The latest blockchain use case: anonymously betting on public figure death pools. Crypto’s hottest new app is Augur. Launched this month by a nonprofit called the Forecast Foundation, Augur lets users create “peer-to-peer prediction markets” where they can wager on whether specific events will occur. You can bet on pretty much anything: whether Ether’s price will hit $500 by the end of 2018, who will win this year’s Tour de France, if the US President will be assassinated...wait, what? That got dark fast.
In fact, few cryptocurrency enthusiasts are surprised (though some are dismayed) by the quick emergence of Augur’s death prediction markets, early examples of which feature Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Betty White in addition to Donald Trump. As Motherboard points out, the concept of an “assassination market” has been around for decades. But, now that you have a mechanism to make bets anonymously, the fear is that someone would be enticed to actually kill a person so they can win a bet they placed on their death.
Don’t expect this nightmare scenario to play out any time soon; these particular markets have seen very few if any transactions thus far. If it did, though, could the creators of Augur be held accountable? They certainly don’t think so. From Augur’s FAQ: “The Forecast Foundation does not operate or control, nor can it control, what markets and actions people perform and create on the Augur protocol.” | 
