Holding back tears, he made it into the bathroom and locked the door. His face too swollen for his phone’s automatic unlock, he fumbled trying to get it working. When he did, his worst fears were confirmed. His odds were slipping in real time.

Will Sam and Milton get engaged? 18% … 17.8% …

“How did we get here?” Sam lamented to himself, and as the SamMiltonEngagementB ticker continued dropping, he zoomed out to All and the arc of the relationship flashed before his eyes.

Back then, he was an idealist. Flush with Jump Trading cash and the moral clarity of giving what he could, he moved back to the Bay Area and started working at One Day Faster. The nonprofit had a modest office in an Oakland building, an appropriately self-effacing contrast to the extravagance of Wall Street. At a casual post-work hang at the office, he’d met Milton, an introverted founder of a startup who had hopped on BART to get there.

There was an attraction right away, but neither of them knew quite the right words to say. Eventually, Milton took out his phone, and sheepishly showed him a graph. Shipper1010 had apparently bet 1000 of some currency, “mana,” that they’d go on a date; maybe it was worth a shot?

Sam’s initial confusion gave way to excitement. He’d made millions trading on volatility indexes: whether international commodities and stock exchanges would be relatively stable or move more dramatically. But his dating life hadn’t even been volatile, more of a flatline. He immediately saw the potential: by incentivising anyone in the world, friends, associates, even dedicated online randos, to make the perfect match, financialised dating markets could solve the matchmaking problem! Existing dating apps were ubiquitous but doomed by bad incentives to keep their users single and coming back for more. Sam was reminded of his startup founder friend, who’d started offering $5,000 bonuses not only for referrals to his company, but also to his bedroom—this was the logical extension.

Sam and Milton went on the date (after first betting the market up to “Odds of first date = 85%”, of course) and never looked back. Milton explained that since it launched last year, this app to let everyone manage their love lives like their Robinhood trades had taken Silicon Valley by storm. Their highest-volume market, SamMiltonEngagedB, swelled steadily to 74% over the next few months. After all, they were both already in their mid-thirties, wanted kids, and it was evidently the rational thing to do.

There had been a blip early on, after a pointless argument over charcuterie. Sarah, a witness to the spat, had sold some shares in the relationship, triggering push alerts to both Sam and Milton, which had embarrassed them. But they both brushed that incident away as trivial. After all, their stock had recovered in minutes, and Sarah had lost her mana.

But now, his odds were at 15%, 14.9%, and continuing to drop. He zoomed in on the trading history and interspersed with Matchbot69SFGay and AellaGirl, he spotted Milton’s alias, Freedhuman, selling shares too! Sam felt his cheeks flush. He immediately texted the only person who could fix it, his whale matchmaker friend Warren. Warren had earned a ton of coin arbitraging away irregularities in the early days of the dating market app and now had enough to sway almost any relationship. Sam pleaded with him to bail out his relationship with a large limit order. If Warren publicly showed his support with a huge buy order, maybe the short interest would dissipate and the vicious animal spirits of the market would calm.

But Warren was unmoved. He’d already lost some on this market, and his technical analysis showed it was unlikely to recover.

Sam remained on the floor, unable to look away from his quantified emotional ruin, displayed for all to see. He hunched over his phone, and the tears continued to flow.