Would you put money on whether Covid-19 originated from a lab? How about whether some of the footage from the Apollo 11 moon landing was actually filmed on Earth?

Verifact Markets, a new startup that bills itself as a “prediction market for disputed facts,” is betting that people will be eager to weigh in on questions like these. The company’s premise is so quirky it sounds like something a couple of philosophy and economics majors dreamed after too many bong rips in their dorm room: Instead of wagering on the future, why not trade on stuff that already happened?

When Verifact Markets launched on Friday, some of the initial topics traders could take a position on included whether Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide and whether insurance behemoth State Farm “intentionally delayed” claims related to the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. The featured market during beta testing was, indeed, about the origins of Covid-19. (As of writing, the market is still open, with “true” priced at 76 cents and “false” at 32; the majority of participants had put money on the pandemic beginning at Wuhan Institute of Virology.)

Verifact Markets is being funded and incubated by Positron Capital Management, the family office of tech investor Peter Wokwicz. He envisions the startup as a way to settle debates over hot-button issues like the amount of energy consumed by AI data centers. “I’m excited, because nobody’s done this before,” Wokwicz says. “We’re not going to shy away from controversial markets.”

In a regular prediction market , participants buy financial instruments known as event contracts, which are pegged to whether a specific event will take place in the future.

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