker C: This is a problem I have with these things.
If I know everyone talks about like oh, the great game of exchange, it's going to basically be two users having the same information, coming up with different opinions and battling it out on the exchange. That is just not what happens in practice. What happens in practice is someone has a piece of information that the other party doesn't have and they screw over the other party and, and whether it not be true, like insider information, like bad bunny, but even information such as like, I know this one NFL player's injury better because I'm more in tune with it and I know how to find the deep pulls and that's what makes the market.
So like if it. I don't, I just don't think this could ever come out to widespread usage because if everyone has the same information, there's. How is there edge to be had?
[00:28:52] Speaker B: I think that first off, we already see that in sports. Like, like the information you're describing sports, you're describing what sports trading is already. And I think that your opinion on mentioned markets and like all of that different stuff is completely valid. And I actually agree with you. And that's part of the reason why I don't think that like these other categories or whatever they have will pop off as much as like sports will. I know they try to like push all of that, but I just don't see it happening.
But yeah, and then of course like that Caliph API router from like a developer perspective just dealing with like Kalsh documents and all that stuff, like pulling from their API is like actually obnoxious and they're not.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: It's wild because so like, so much respect for the tech stack there in general.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Like the API is like astonishingly like.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: PSS signing like they were. But like, I don't know, like they were like their crypto signing method. Like I was looking it up and it just came out in like 2018 and it's like this crypto signing method that I've never heard of. I had to like reach out to a professor to like understand it, like, and he didn't know what it was talking about. But yeah, but anyway, that like router, I think from like a developer perspective will make everything a lot easier because it'll be similar to like what Opticods API is. And like, if people are like used to using that, then they'll understand.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: The fact that CFTC regulation though opens you up to execution happening without being directly on the platform, which has never really been possible with sportsbooks, is so huge. I don't think people grasp that how big a deal that's going to be. Like, I've been talking to some people at Bloomberg in the old data department this week about getting sports markets up on the terminal.
Just like, like my like pitching, you know, like, you guys should really do this, but there's no reason you couldn't be executing those trades on a Bloomberg terminal, you know, like, that would be sick. I think, like to.
I think the Bulls have some points. Like there are. You got to think a little creatively here. Like some of this could be really sick.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: I just, I don't know, I just don't buy.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: Look how big Chris's eyes are right now.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: I just don't. It looks like he's on the whole like alternate market. Like, I don't buy it. Like, I just don't. I mean, I don't see a world where like a wreck gets so excited that like Mr. B said something in a video and they get so hyped about it.
[00:31:19] Speaker C: I wasn't thinking about that. Honestly, what I was thinking of is the guy I worked at Family, he bets sports and like I could totally see him looking pulling up his Bloomberg terminal and yeah, like, I'm a fire here for once. Like, you know, screw it.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: I think Joe is totally right that like sports is in many ways at a. At a super efficient state. Especially like you think about NFL and. And there's more volume than ever on it. Like it's good to have efficiency.
[00:31:47] Speaker C: Well, the thing that's very. Makes me very bullish though is we talked to this last episode is the Fed News.
And that is.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:31:56] Speaker C: Why did you. Why did you.
[00:31:57] Speaker B: Are you talking about, like, the volume?
[00:31:58] Speaker A: It did.
[00:32:00] Speaker C: Well, that actually. No, no, not only that, but it actually becoming very actively traded. I actually, for the first time see the purpose of. Whenever they.
The whole pitch of prediction market is like, oh, you can use hedging instruments. And the good people of Kansas City were betting on Baltimore. We get to hedge out the Kansas City economy, which we all know is a farce. But actually hedging out what Powell does, if he cuts 25 bips, 50 bips or zero is very real in finance, like, extremely real. And if that was on a Bloomberg terminal and you could see that, like, oh, it's priced at this percentage and I can hedge it out, that would be enormous, in my opinion. Like, that would be very, very big.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: No, I agree with you there. I just think that another.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: I actually have to execute on this idea. Like, this is literally one text I sent to a buddy being like, shop this.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: Just like, messing around.
[00:33:04] Speaker A: Yeah, no, no, but I mean, a little.
[00:33:06] Speaker C: If you could actually. If you could actually get that on a Bloomberg terminal. And it got to the point where it was like millions deep in liquidity. I could totally see everyone's just focused.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: On the sports markets, all the Bloomberg terminals.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: All right, we're going to wrap up. Can. Can I tell you.
Oh, I don't know if I should even tell the story. I'll tell the story. What the hell? The first support ticket at Bloomberg that ever mentioned bitcoin.
[00:33:29] Speaker B: No.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: Okay. So I looked this up when I worked there. There was somebody back in. It was like 2011 or something, complained that their machine was running really slow, the terminal was running super slow. And an engineer looked into it, and they were like, yeah, this guy's computer is using all. All of its CPU cycles on a task called bitcoin. Tell them to quit the bitcoin task. They worked at, like, J.P. morgan or something. You know what I mean? They're a corporate client, and the customer support person is like, okay, I'll advise them that. And then the next day, 9am, there's an update, and it says the user will not stop running the bitcoin test. Like, that is not an acceptable resolution. They would rather just quit this job.
And, yeah, that was pretty cool. So just another way of saying maybe we're early. All right, let's wrap it up there, Joe. Thanks for coming on.
[00:34:19] Speaker C: Of course.
[00:34:19] Speaker B: Thanks for having me.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: Later.
