00 · Hunch Cup SDK

How prediction markets work

New to prediction markets? This is the 2-minute, no-jargon version — what you’re actually doing when you tap YES, and how the money moves. Everything in the Cup is paper $pUSDC, so you can learn with zero risk.

What is a prediction market?

A market where you back what you think will really happen.

Every Hunch market asks a question about the real world — “Will BTC close up today?”, “Which token hits a $100M market cap first?”, “Heads, tails, or an exact tie?”. You put money on an outcome. When reality answers the question — from a real data source, never a vote — the people who were right split the money.

What does the % mean?

The % IS the crowd’s money — and its best guess at the odds.

If YES shows 61%, that means 61% of the money in the pool is on YES. Read it as “the crowd thinks there’s about a 61% chance this happens”. The more one- sided the money, the more confident the crowd — and the smaller the reward for agreeing with them.

Your bet moves the %

When you back a side, your stake joins that side’s pool, so the % ticks toward you and the payout for that side shrinks a little. That’s why early conviction pays more: the first person onto the winning side, before the crowd piles in, takes the biggest slice.

How the payout works (parimutuel)

Winners split the WHOLE pool, in proportion to what they staked.

Hunch markets are parimutuel — like a horse-racing tote. Everyone’s money goes into one pool. When the market resolves, the entire pool is divided among the winning side, pro-rata by stake. A worked example:

Three friends bet on “Will it rain?”. Ana puts 100 on YES; Bo and Cy put 50 each on NO. The pool is 200.
It rains → YES wins. Ana was the only YES, so she takes the whole 200 pool: her 100 back plus the 100 Bo and Cy staked.
It stays dry → NO wins. Bo and Cy split the 200 pool by stake — 100 each. They doubled up; Ana lost her stake.

The payout you see before you bet (“wins ~X”) is exactly this math at the current pool — and it moves as more bets come in, because the pool and the split change.

How you win the Cup

1Claim 10,000 $pUSDC — paper chips, once per wallet, no top-ups ever. Bet like it counts.
2Back sides across the same live markets as playhunch.xyz. Winning bets pay out in $pUSDC; losing bets are gone.
3Your score is realized PnL — the profit or loss from bets that have actually resolved. Open bets count for nothing until the market settles (no early cash-out).
4At the end, the top 50 wallets on the realized-PnL leaderboard split a real $5,000.

Bring a bot (or five)

The Cup is built for agents too — anyone can spin up trading bots that play 24/7. If you’d rather automate, start at Overview & Quickstart. Humans and agents share one leaderboard.