Augur – a mysterious start-up for predictors

There is not that much information about Augur online including the official website of the cryptocurrency. In this review we will do our best to tell you more about Augur and find out what advantages this new system can offer.

Background information

Augur functions of a very interesting combination of different solutions. It uses decentralized and open source approaches together with the Bitcoin blockchain. The developers team of Augur has a very ambitious aim — they want traders to earn on accurate market predictions basing on so called "wisdom of crowds". Crowd influences the market and the task of Augur system is to predict the most probable outcome.

Augur creators claim that their system is capable of predicting any kind of events and trends in economics, politics, geopolitics and so on. They call Augur "an early warning system" predicting anything influenced by humanity.

Technically, Augur is not even a cryptocurrency even despite the fact that it uses the Bitcoin blockchain and some other components of Bitcoin system.

In other words, Augur is more like a prediction market that uses BTC as the medium of exchange while their own token — Augur Rep or Reputation Token — is considered as a score which every participant may win. Reputation Tokens can be traded on many online exchanges for BTC, LTC and most of fiat currencies including USD, EUR, GBP and more.

In Augur one can create his or her own market — actually, any number of markets — and predict the events. If the predictions were correct the user can earn on that.

An attentive user of one cryptocurrency forums once called Augur "a betting company" and the Augur team confirmed that adding that unlike usual betting services they let bet for any kind of events but not on sport events only.

Advantages of Augur

Without a doubt, Augur team has implemented an innovative idea with prediction markets. There is no other cryptocurrency of the same kind online and it makes Augur an outstanding and unique service.

Technically Augur is a fully decentralized solution allowing users to make any financial operations and remain out of side of national and international fiscal bodies. That is a perfect choice for people who don't want to make their financial activity visible to anyone.

Everyone can create an account in Augur for free and start earning right away. Generally the dashboard of Augur is really simple and you can quickly learn how to use it even without tutorial.

Augur lets all traders become the predictors and thus influence the situation on market. It is a great chance to take part and to earn on making correct estimates of the nearest future events.

The fees for transactions in Augur are set by users themselves. Lack of outer regulation makes the fees really low especially comparing to major exchange and betting services.

All traders' funds are stored in smart contacts. It means that if someone bets a certain amount of money and loses he or she won't be able to prevent the transaction of this amount to the winner. It makes Augur a transparent and highly automated system where everything is calculated.

An example of how Augur works

In order to explain better we would like to share an example of how Augur actually operates. Let's image that you are an inveterate soccer fan who would like to predict the outcome of the World Cup 2018 in Russia.

Your prediction would look like this then:
"Will Italy become the champion and win the World Cup tournament in 2018?"
Initial financing: $5 000
Shares for the answer "Yes": $3 000
Shares for the answer "No": $2 000
The transaction fee: 2%

So it is you who sets the rules here. You upload $5 000 as the initial amount of money, you set the shares and you set the transaction commission. After it you publish the prediction and traders start participating buy purchasing certain parts of "Yes" or "No" shares. The share price is defined by the probability of the outcome.

For instance, a "Yes" share could cost $0.70 meaning that the outcome when Italy becomes the champion is equal to 70% and the negative outcome probability is 30%. The share price can be changing with the pace of events — if Italy successfully reaches semi-final the share cost can raise to, let's say, $0.90.

The owners or $REP coins act like judges and observe the betting process. That's why Augur is a fully decentralized system — someone creates a prediction while others bet and control the situation. Judges will benefit regardless of the outcome by getting half the commission set by the predictor. In our example they will get 1% (2% divided by 2).

And now let's compare the commission of Augur to commissions of other betting companies — Augur predictors usually charge from 1% to 3-4% while a typical betting company would hardly set the commission lower than 10%. The difference is obvious, isn't it?

Disadvantages of Augur

Augur website is not localized — it is available in English only as of now and it can be an obstacle for traders from other countries.

Another shortcoming is that Augur system is not properly explained on the official website and the video tutorial is not informative enough, we suppose. Clearer explanation of how it all works would certainly attract more people.

Conclusion

As you see now Augur is a very good hybrid of a cryptocurrency and a betting agency — you can earn money avoiding both anti-gambling legislation and high commissions set by other betting services.

Augur provides tremendous opportunities for all traders — there are no limits for the amount to earn! That is a great challenge to the Big League guys who used to be the only people who set the rules. Now you can also do it. Create your own event with Augur, start selling shares and try to benefit on it! Earn reputation tokens and sell them for other currency or become a judge! Everything is possible with Augur.