Using Stips means agreeing to these Terms and to the Privacy Policy. Stips is made by Barsky Design, a one-person studio; these Terms are written to be read rather than to be impressive.
2. Stips is play money
Every account starts with $500 in credits. Credits have no cash value. They cannot be bought, sold, transferred, cashed out or exchanged for anything, and nothing you do on Stips can win or lose you money.
There are no deposits and no withdrawals, because there is no payment path in the product at all. Stips is not a gambling service and should not be described as one. If real-money betting is ever built it will be a different product under different rules, and these Terms will be replaced rather than stretched.
3. Eligibility
You must be at least 18 years old to hold an account. The requirement stands even though no money is involved: markets are written by other people about real events, and moderating that is adult territory.
4. Your account
Keep your credentials to yourself; you are responsible for what happens under your account.
Give accurate information, and keep it current.
One account per person. Extra accounts created to influence a market or a leaderboard will be removed.
Accounts that break these rules may be suspended or closed.
5. Markets and trading
Anyone can write a market. A market is one question with an unambiguous answer, a stated deadline and resolution criteria published before anyone can trade.
A position is final once placed. Prices move with trading, so the price you took is the price you keep.
Markets are settled against public evidence at their close time. Winning positions are paid in credits automatically; losing positions pay nothing.
Some markets are drafted automatically from news and are labelled as such on the page.
A market that cannot be settled without an argument is a bad market, and may be cancelled and refunded rather than resolved.
6. Invitations
You may invite people by email, and only to addresses you have permission to use.
People you invite take part under these same Terms.
7. Moderation
Markets that are unresolvable, duplicated or abusive may be hidden, rejected or archived.
Markets with no positions on them may be deleted outright.
Where a market with positions on it is removed, those positions are refunded rather than lost.
8. Intellectual property
You keep ownership of what you write — your questions, your comments.
By posting it, you grant Stips a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to display, store and distribute it within the service.
The Stips name, design and code are not yours to reuse without permission.
9. Prohibited conduct
You must not:
Manipulate markets or leaderboards, including through extra accounts
Harass or abuse other people, or post hate speech
Post illegal, obscene or harmful content
Run unauthorised bots or automated attacks against the service
Probe for or exploit vulnerabilities — report them to the address below instead
10. Disclaimers and limits
No guarantee of uptime, correctness or accuracy. Markets are written by people and can be wrong or badly worded.
Nothing here is advice. Prices on Stips are a game, not a forecast to act on.
Provided as-is, with all warranties disclaimed to the extent the law allows.
11. Termination
Access may be suspended or ended for breaking these Terms. You can close your account at any time. Since credits have no cash value, closing an account forfeits nothing of monetary worth.
12. Disputes
Raise a dispute by email first, with a link to the market in question. Most disputes are about a single resolution and are settled by looking at the evidence the market was meant to be judged against.
These Terms do not name a governing jurisdiction. Stips is an independent one-person project, and naming a venue it cannot stand behind would be worse than saying so plainly. If any part of these Terms is found invalid, the rest stays in force.
13. Changes
These Terms may be updated. The date at the top of this page records when the wording last changed. Continuing to use Stips after a change means accepting it.
14. Contact
Questions about these Terms, or a market you think resolved wrongly: