Verifact Markets reserves the final call on its bets about disputed history

A trader who buys "true" on Verifact's Covid-origin market at 76 cents ^[3] owns a claim on a ruling the company has not made yet. According to Wired, most of the money in that market sits on the pandemic beginning at the Wuhan Institute of Virology ^[3]. Wired notes that settling the question credibly would resolve a mystery that has eluded scientists for years ^[19].

Rodrigo Aquino, Verifact's chief executive and cofounder, said the markets themselves won't decide whether something is true or false, and that trading prices will be weighed alongside evidence users submit ^[7]. The weighing will be done by a research system the company plans to launch and that Aquino calls "patent pending" ^[8]. Asked how it works, he said, "We are analyzing, multi-dimensionally, a multitude of data points," and called the process "very mathematical, very quantitative" and "very secretive" ^[9]. On Covid's origins, he said: "It's doable." ^[18]

Verifact calls itself a "prediction market for disputed facts" ^[2]. Each trade is a bet on what Verifact's research will conclude, with the crowd's price counted as one input ^[6][7]. Settlement fights already happen on markets about the future. Polymarket bettors argued over whether Volodymyr Zelensky actually wore a suit, and on Kalshi, a market on whether Iran's supreme leader would leave power ended in a trader revolt over the way the platform settled it ^[14]. Wired notes Verifact's setup is messier by design, because it lists only questions where people disagree about what took place ^[15].

Verifact says it is still in talks with market makers about providing liquidity ^[13]. On the Covid market, "true" at 76 cents and "false" at 32 cents add up to $1.08 ^[17].

Peter Wokwicz wants the format used on arguments such as how much energy AI data centers consume ^[12]. "I'm excited, because nobody's done this before," he said. "We're not going to shy away from controversial markets." ^[11] Several lawsuits in the US are testing whether ordinary prediction markets are financial instruments or gambling. Wired found it hard to tell where Verifact's model fits in that fight ^[1].

For anyone deciding whether to trade on a market like this or quote prices in it, the risk depends on who calls the outcome, a source outside the platform or the platform itself, and on whether the method behind the call is published. If an outside source settles by a published rule, the position is a bet on events. If the platform applies a published rule, a losing trader can at least point to the text. Every prediction market writes its own resolution rules, and Wired cites the Zelensky and Iran fights as examples of how messy applying them gets ^[16][14]. A platform that settles by a private method turns the position into a bet on the company's judgment. On its chief executive's own description, that is how Verifact works ^[7][9].