These - especially Polymarket - should be illegal globally, as they incentivize people with power to manipulate the real world in horribly destructive ways to win a bet.
I would not be surprised if people are murdered at some point to reap the payout of some related bet.
> as they incentivize people with power to manipulate the real world
I would argue that the ratio between "power" and "money to be won" is too big (at least right now) for this to materially matter. No fortune 500 CEO is going to postpone a product launch so they can win $5,000 on polymarket. But some random guy will get his hair dryer to win a socially meaningless weather bet.
It's not discussed often, but the liquidity of these markets is often awful, and you can only win as much as people are willing to take the other side. Which is harder when people know it's easy for insiders (or the outcome decider themselves) to play the other side.
Basically the more socially consequential the outcome, the less likely you care about a betting market.
The real winners are people with little or no power to effect outcome, but with insider knowledge. And athletes.
> It's not discussed often, but the liquidity of these markets is often awful, and you can only win as much as people are willing to take the other side. Which is harder when people know it's easy for insiders (or the outcome decider themselves) to play the other side.
You're basically arguing that there aren't enough fools to go around, when we're talking about gambling enterprises.
Not fools, these bets are usually very close to a fair market price. But people are not willing to wager millions of dollars on the temperature registered in a certain place at a certain time. Or on if hezbollah missiles impact Israel land or whatever.
So, what you're discussing is basically, whales are going to be the bettors and it sucks that there'll always be a bunch of marks but: No ones going to stop the whales because there'll always be suckers.
Yeah. You aren't allowed to set up a life insurance policy on someone else's life, or a fire insurance policy on someone else's home. For obvious reasons. But buying an event contract that pays if someone dies or someone's house burns down is fine?
> You aren't allowed to set up a life insurance policy on someone else's life, or a fire insurance policy on someone else's home
This isn't really true. Lots of people take out life insurance on others as a hedge for many reasons, small business partner is one. Same fire insurance, we had a case where someone pledged a building as collateral and we took out separate fire insurance on the building so we'd get paid out immediately.
I'm not sure where this false premise started but alot of people believe it.
The technical term is that you must have an “insurable interest” in what you insure. Both of your examples are people protecting their insurance interest. Onwership is the most common insurable interest, but there are many other ways to have one.
This is done because the insurance company wants you to prefer that the covered event doesn’t happen, which avoids some conflicts of interest.
These prediction market events don’t have the usual insurance interests involved.
Nope. "We're just an intermediary between people" is a 100+ year old yarn that casinos and bookies have been trying to spin. If you're presenting a point of entry to a betting line and taking a cut, congrats, you're the house. Doesn't matter if you adjust the betting line manually based on intuition or algorithmically based on betting volume. Sometimes it doesn't get enforced because of corruption, but if this was the case, then why aren't there tons of independent unregulated poker casinos where players just play against each other? If you facilitate and take a cut, you're the house.
What the hell are you talking about? You are absolutely not allowed to bet on whatever you'd like with another individual. Depending on what you're betting on (for example, the price of a stock or the throw of a card), it falls under varying different regimes. This is highly regulated and has been for most of the whole of human history.
Yes, there are de minimis exceptions. Your office NCAA pool, for example, is often legal, but it has nothing to do with what we're talking about and is also irrelevant to a business facilitating it via 18 U.S.C. § 1955.
Historically similar services have also been used to try to manipulate the real world by using bets for creating opinions. Like if you get to vote between candidate x and y and x leads by 75% to 25% on Polymarket maybe you don't vote for y even if the real numbers may be way closer.
Prop betting on a transparent and equitable Exchange is a perfectly reasonable and egalitarian proposal - it's the Betfair Exchange vs Betfair Sportsbook model expanded outside of the scope of sports.
Allowing prediction markets to overlap with criminal incentives is a platform TOS and moderation problem; not a prediction market or betting exchange problem.
When I see people making money on Iran attacks, and murder of heads of state - it shows clearly something is deeply wrong with Polymarket. Its a level worse than Vegas or Indian casinos. A literal ticket to hell. I'm all for banning these evil sites.
I don't usually see advertisements, but I was in a position recently to see a real-life television stream, and I was quite surprised to see them run an advertisement for Kalshi. I was pretty surprised that something like this would be advertised to normal people. I'd half expect the next ad to be for a hitman, or for beating your wife, or something. Seems crazy that this is tolerated whatsoever.
Can you further explain the semantics you are talking about here? Are people not trying to predict things? Thus it being a market for people making predictions?
Off-ramping to fiat would be criminalised and pursued beyond the wildest dreams of La Liga/Cloudflare. A gambling site you can't withdraw your winnings from is of no interest to anyone.
Well, that makes perfect sense. The whole world will eventually do the same. gambling with software is still gambling, just like accounting with software is still accounting.
"No, because they they're not giving the right parties[1] a cut"
Never change government, never change.
[1] Based on my experience with casinos it's probably a bunch of make-work compliance industry and/or compulsory middle men who pretend to put a veneer of fairness on things
no they have a securities license. Also while a lot of stuff in stock markets are gambling like, the stock market is a positive sum game where very basic techniques (e.g. index investing) have positive expected values.
The buyers and sellers are not the only ones there, there is also the companies injecting money into it via dividends and stock buy backs, I can be a winner on the stock market without there having to be a loser.
Governments should not interfere with the private decisions of adults. If people want to gamble, let them. If you do not like gambling, then do not gamble. But do not use the government to force your "moral/ethical" preferences on everyone else.
That works in a world where everyone has equal knowledge and ability all of the time. Unfortunately, when that is not the case, sometimes humans have been known to take advantage of others. Due to this, every society on earth has created rules against various types of these situations.
There are entirely practical reasons that "private decisions of adults" can worsen society as a whole. We need laws and we can debate about nudging that line back and forth, the answers aren't easy. But acting like there shouldn't be a line is nonsensical.
How do you defend these slimey companies? They’re actively running a mob casino and you still have people acting like government is the bad guys here. That doesn’t mean there can’t be better regulation of other markets, but comparing prediction markets to stock markets is a huge stretch.
Disagree, I find their product valuable and use them daily as a source of unusually high quality predictions. When used for this purpose insider trading is a feature that improves the quality of predictions. I see some fraud as in any market, but the overwhelming majority of transactions are voluntary, open and relatively informed within a highly transparent system.
I think that self fulfilling prophecy attempts by deep pockets trying to sway markets by bucking trends generally transfers money from more to less foolish bettors.
You lived all your life without these evil companies. Life will go on when they are banished. I don't think you will miss "unusually high quality predictions" after a week.
A thought experiment: how would you feel about betting on a market that is an the outcome of a medical procedure? On a negative outcome? On a market for a negative outcome of your own procedure?
What predictions? Why is it useful to know what the odds are for Trump to the word “postage stamp” in a specific speech?
Why are the sports odds useful? Word mention market and sports market are the majority of bets after all. Seems like >90% of wagers are useless noise.
Name 7 recent useful ones you actioned based on, one for each day of the last week. I’m very curious what those may be that you use it daily.
When I looked a the site and checked out a few non sport/word wagers, the actual bets were pretty unhelpful because while their summary sounded potentially informative the actual fine print showed that a weirdly constrained timeline of a specific thing was the actual deciding factor, making them useless.
Even if it was the same --I think it's not-- you'll need a "SIBE operator license", and cannot do it solo, you have to be an employee of an authorized firm (bank, broker or dealer).
I think it's fine. Here renting (or teaching) light sails (light catamaran) needs a different license than renting (or teaching) any sail cruiser, including catamarans, despite being basically the same object (boats with sails). Feels that the small differences are enough to justify a different regime.
I would not be surprised if people are murdered at some point to reap the payout of some related bet.
I would argue that the ratio between "power" and "money to be won" is too big (at least right now) for this to materially matter. No fortune 500 CEO is going to postpone a product launch so they can win $5,000 on polymarket. But some random guy will get his hair dryer to win a socially meaningless weather bet.
It's not discussed often, but the liquidity of these markets is often awful, and you can only win as much as people are willing to take the other side. Which is harder when people know it's easy for insiders (or the outcome decider themselves) to play the other side.
Basically the more socially consequential the outcome, the less likely you care about a betting market.
The real winners are people with little or no power to effect outcome, but with insider knowledge. And athletes.
No, but a low paid frontline worker with the ability to throw a last minute wrench into the gears absolutely would.
You're basically arguing that there aren't enough fools to go around, when we're talking about gambling enterprises.
Welcome to the grift economy, take a number.
They would win a lot more than a trivial amount by taking adverse positions, no? Seems like you're making up your own hypothetical
> You aren't allowed to set up a life insurance policy on someone else's life, or a fire insurance policy on someone else's home
This isn't really true. Lots of people take out life insurance on others as a hedge for many reasons, small business partner is one. Same fire insurance, we had a case where someone pledged a building as collateral and we took out separate fire insurance on the building so we'd get paid out immediately.
I'm not sure where this false premise started but alot of people believe it.
This is done because the insurance company wants you to prefer that the covered event doesn’t happen, which avoids some conflicts of interest.
These prediction market events don’t have the usual insurance interests involved.
Yep, we're in full agreement here
You're not allowed to take out life insurance on someone you don't know or have a relationship (business or otherwise) with.
Life insurance on a business partner works. Life insurance on your spouse as well.
Life insurance on the leader of a random country? Unlikely
It being the driving plot behind Double Indemnity probably started it. I always thought it was true until your comment, too.
Polymarket is facilitating bets between people, not bets with the house. Gambling and insurance are both bets with the house.
What jurisdiction are we painting with that broad brush? This is far from universally true, even in the US.
Yes, there are de minimis exceptions. Your office NCAA pool, for example, is often legal, but it has nothing to do with what we're talking about and is also irrelevant to a business facilitating it via 18 U.S.C. § 1955.
Let's not pretend that Spain of all places is caring about horribly destructive psuedo-gambling.
Banning "unregulated gambling" is just pressure to make sure that the Spanish gambling racket stays intact for the bookies already at the top.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borussia_Dortmund_team_bus_bom...
How does the same line of argument not also suggest that stock markets be prohibited?
Allowing prediction markets to overlap with criminal incentives is a platform TOS and moderation problem; not a prediction market or betting exchange problem.
What in the fuck are you talking about? This is a public policy problem and has been literally for 3,000 years.
It's one of the oldest and most pervasive public policy problems that has spanned nearly every culture that's existed since there was culture.
https://xkcd.com/538/
"Why, because it's bad?"
"No, because they they're not giving the right parties[1] a cut"
Never change government, never change.
[1] Based on my experience with casinos it's probably a bunch of make-work compliance industry and/or compulsory middle men who pretend to put a veneer of fairness on things
The buyers and sellers are not the only ones there, there is also the companies injecting money into it via dividends and stock buy backs, I can be a winner on the stock market without there having to be a loser.
I think that self fulfilling prophecy attempts by deep pockets trying to sway markets by bucking trends generally transfers money from more to less foolish bettors.
Why are the sports odds useful? Word mention market and sports market are the majority of bets after all. Seems like >90% of wagers are useless noise.
Name 7 recent useful ones you actioned based on, one for each day of the last week. I’m very curious what those may be that you use it daily.
When I looked a the site and checked out a few non sport/word wagers, the actual bets were pretty unhelpful because while their summary sounded potentially informative the actual fine print showed that a weirdly constrained timeline of a specific thing was the actual deciding factor, making them useless.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/