How Hunch works.

Hunch is a market on what a private company will be worth on the day it goes public or gets bought. Think it will be worth more than the market says? Buy LONG. Less? Buy SHORT.

Most prediction markets ask a yes or no question. This one asks how much. The number is what the world pays for the company the day it goes public or gets bought.

LONG pays more the higher that number goes. SHORT pays more the lower it goes, and pays the most if the company never exits at all. You pay up front, so the most you can lose is what you put in. No margin, no liquidation.

The price is live, and you can sell any time. There is one market number and it moves with every trade, so you do not have to wait for 2030 to make or lose money. Most people who profit here will do it by buying, watching the number move, and selling. Settlement is the backstop, not the plan.

LONG, SHORT, and bands.

One decision: do you think Anthropic ends up worth more than the market says, or less? More, buy LONG. Less, buy SHORT. Behind the Pro button is the band builder, for when you have a view on the actual number.

The price moves. It changes every time somebody trades, so this is not a fixed question sitting still until 2030. If the market's number rises, LONG gets more expensive and you can sell yours for more. If it falls, SHORT does. That is how almost everybody who makes money here will make it. Every figure on this page is a worked example from a demo market, not a live quote.

What a share pays at the end

If you hold all the way to settlement, one LONG share pays the exit valuation divided by the ceiling. With an $8.00T ceiling, an exit at $4.00T pays $0.50 and no exit at all pays $0. The full $1.00 only arrives at $8.00T, which the market treats as near impossible, so read that as the ceiling rather than the target. SHORT is the mirror: $1.00 if there is never an exit, sliding to $0 at the ceiling. The two always add up to $1.00, which is the dollar the vault holds for you.

Your first trade.

1. Pick LONG or SHORT. (Or press Pro and drag the handles until the band covers the values you believe in.)
2. Type the amount of USDC you want to spend.
3. Read the quote. It shows the price per share, the most you can win, and the most you can lose.
4. Place the order. The site opens in demo mode with play money, so you can practice with nothing on the line; live trading uses a connected wallet.
5. Sell any time before settlement, or collect your payout after it.

That is the whole flow. Everything below explains what happens underneath, and none of it changes those five steps.

How your band pays.

Your band has a left edge, a peak, and a right edge. The peak is your best guess, and a share pays the full $1 if the final number lands exactly there. The payout slides down to $0 as the number moves from your peak toward either edge. At or past the edges, it pays nothing.

Missing your peak by a little means a smaller payout, not an instant zero, as long as the landing stays inside your band.

A narrow band is a bold call: cheaper per share, bigger multiple when it hits. A wide band costs more and wins more often. Band prices move with every trade just like LONG and SHORT, and you can sell one back at any time.

How to get a bigger multiple.

You do not need a giant valuation to make a big return. The top number on the LONG card only pays out at the very top of the grid, which the market treats as near impossible. That is the ceiling, not the target.

The real lever is being precise. A narrow band is a smaller target, so it pays more. These are worked examples from a demo market, for bands sitting right on that market's own view of about $1.80T, so nothing surprising has to happen:

About 30x at the number everyone already expects. Move that same narrow band away from the crowd and it pays more still: at $1.5T about 55x, at $1.2T about 145x.

One catch worth knowing. SHORT costs about $0.82 and can never pay more than $1.00, so the most it can ever make is about 1.2x, even if the company collapses. If you think the number is going much lower, a narrow band down at that lower value pays about 145x instead. Same view, same capped downside.

All of these move with every trade, in both directions.

One trade, start to finish.

1. Maya thinks Anthropic exits near $2T. She sets her band from $1.8T to $2.2T with the peak at $2.0T.
2. The market quotes her $0.25 per share. That price is the market's current odds that her band pays out, read off the shared curve. It weighs the zones her band covers by what each would pay her, times the chance of an exit at all. She spends $200 and gets 800 shares.
3. Months later the market moves her way and the same shares now sell for $0.40. She could sell here for $320 without waiting. She holds instead.
4. Anthropic lists, and the settlement value comes in at $1.9T. That is halfway between her left edge and her peak, so each share pays $0.50.
5. Her 800 shares pay $400 on her $200. A landing right at $2.0T would have doubled that to $800, and a landing at $2.5T would have paid nothing at all.

What you make depends on where you bought and on where the number lands.

What backs the payouts.

Every dollar the market could ever owe is locked in the vault, in USDC, before trading opens. The contract checks this on-chain and refuses to start otherwise.

• Your position is fully paid for the moment you buy it. Nobody can close it out from under you.
• The most you can lose is what you paid. There is no margin call and no funding fee.
• Rounding always favors the vault, so tiny fractions can never add up to money the vault does not hold.

How the final number is decided.

The rules below were fixed before trading opened, and the trading price on this site never decides the settlement value. Only real-world exit documents do.

If Anthropic goes public

The settlement value comes from the stock's first three weeks of trading, so no single day can decide it. Day one is skipped, because the IPO pop and the banks' early price support make it the least representative day. The two highest and two lowest days are then set aside, and the remaining eleven averaged.

One wild day, a halt, or a squeeze cannot set the price, and anyone can recheck the number from public market data. Major benchmarks like SOFR and oil futures settle the same way, averaging many real trading days.

If Anthropic is acquired

The deal must close by the deadline. The settlement value is the total equity price the buyer actually paid, taken from the deal's official filings. When the price is not public at closing, it comes from the buyer's next financial reports, which accounting rules require to state it. Should no public document state the price within two quarters of closing, the market settles at $0.

If neither happens by the deadline

The settlement value is $0 and every band pays $0.

Who posts the number

A settlement team posts the value along with links to the public documents behind it. A waiting period of at least two business days follows, during which mistakes can be challenged and corrected. After the window, anyone can trigger the final settlement, so the market cannot be held up by one absent operator.

If the deadline passes with no exit and the team goes silent, anyone can settle the no-exit outcome after a fixed delay. Collecting your payout can never be paused, and stays open for 180 days after the value is final.

Where prices come from.

You can always sell. A bot quotes both a buy price and a sell price at every size, all the time, so you never have to find someone to take the other side. That is why a position here cannot trap you.

Every possible landing zone has a price, and all of them add up to $1. Read together they are the market's odds for where the number ends up, and the cost of anything you buy is those odds applied to its payout. Buying pushes the zones you bought up and everything else down, which is why the number moves as people trade. Nobody sets it by hand and there is no outside price feed.

The headline value on the trade page is the average landing weighted by those odds, counting only the outcomes where an exit happens. Treat it as the market's current opinion priced in real money. The crowd can be wrong.

Beta terms.

• Deposits are capped per wallet and for the market as a whole. Market details shows your usage. Caps may rise over time.
• The contracts have not had an outside audit yet. They ship with a heavy test suite, the deposit caps, and a pause switch instead. Pausing halts trading only; payouts after settlement can never be paused.
• Each share pays at most $1, and the chart ceiling caps the settlement value the market can tell apart.
• A flat fee, shown under Trade mechanics on the ticket, applies to buys and sells.
• The grid, the deadline, the settlement rules, and the fee were fixed at launch and cannot be changed for this series.

Know the risks.

• You can lose everything you put in. A landing outside your band pays $0, and so does no exit at all.
• Big orders move the price. Your slippage limit bounds the damage on any single trade.
• The settlement team could post late or post wrong. The challenge window and the public backstop reduce this risk without removing it.
• The contracts are unaudited beta software. The deposit caps exist so the worst case stays bounded.
• An exit that misses the deadline settles as no exit, even if it was already announced.
• Rules for markets like this are still evolving, and participation may be restricted where you live. Nothing here is investment advice.