I don't think any of those reasons explain why the Intrade markets were unpopular. The problem wasn't a lack of markets, deposit interest or fees. I don't think there were any restrictions on customers until after the CFTC charges were filed. I have a hard time believing that counterparty risk was meaningful.
In fact Intrade realized that the only markets people were interested in were sports markets and have focused exclusively on that area since the relaunch.
> I don't think any of those reasons explain why the Intrade markets were unpopular.
It's hard to say if any of these are the fatal problem with Intrade, but it's not like we'll know until some prediction market does 'take off', and we should at least address the known problems even if they don't look like huge problems.
> I don't think there were any restrictions on customers until after the CFTC charges were filed.
They didn't make it easy on US customers well before CFTC, as I found out first hand. You had to really want to sign up. It was much harder to get my money into Intrade than, say, Bitcoin (and people claim the difficulty of fiat->Bitcoin is a major barrier to Bitcoin adoption, so...)
> I have a hard time believing that counterparty risk was meaningful.
Even if we assume customers were idiots who didn't believe in counterparty risk before, they certainly do now.
> In fact Intrade realized that the only markets people were interested in were sports markets and have focused exclusively on that area since the relaunch.
Or... those are very safe areas legally for Intrade, and that's why they ban other markets?
In fact Intrade realized that the only markets people were interested in were sports markets and have focused exclusively on that area since the relaunch.