As an aside, I have pondered the viability of an escrow service aimed specifically at people who want to wager about topics like these.
I see this at verious forums, someone says Company A will be bankrupt in a year and another one says that won't happen. One of them frequently pipes up to say, "I'll bet you $100 that I'm right!"
Yet, nobody ever takes the chance to capitalize on those potential bets.
Basically, they would set their terms, agree on those terms, upload those terms in a verifiable way as the terms they agreed to, pay their money, and then wait for the time period to end.
At that point, someone at the escrow company will review the wager and the evidence and decide who gets the payout, less the fees associated with it. Not all bets are easy to judge, so writing accurate terms would be important. The service will supply, if needed, impartial judging of the merits. I suppose the company would also need to have the ability to refuse to accept certain bets, perhaps insisting that they make the goals clearly articulated and demonstrable success or failures would be important.
They might even enable it for multiple parties. Each bet would require a deposit of the entire amount due. I suppose people could even go so far as to set odds, if they wanted.
I'm pretty sure this should be a thing.