Interpretation of Prices
In a prediction market, binary options are used to find out a population's best estimate of an event occurring - for example, a price of 0.65 on a binary option triggered by the Democratic candidate winning the next US Presidential election can be interpreted as an estimate of 65% likelihood of him winning.
In financial markets, expected returns on a stock or other instrument are already priced into the stock. However, a binary options market provides other information. Just as the regular options market reveals the market's estimate of variance (volatility), i.e. the second moment, a binary options market reveals the market's estimate of skew, i.e. the third moment.
In theory, a portfolio of binary options can also be used to synthetically recreate (or valuate) any other option (analogous to integration), although in practical terms this is not possible due to the lack of depth of the market for these relatively thinly traded securities.
In theory a portfolio of options can synthetically recreate any other financial instrument, including conventional options.
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