Torch

A decentralized AI-driven prediction system for crypto price discovery 🔥

[Torch @TorchBet]

Noticed the new 'Bet on HBAR price' button on our website?

It takes you to a dapp where you can forecast $HBAR price ranges on @hedera.

This is the Ascension hackathon winner: still a prototype, but rewards are real.

Try it here now: https://t.co/214kxgoIxG

Feedback welcome🔥

[Torch @TorchBet]

@SethiLiam Yup. One can put it this way too 😉

[Torch @TorchBet]

Somebody has to say it:

the prediction market boom is partly an attempt to legalize insider trading.

The product being traded is informational advantage itself.

Which, to be fair, markets have always rewarded anyway.

[Torch @TorchBet]

Torch has joined the @Hedera incubator!👨‍💻

We’re building a novel continuous prediction market that turns crypto price forecasts into a real-time probability map, moving beyond binary markets.

Thanks to @hashgraph @angelhack @hgraph @kabilaapp @HeadStarterOrg @HashgraphOnline

[Torch @TorchBet]

We are! A novel, fully continuous model 🔥

[Evie @0xgingergirl]

Is anybody actually building new prediction markets, or is it all just tools for Polymarket and Kalshi?

[Torch @TorchBet]

Binary prediction markets keep rediscovering the same oracle edge-cases:

– Ambiguous wording
– Post-hoc interpretation
– Governance capture
– Financialized truth

The next frontier isn’t only better arbitration, but richer market primitives that reduce ambiguity altogether.

[Trueo @Trueo_]

https://t.co/Sgrr1OWFl1

[Torch @TorchBet]

Prediction markets are so hot at @ParisBlockWeek 🔥

[Torch @TorchBet]

Who's in Paris this week? 🗼

[Denis Igin 🇺🇦 @denisigin]

Coming to Paris for PBW? Hit me up (with a 🥖)!
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AI tag: Paris Bockchain Week

[Torch @TorchBet]

Torch is evolving into a fully continuous, zero-subsidy engine for crypto price beliefs.

Capital flows toward the most calibrated forecasts over time, rewarding signal and penalizing noise.

A probability-weighted prediction system for crypto markets!

Stay tuned.

[Torch @TorchBet]

“Breaking news” is just the media discovering what markets already priced.

Alpha is seeing the probability distribution before it becomes narrative.

Torch makes that distribution visible.

[bl888m @bl888m]

people ask "how did you catch Iran 9 minutes early"

here's the actual workflow

I don't watch CNN

I watch @glintintel terminal 24/7

> left screen - Glint live map
> right screen - Polymarket orderbook
> phone - Telegram alerts

this morning 6:47 AM:
Glint flags aircraft Dubai → market at 8¢ → execute $3,500
6:56 AM: CNN publishes → 76¢ → exit $23,400

9 minutes of edge

while you were:
- checking Twitter for "breaking news"
- waiting for Reuters headline
- asking Discord "should I enter?"

I was already cashed out

the difference:

you trade on news (reaction)
I trade on data (prediction)

you need eyes everywhere or Glint watching for you

stop watching, start seeing - https://t.co/XiL7rYw53f

[Torch @TorchBet]

6/ Most importantly, always build decentralized information finance!

Not corposlop ✊

[Torch @TorchBet]

Prediction markets that rely on naive traders drift toward dopamine extraction.

@VitalikButerin is right: the sustainable equilibrium is hedging.

Crypto price markets can evolve into volatility insurance primitives. 🧵

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

Recently I have been starting to worry about the state of prediction markets, in their current form. They have achieved a certain level of success: market volume is high enough to make meaningful bets and have a full-time job as a trader, and they often prove useful as a supplement to other forms of news media. But also, they seem to be over-converging to an unhealthy product market fit: embracing short-term cryptocurrency price bets, sports betting, and other similar things that have dopamine value but not any kind of long-term fulfillment or societal information value. My guess is that teams feel motivated to capitulate to these things because they bring in large revenue during a bear market where people are desperate - an understandable motive, but one that leads to corposlop.

I have been thinking about how we can help get prediction markets out of this rut. My current view is that we should try harder to push them into a totally different use case: hedging, in a very generalized sense (TLDR: we're gonna replace fiat currency)

Prediction markets have two types of actors: (i) "smart traders" who provide information to the market, and earn money, and necessarily (ii) some kind of actor who loses money.

But who would be willing to lose money and keep coming back? There are basically three answers to this question:

1. "Naive traders": people with dumb opinions who bet on totally wrong things
2. "Info buyers": people who set up money-losing automated market makers, to motivate people to trade on markets to help the info buyer learn information they do not know.
3. "Hedgers": people who are -EV in a linear sense, but who use the market as insurance, reducing their risk.

(1) is where we are today. IMO there is nothing fundamentally morally wrong with taking money from people with dumb opinions. But there still is something fundamentally "cursed" about relying on this too much. It gives the platform the incentive to seek out traders with dumb opinions, and create a public brand and community that encourages dumb opinions to get more people to come in. This is the slide to corposlop.

(2) has always been the idealistic hope of people like Robin Hanson. However, info buying has a public goods problem: you pay for the info, but everyone in the world gets it, including those who don't pay. There are limited cases where it makes sense for one org to pay (esp. decision markets), but even there, it seems likely that the market volumes achieved with that strategy will not be too high.

This gets us to (3). Suppose that you have shares in a biotech company. It's public knowledge that the Purple Party is better for biotech than the Yellow Party. So if you buy a prediction market share betting that the Yellow Party will win the next election, on average, you are reducing your risk.

Mathematical example: suppose that if Purple wins, the share price will be a dice roll between [80...120], and if Yellow wins, it's between [60...100]. If you make a size $10 bet that Yellow will win, your earnings become equivalent to a dice roll between [70...110] in both cases. Taking a logarithmic model of utility, this risk reduction is worth $0.58.

Now, let's get to a more fascinating example. What do people who want stablecoins ultimately want? They want price stability. They have some future expenses in mind, and they want a guarantee that will be able to pay those expenses. But if crypto grows on top of USD-backed stablecoins, crypto is ultimately not truly decentralized. Furthermore, different people have different types of expenses. There has been lots of thinking about making an "ideal stablecoin" that is based on some decentralized global price index, but what if the real solution is to go a step further, and get rid of the concept of currency altogether?

Here's the idea. You have price indices on all major categories of goods and services that people buy (treating physical goods/services in different regions as different categories), and prediction markets on each category. Each user (individual or business) has a local LLM that understands that user's expenses, and offers the user a personalized basket of prediction market shares, representing "N days of that user's expected future expenses".

Now, we do not need fiat currency at all! People can hold stocks, ETH, or whatever else to grow wealth, and personalized prediction market shares when they want stability.

Both of these examples require prediction markets denominated in an asset people want to hold, whether interest-bearing fiat, wrapped stocks, or ETH. Non-interest-bearing fiat has too-high opportunity cost, that overwhelms the hedging value. But if we can make it work, it's much more sustainable than the status quo, because both sides of the equation are likely to be long-term happy with the product that they are buying, and very large volumes of sophisticated capital will be willing to participate.

Build the next generation of finance, not corposlop.

[Torch @TorchBet]

5/ Eventually, agents could auto-assemble personalized hedge baskets from that probability surface based on liabilities and expenses.

That’s very close to @VitalikButerin’s “LLM + prediction shares” idea, but applied to crypto price states.

[Torch @TorchBet]

Torch plans to be in Paris for @ParisBlockWeek and participate in #StartInBlock! This is going to be grand:

- $10M+ in prizes
- Pitch to 100s of investors
- Finals at the Louvre and much more …

You can also apply https://t.co/SEnhrLzurX or learn more https://t.co/sUIjhpnAva

[Paris Blockchain Week @ParisBlockWeek]

The Start In Block Startup Competition Is Open For Applications⚡️

And this year, the stakes are higher.

🏆 $10M+ in prizes
💰 400+ active VCs and investors managing billions
🎤 A chance to pitch on stage at the Louvre

We’re bringing together the most active VCs, funds, and capital allocators backing the next wave of Web3 unicorns.

And what an alumni you will be following. Winners of our previous edition are now building with real traction:

➡️ @glider__, founded by @BrianInCrypto
➡️ @earnos_io, founded by @itsphilgeorge
➡️ @almanaxai, founded by @francescpicc

And they were evaluated by a jury composed of senior investors and operators with direct capital allocation and operating responsibility, including @jakub_rusiecki - @1kxnetwork, @0xjatkins - @Auros_global, @Aisashley - @cryptocom_cap, Nathan Chiron - @iEx_ec, and @akshat_hk - @MaelstromFund.

This year’s jury is being assembled to the same standard, maintaining the level of judgment and accountability that defines Start In Block.

If you’re building in crypto to scale beyond the early cycle, this is where your story gets tested.

Think your startup has what it takes?

Apply now to #Startinblock: https://t.co/rW0mfPOUup

[Torch @TorchBet]

This is the live probability map for $HBAR on Feb 14 👇

Think you have alpha for tomorrow?
Back your target price range with a bet.

Beat the crowd. Get paid if you’re right.

Stake for Valentine’s Day 💘
https://t.co/214kxgoIxG

[Torch @TorchBet]

Tap trading = dopamine. InfoFi = edge.

On Torch, you don’t win by tapping faster.
You win by knowing something others don’t.

1) Pick a future time
2) Choose a price range
3) Back it with capital

Do you actually have alpha on $HBAR?
https://t.co/214kxgoIxG

[munch.mega @munchPRMR]

The future of retail gambling onchain is with tap trading.

This is like TikTok for trading.

[Torch @TorchBet]

AI says @hedera’s $HBAR stays in this range 👇

Do you trust the Valentine’s Day price prediction? 💘

Back your alpha. Win real money if you’re right 🤑

https://t.co/scZhAyojyb