Augur swept up in DeFi craze as crypto hits highest price since January 2018

Trading boomed this weekend for Augur (REP), the coin that underlies the ambitious decentralized betting protocol masterminded by Joey Krug. Its price hit highs of $30 on Saturday and trading volume is through the roof. 

Augur began its slow upward charge at about midday on Friday, marching from about $20 to $30 by early Saturday morning—an increase of 50%—according to data from metrics site CoinMarketCap. This was Augur’s highest price since January 2018, when Augur hit nearly $110.

And at peaks of $163 million on Saturday afternoon—up from about $12 million on Thursday—daily trading volume hasn’t been this high since way back in January 2018. 

Traders’ great news turned sour on Sunday, when Augur’s price fell steeply to lows of $24 and its volume sunk to $58 million. (Augur’s current price is $24.94). But its trading volume is still five times larger than pre-boom. 

What is Augur? 

So often in crypto land, what the coin actually does is forgotten. Augur powers an eponymous decentralized betting market, which was created back in 2014 by Jack Peterson, Joey Krug and Jeremy Gardner. 

Claiming to ‘harness the wisdom of the crowd’, Augur allows individuals to place bets on anything they like. Current gambles include whether Donald Trump will win the US election in November and whether Bitcoin will reach $14,000 by the end of September. 

Is Augur being “gamed”?

Augur, the best-known prediction market and a pioneering, closely watched example of a distributed platform, has a problem: Scammers are taking advantage of deliberate ambiguities in phrasing in certain markets to game the system and reap illicit profits, observers say. One of the earliest ICOs, Augur lets people create and bet on markets about virtually anything. The aggregate of bets, supposedly, constitutes a reliable source of predictive knowledge. (See: The Wisdom of Crowds.) To ensure mark...

According to Predictions.Global, a site that tracks Augur markets, gamblers are currently staking about $7.9 million. That’s far, far less than the daily trading volume of the Augur coin. And there are only 84 public betting markets right now, according to Predictions.Global, and only about 40 without any bettors. Perhaps because the transaction fee is about $23.