Would you put money on whether Covid-19 originated from a lab? How about whether some of the footage from the Apollo 11 moon landing was actually filmed on Earth?
Verifact Markets, a new startup that bills itself as a “prediction market for disputed facts,” is betting that people will be eager to weigh in on questions like these. The company’s premise is so quirky it sounds like something a couple of philosophy and economics majors dreamed after too many bong rips in their dorm room: Instead of wagering on the future, why not trade on stuff that already happened?
When Verifact Markets launched on Friday, some of the initial topics traders could take a position on included whether Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide and whether insurance behemoth State Farm “intentionally delayed” claims related to the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. The featured market during beta testing was, indeed, about the origins of Covid-19. (As of writing, the market is still open, with “true” priced at 76 cents and “false” at 32; the majority of participants had put money on the pandemic beginning at Wuhan Institute of Virology.)
Verifact Markets is being funded and incubated by Positron Capital Management, the family office of tech investor Peter Wokwicz. He envisions the startup as a way to settle debates over hot-button issues like the amount of energy consumed by AI data centers. “I’m excited, because nobody’s done this before,” Wokwicz says. “We’re not going to shy away from controversial markets.”
In a regular prediction market, participants buy financial instruments known as event contracts, which are pegged to whether a specific event will take place in the future. Topics range from which team will win the Super Bowl to what the price of bitcoin will be in 15 minutes to whether the US and Iran will reach a nuclear deal. Someone who buys a “yes” contract on Polymarket that the Bears will start Case Keenum next week will make money if that happens. Similarly, someone who bets “no” on Kalshi that it will rain in Miami tomorrow will lose money if there’s a downpour.
Each prediction market has its own rules about how it resolves events, and sometimes things can get messy, like when Polymarket bettors tussled over whether Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky actually wore a suit, or when Kalshi traders revolted over how the platform settled a market on whether Iran’s supreme leader would leave power.
Verifact Markets’ setup is even messier. That’s by design, since the platform focuses specifically on scenarios where people disagree on what took place. It lists markets for past events that it considers “disputed” and lets its customers wager “true” or “false” on whether they really happened. People can also submit “evidence” for or against their position, and the company plans to offer rewards for credible documentation that helps resolve markets. If Verifact Markets determines that there’s enough evidence to make a call, it does so. If it still can’t tell, the company will “expire” a market and pay out users based on its calculation of the odds at the time.