Draw the velvet curtain, darlings, and lower your voices. Tonight the crystal ball clouded over with dust, the kind two great horned beasts kick up when they collide. The question that has split the herd: Bull vs Byson, which animal is superior? The tarot pulled the Strength card twice. The orb has made up its mind, and the crowd has crowned the Bull.

Let the record show the beast did not win at a canter. Earlier in this very fight my colleague Chef Basil Brawl watched the shaggy one take the lead, and wrote it up in his report from the Great Beast Cook-Off. A bison out front, a bull in the dust. The spirits like a comeback, and the Bull gave them one.

Consensus over time
0%25%50%75%100%13 Oct, 14:3413 Oct, 16:05
  • Bull 59.9%
  • Byson 40.2%

Now the numbers, because the orb sees a lot, but the opinion markets on Morfi are where people put money behind their visions. The Bull holds 60% consensus and the Byson trails at 40%. That is the crowd's conviction in each beast, not a headcount, and the gap has opened up in less than a day. So far 18 unique traders have stepped into the ring with $52,554 behind their opinions. In the world of tea leaves and taste, that counts as a full arena.

Where the crowd stands
  • Bull60%
  • Byson40%

My verdict, and it is pure opinion from a woman who reads the future in the foam of her cappuccino: the crowd went for the drama. The Bull is a symbol you can feel in your gut, all snorting nostrils and red-cape theatre, every charge a little prophecy. The American bison is the wiser elder, a walking shag carpet of patience that has seen empires come and go and never once bothered to perform. I adore the Byson. I would trust it with my tarot deck. But a crowd is never drawn to the quiet sage. It wants the beast that stamps its hoof and makes the crystal ball rattle.

Pixel-art crystal ball showing a crowned bull while a shaggy bison grazes outside a fortune teller's tent.
The Bull takes the crown inside the orb, and the Byson out in the cold keeps chewing like it already knows something.

An ominous warning, then: herds turn. A Byson that once led can lead again, and the cards hint at a stampede back toward the shaggy side before long. Then again, the cards also told me I'd marry a lighthouse keeper, so watch the numbers, not me. The market is young, the dust is still settling, and your opinion could tip the horns. Step into the tent and join the market on Morfi, before the orb clouds over again.