How Hunch works.

Hunch is a market on what a private company will be worth on the day it goes public or gets bought. You pick a band of company values on a chart, and the closer the real number lands to your pick, the more you get paid. The first market is Anthropic.

What this is.

Most prediction markets ask a yes or no question. This market asks where a number lands. The number is the price the world puts on a pre-IPO company on the day it goes public or gets bought.

You draw a band on the chart to say where you think that number ends up. If you are right, each share you hold pays up to $1. If the number lands outside your band, your shares pay nothing. The most you can ever lose is the money you put in. There is no margin and no liquidation.

Your first trade.

1. Drag the handles on the chart 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 with your 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. It costs less per share and pays a bigger multiple when it hits. A wide band is a safer call that costs more per share and wins more often. The ticket always shows the multiple, which is $1 divided by the price per share.

You can also slide the peak inside the band. Push it left and lower values pay more. Push it right and higher values pay more.

The exact payout formula

L = left edge
P = peak
U = right edge
Y = final settlement value

Payout = 0                     when Y ≤ L or Y ≥ U
Payout = (Y - L) / (P - L)     when L < Y ≤ P
Payout = (U - Y) / (U - P)     when P < Y < U

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. 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.

Why you can always sell.

Your band does not open a private market that needs its own buyers. Every band is assembled from the same shared set of standard claims, one claim for each possible landing zone of the final value. Picking a band just picks which claims you hold.

An automated market maker prices those claims and never refuses to quote. When you sell, it buys your claims back at the going price. You never need to find another person who wants your exact band.

Because every trader shares the same claims, all the money in the market provides depth for every band at once.

Selling before settlement

You can close all or part of a position whenever you want. The price you get depends on where the market has moved since you bought. Large orders move the price against themselves; your order includes a slippage limit, and if the price slips past it, the trade cancels instead of filling at a worse price.

The grid and the ceiling

Band edges snap to fixed steps, shown in the status strip on the trade page. The chart also has a top value. A settlement above the top of the chart counts as landing at the top. Both are fixed terms of this market and never change after launch.

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, the two highest and two lowest days are set aside, and the rest are averaged.

The IPO value, step by step

1. Anthropic lists and the stock starts trading.
2. Trading days 2 through 16 are recorded. Day one is skipped because the IPO pop and the banks' early price support make it the least representative day.
3. Each day is valued at its volume-weighted average share price times all shares outstanding.
4. The two highest and two lowest days are set aside, and the remaining eleven are averaged. That average is the settlement value.

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: a robust average of 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. If the price is not public at closing, it comes from the buyer's next financial reports, which accounting rules require to state it. If no public document states 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 after settlement stays open forever and can never be paused.

The price you see.

Before settlement, prices come from the market itself. Each landing zone has a price, all the prices add up to $1, and together they read as the market's odds for where the number ends up. The cost of your band is those odds applied to its payout shape.

The implied value number

The headline value on the trade page is worked out from those same odds. The exit chance is everything except the no-exit zone. The implied value is the average landing, weighted by the odds, counting only the outcomes where an exit happens. It moves whenever trading reshapes the odds.

Treat it as the market's current opinion, priced in real money. It is a reading of the crowd, and the crowd can be wrong.

Beta terms.

• Deposits are capped per wallet and for the market as a whole. The status strip 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 in the stats panel, 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.