CKay wrote:TallDave wrote:CKay wrote:Why would a private individual take on any bet at those odds?
Because you're really, really sure it won't happen. Options traders make a killing this way -- unless they're wrong, of course.
They make their profits on the volume of trades.
Well, more accurately, they make their money on the risk spread -- if the risk of event X is, say 1000:1, and I can sell the bet at 100:1, if I've done my DD I should come out way ahead.
That's why, if you have faith in your estimate of the odds, you would you want to accept
any bet that is well below your perceived odds, leverage notwithstanding.
So if you think odds of Rossi coming through are, say a million to one, this is a great moneymaking opportunity for you -- you can accept every bet that offers even a measly 100:1. Pop by the various Rossi outlets and spam your Intrade with the appropriate level of tauntiness and you could end up being the one person making money on the E-Cat!
The question regarding his reluctance to provide reasonable proofs for his claims (which should be a trivial matter) shows that he is either an extraordinarily incompetent entrepreneur (not at all interested in getting the best deal, the most financial support, the biggest backer),
I've already explained the gaping hole in that logic. The biggest players are (surprisingly enough!) not especially excited about making you a billionaire, the bigger they are the bigger piece of the profits they take, and they are
even happier to just reverse engineer your IP and let you try to sue them for it while they steal all your market share. Given Rossi's demonstrated paranoia this probably seems to him like the appropriate level of uncertainty. Unless he's also lying about his operations he seems to not have financing problems.
VC is generally more about finding the right size, rather than biggest.
Hell, the Star-Lite guy died without
ever going commercial. And everyone was pretty sure he actually had something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlite
n*kBolt*Te = B**2/(2*mu0) and B^.25 loss scaling? Or not so much? Hopefully we'll know soon...