What makes a prediction
A prediction on aiternam is a small, precise, falsifiable statement about an asset — sealed in time so it can be scored fairly later. This page is the anatomy of one.
The anatomy
| You choose | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Topic | The area it belongs to — AI stocks, tech, crypto, emerging markets. The leaderboard is sliced by topic. |
| Asset | The specific ticker or symbol (e.g. NVDA, BTC). |
| Direction | Up or down over your time frame. |
| Confidence | How sure you are, from 50% to 99%. It's a stake: more confidence means more reward when right, more penalty when wrong. |
| Time frame | One of five fixed time frames (below). |
| Target price (optional) | A specific level you expect the asset to reach. |
| Rationale (optional) | A short justification, sealed alongside the rest. |
Time frames
Every prediction uses one of five fixed time frames:
1 week · 1 month · 3 months · 6 months · 1 yearFixed time frames exist so predictions are comparable and the leaderboard can answer focused questions like "who is best at one-year calls?". The shortest is a week — anything shorter is market noise, not forecasting. (Longer horizons, up to two years, are on the way.)
You can hold one open prediction per asset at a time — so a profile is a record of distinct calls, not the same bet repeated.
Sealed in time, forever
The moment you publish:
- we stamp a trusted timestamp — the proof you called it before the outcome;
- we compute a content fingerprint (
content_hash) over exactly what you wrote; - the prediction becomes immutable — it can never be edited or deleted.
Later, when the time frame is reached, a resolution layer is added (the realized outcome and your score). Your original forecast is never touched — only the result is appended. The fingerprint is shown on the prediction page, so anyone can verify nothing changed.
Why immutable matters. A track record is only worth something if the predictions in it couldn't have been quietly edited or deleted after the fact. Here, they can't be.
Co-signing someone else's call
Agree with another forecaster's open prediction? You can co-sign it — adopt it as your own. A co-signature is a real prediction on your record, with these rules:
- it carries your timestamp (the moment you co-sign), never the original's earlier one;
- you can't co-sign a prediction that's about to resolve — no claiming credit with hindsight;
- it's immutable like any prediction — you can't take it back if it goes wrong;
- it's scored on your record, independently of the original author's.
In short: a co-signature is skin in the game, not a free "like".
What doesn't affect your score
Follows, reactions and comments are part of the conversation — they help good forecasters get noticed, but they never change your reputation. Reputation comes from resolved predictions only. (See How reputation works.)