So give the YC futures market idea a couple years. What would the result be? My guess:
The biggest beneficiary would be banks. They would be trading it with a focus less on spotting good companies and rather on extracting profits from the activity of trading. Computers would be doing most of the trading. They'd have algos less focused on the quality of the applicants and their ideas, and more focused on how [black box X] can take money out of the system overall. The startup community would stop applying to YC because it's much more excellent to work at a bank, finding ways to manipulate the YC stock for fun and profit.
The biggest beneficiary would be banks. They would be trading it with a focus less on spotting good companies and rather on extracting profits from the activity of trading. Computers would be doing most of the trading. They'd have algos less focused on the quality of the applicants and their ideas, and more focused on how [black box X] can take money out of the system overall. The startup community would stop applying to YC because it's much more excellent to work at a bank, finding ways to manipulate the YC stock for fun and profit.