You should be more than happy to take this bet, at any amount that he's willing to offer. I know I would be, as long as it was denominated in USD.
Let's say the wager was $10k - if you buy about $198 worth of BTC at the start of the bet, you're guaranteed to come out ahead by at least $9,802, regardless of what happens. Do the math if you don't believe me - that's a bet I'd be happy to take...
If the bet was in terms of Bitcoins instead, then I'd be a lot more hesitant - you could still hedge against an unbounded loss by buying the BTC up front, but if the price of BTC went down by more than 50% you'd end up losing USD even though you won the bet (also if the price went up by a factor of more than 100 but less than 101, which is unlikely enough to mostly ignore), so you'd need to be somewhat of a BTC bull to be comfortable with that.
Edit: I see now that Longbets mandates that proceeds go to charity, which means that if you followed my strategy you'd be making a donation in some cases since you don't see winnings from the bet. I suppose that changes things a little bit, but even so, I'd happily throw in $198 of my money to make sure with 100% certainty that $10k went to charity.
Which makes it extra scummy if it's true that the offerer of this bet won't accept any challengers...
You should be more than happy to take this bet, at any amount that he's willing to offer. I know I would be, as long as it was denominated in USD.
Let's say the wager was $10k - if you buy about $198 worth of BTC at the start of the bet, you're guaranteed to come out ahead by at least $9,802, regardless of what happens. Do the math if you don't believe me - that's a bet I'd be happy to take...
If the bet was in terms of Bitcoins instead, then I'd be a lot more hesitant - you could still hedge against an unbounded loss by buying the BTC up front, but if the price of BTC went down by more than 50% you'd end up losing USD even though you won the bet (also if the price went up by a factor of more than 100 but less than 101, which is unlikely enough to mostly ignore), so you'd need to be somewhat of a BTC bull to be comfortable with that.
Edit: I see now that Longbets mandates that proceeds go to charity, which means that if you followed my strategy you'd be making a donation in some cases since you don't see winnings from the bet. I suppose that changes things a little bit, but even so, I'd happily throw in $198 of my money to make sure with 100% certainty that $10k went to charity.
Which makes it extra scummy if it's true that the offerer of this bet won't accept any challengers...