Looks like Intrade Forums are Down

[blazesp...@gmail.com]

Not sure for how long.   Hopefully it's not down to silent any dissent or anything.   Everyone's withdrawals going ok?

[intrad...@gmail.com]

Looks like the forums disappearing this time is for good.

Any speculation on what exactly has happened? My best guess is that and employee or the company itself was dipping into customer accounts and they just noticed the discrepancies.

Sad way to see Intrade go.

[blazesp...@gmail.com]

Well, could be someone was dipping into the segregated accounts or mishandling them.   

Unlikely it had anything to do with trading or manipulation thereof, as any significant price discrepancies are generally remarked upon immediately.      Maybe some weirdness in the pope markets, but I doubt it.

It could be some americans were leaking back in.

Most likely I think the directors were just looking for an excuse to shut it all down.  Too bad, they could have made a lot of money on the sports markets.

I feel a bit bad for Carl.  His career really is founded on Intrade.   Hopefully this doesn't blow up in his face, he worked pretty hard for the company over the years.

A truly sad day.

[blazesp...@gmail.com]

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-11/whats-behind-the-mysterious-intrade-shutdown#r=rss

Then in February, as reported by Bloomberg, an Irish auditing firm raised concerns about payments made to accounts controlled by Intrade’s late founder, John Delaney, who died in May 2011 while trying to climb Mt. Everest. That was a strange finding, considering Delaney’s been dead for nearly two years, but it raises the question of how Intrade was managing the cash in its customer accounts.

There is now speculation that Intrade committed the same sin as failed commodities brokerage MF Global: that it dipped into the cash balances of its customer accounts. To understand how this might have happened, (again pure speculation at this point), it’s useful to understand how Intrade funds itself. When it was initially founded by Delaney back in 1999, Intrade charged a per-trade fee of about five cents. In January of 2011 it switched to a flat monthly fee of $4.99 in order to boost liquidity, which it did. That monthly fee covered Intrade’s operational costs: salaries, technology expenses, etc, and was a function of how many members it had. After the CFTC suit purged Intrade of its U.S. customer-base, it’s not a stretch to assume that Intrade was having a harder time funding itself.

And we certainly know that trading has dried up in recent months.  According to itsown stats, so far this year there have been only 52,166 trades executed on Intrade, for a grand total of 363,517 shares. That’s compared to more than 1 million trades executed in 2012, for a total of 23.8 million shares.  As reported by the Financial Times in February, according to ComScore, which tracks internet traffic, the number of visitors to Intrade fell from 287,000 in November 2012, to just 67,000 in December. By January, the number of visitors was too low to measure.

The handful of members who remained presumably had cash in their accounts. In a blog post Monday, Barnard economics professor Rajiv Sethi suggests that cash may not have been held, as it should have been, in segregated accounts separate from company funds. While there is no evidence that’s what happened, another online betting firm recently made that mistake. One year ago, the London-based firm WorldSpreads Group, which let people place tax-free bets on stocks and commodities without actually owning them, shut down after directors discovered a $19 million shortfall in client funds.

[ste...@aol.com]

hi, I just saw this

who is still here

[ste...@aol.com]

Carl Wolfenden, Intrades’s operations manager, declined to comment

[ste...@aol.com]

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/financial-services/intrade-seeks-customer-support-for-survival-plan-1.1346533

50%

[intrad...@gmail.com]

I'm still around...

What are the two of your thoughts about the "survival plan"?

Do you think enough customers will go for it, and what are the odds that an investor plugs the $2.5 million hole? If only there were a market for that! Honestly, I would support the 50% payout and leave time for the remaining 50% if it means Intrade could resume operations. I am also skeptical that the recovery rate would be much higher if the company completely liquidated.

I have some doubts that customers will have any faith in depositing cash in the future, but it seems like the "financial irregularity" problem died on Everest in 2011. Maybe a new investor, new staff, and re-branding with audited financials would bring back customers... I'd be there in a heartbeat since there are not other comparable markets, but maybe I'm an outlier.