(1) Recreational or addicted gamblers
(2) Hedging your investments or exposure to an event by betting on it as insurance
(3) Insiders
(4) Information arbitrage (researchers, etc)
Three (3) and Four (4) are probably the most important for conveying useful information in pricing. I see it as a good, not bad thing, they are involved.
With my usual addictive behaviour, I think it's prob best I stay away from that though.. :)
It’s not because they bet, because how and when they bet
> The whole thing is so stupid it makes my head hurt
Look on the bright side, at least the malicious actors aren't able to competently implement their goals.
The US/North America is petroleum-product-independent-ish. We produce approximately as much hydrocarbons as we use. We also could produce a lot more but tar sands, shale oil, etc. are more expensive to produce and not very profitable at $60/bbl but it's there ready for the taking. When you're talking about how we aren't it's about how certain refineries are tuned for which type of oil and how we import unrefined and export the refined products, etc... but we're not RUNNING OUT of oil or energy.
Many places in the rest of the world aren't like that and will suffer much greater losses while the US is relatively strong. Of course we're all linked, but a power hungry dictator might only really care who's on top in a relative sense even if everybody is dragged down.
this isn't new, the techo-feudalism has been pretty clear since Thiel got his man (JD Vance) into the VP slot.
the Israelis also figure he's probably not gonna last through the mid-terms, so they want the US to do their dirty work while they still have leverage over him via Epstein files. Russia wants the US to get into a similar long-slog war, and is desperate for high oil prices.
The problem is all of these things are politically untenable. This is the only reason why I think this war could continue long term because Trump simply cannot back down.
I think the recession from this could actually get so bad that there's now a nonzero (but still small) chance Trump gets removed from office, either by impeachment or by being 25A'ed.
It is hard to adequately state what a geopolitical disaster this was and it is I think quite easily the biggest mistake by an administration in the entire history of the US. I'm not exaggerating.
I wonder how the coup in Cuba will turn out. That has to happen before the midterms, and he's unlikely to wait for Iran to resolve.
So like in Game of Thrones, we hope a Jamie Lannister shows up...
Not only is Iran justifiably angry at its attackers, they have no reason to trust a ceasefire would be respected, and, furthermore, despite damage taken, stand to gain quite a lot if the war progresses as it has. Currently Iran is exporting more oil than ever before[0]. If the war continues as is they stand to emerge a much, much more dominant power on the world stage. Essentially being to BRICS what the GCC countries have been to the US (although much better defended).
Even the threats against their energy infrastructure can't really be backed up effectively. Iran has intentionally built its energy infrastructure to be highly distributed. Meanwhile Israel's infrastructure is highly centralized, with a small number of power plants providing massive proportions of the nations infrastructure. All this meaning that Iran can retaliate much more effectively the they can be harmed.
0. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/irans-control-of-hormu...
If there is insider trading it's most likely low-level staffers or friends of officials who speak too freely.
If a high ranking official wanted to make a lot of money on these moves in an untraceable way, there are numerous financial market opportunities. The amount they could make on betting markets is peanuts and too easily tracked.
Have you noticed any meaningful scandals back then?
https://www.9news.com.au/world/donald-trump-iran-updates-oil...
Discussion on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1s1x5jq/minutes_b...
Since when do profoundly stupid people use this site?
Profoundly stupid people are the target demographics.
They are burning your country to the ground while enriching themselves.
They would absolutely (have their secretary) commit legal inside trader for a few hundred thousand on every occasion they could.
At least I'm having my hopes up for this.
I'm sure he exaggerates his wealth, but we know he's at least a billionaire.
Bit players with knowledge that have been perennially underpaid by the us govt. however, mortgage-saving money. I don’t blame them. Do you?
“I’m aware of a big decision and I can make 23k off of it, probably.” Do it up, congress has been living off insider trading for a century, let the little guy get theirs.
Until gambling commercials are banned in the same way cigarette commercials were banned, we’re all just yelling at the wind.
Ben Yorke is the only expert I see mentioned in the article, so it'd be a lot more accurate (and a lot less sensational) if The Guardian changed its title to "... says one expert" (but it wouldn't sound as interesting then, would it?).
> Eight accounts, all newly created around 21 March, bet a total of nearly $70,000 (£52,000) on there being a ceasefire. They stand to make nearly $820,000 if such a deal is reached before 31 March.
Not to sound privileged but $800k doesn't sound like that much of money for someone that has access to that kind of insider knowledge, especially considering the risks.
All things considered, I feel like the same people could make much bigger bets using trad-fi instruments than Polymarket so I don't understand what's so significant about Polymarket "whales".
In the end people just betting on TACO.
I think you over-estimate by a large margin how much congressional staffers and/or Pentagon employees make, many of whom could have access to this kind of information in the course of their duties.
What risks?
1. This isn't insider trading of securities.
2. This administration is laughably corrupt.
Do you have any other plausible explanation for this behaviour? I can't think of any, if it's just like your average WallStreetBets gambler, why would they be making these bets from brand-new accounts?
Seems a rather risky bet considering how deep Israel has ventured into its war in Lebanon. Very doubtful they will stop anytime soon. Given the leverage Israel has demonstrated over US foreign policy I find it hard to imagine that the US will 'leave them to it'. Likewise, Iran is unlikely to leave Hezbollah's interests out of any negotiations or for that matter to trust that the US isn't asking for negotiations in bad faith. I guess there could be a limited ceasefire agreed between Iran and the US to make room for negotiations but the ceasefire would almost certainly have to occur without the opening of the strait or an end to fighting in Lebanon. This (now regional) war has a long way to go in my opinion.
Ultimately, I think this all hinges on whether or not the Iranians feel that they have enough leverage to exercise yet. My feeling is that they will want to continue to the point of destroying Trump's political career - something they could possibly do if this quagmire continues to get worse and closer to the US midterms. Bringing down a US president is potentially one way they can help ensure that they don't simply get attacked again in the near future.
I do not have any reason to doubt that people are doing insider trading. The US admin is obviously corrupt and the Iran attacks are the most abject symptom of its corruption so far.
But you can't just put out a bunch of completely isolated observations with zero analysis and say "that looks like insider trading". There is nothing at all in here that presents an argument for that claim.
I am a daily Guardian reader but I stopped paying for it coz there are so many articles like this that are just complete fucking trash. Because I am the target audience (leftist Euro who can easily get riled up by topics like this) it pisses me off when I feel I'm being manipulated.
This 5 day extension is to replenish US stocks and build up the marines in the region. while Israel continues to attack all the time.
The only deal that may have emerged in secret is for Iran not to hit the Dimona nuclear power plant and for Israel/US not to hit the Bushehr nuclear power plant.
Of course Trump's cronies will utilize the volatility and insider knowledge. The entire presidency is there to enrich his clan.
As an Australian the next dumbest thing I've ever heard of reliably happens mid Saturday as a result.
The "5 day extension" is coincidentally exactly that timeframe.
Are they operating on hopes and prayers that Trump isn't lying "this time"? Or does everybody know it's all crap but if everyone else is buying, they don't want to miss the tide?
Trump is the ultimate mercurial. At the drop of a hat, he'll change his mind on things. Predicting Trump is a ridiculous proposition, and I'm willing to be most would agree with that.
Even Trump doesn't know what Trump will do next!
Yet meanwhile, there are people using "insider knowledge" to make decisions? What insider knowledge!! There is none. It's all made up on a day to day basis.
He's delaying until the Marines get there in a few days.
And until the markets close on Friday, notice how he said 5 days on Monday.
He's also bombed them the past two times in the middle of negotiations, why stop now
The man is a proven constant pathological liar since the day he came down the golden escalator 10 years ago, literally every time he speaks it's a lie.
To end the war, Iran will demand a full withdrawal of US forces from all neighboring countries as well as a shut down of US bases. This will also have the added benefit of giving them full control of the strait when the US leaves, and a free hand to bombard Israel. The GCC are already fatigued from a war they had no say in, so if the Iranians strike the desal plants, they will either join the US offensive or they'll kick the American troops out.
That's quite possible.
> and he likely lacks the capacity to end it if he wanted to.
Nah, he could end it any time he wants. Iran will stop bombing its neighbors in a week or so, and things will more or less return to the pre-war status quo.
He chooses to not end it, because the one thing that he cannot stand is losing face.
So the president has absolute immunity from any consequences. The president can pardon anyone in their orbit. Pardons are now being openly sold for personal profit [4].
All of this was completely foreseeable from giving someone absolute immunity.
Prediction markets make this much worse because they're even more unregulated. We certainly had corruption even in Trump's first term (eg Jared Kushner's Saudi "investment" [5]). This is the new normal.
[1]: https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/supreme-court/13-worst-su...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States
That's not true. Congress still has the power to impeach with the a conviction in the Senate removing the sitting president. The problem is that both chambers of Congress are lead by sycophants of the president. All SCOTUS did was put an asterisk to the notion that "no man above the law". It's a big fat asterisk to be sure, but they gave themselves a little wiggle room.
What if everything Trump does and says is merely to manipulate markets?
- Standards and norms, which obviously the current administration doesn't give a rat's ass about
- Failing that, Congress has to step in and impeach and convict. This won't happen because the Republicans have completely rolled over
So, here we are.
* you can place large bets on events you have influence on the outcome for and make large amounts of money
* you can place large bets on events and then threaten people who have influence with a big stick
* you can place large bets expecting to lose money in order to change the outcome or a related outcome expecting people to look at the odds and change their behavior
And probably lots of other ways.
It corrupts events and on a world stage with unethical government in vogue... it's not impossible for people to manipulate a war in order to make bets go their way.
I think prediction markets worked as an idea to provide a wisdom of the crowd view when they were being used in good faith, but rewards cause people to prioritise winning and gaming the system pays better than playing fairly.
But there are two large concrete betting markets now. And they advertise not as a "world state discovery system" but as a gambling platform for people to try their luck on. They are also large businesses that are making their owners rich. Falling back on "oh we are just interested in the intellectual exercise of information discovery" is not tenable at this point.
That seems like a big one
All war is for profit anyway - on sufficiently long time scales, stopping war is the imperative.
No. It’s an unintended side effect that risks breaking trust in the system by (the majority of) players who don’t have insider knowledge.
The only way you get more wisdom from “the crowd” is if it teases folks who hold non-public (or at least less public) information into the market to refine the odds towards what they should be.
Without insider information the entire concept is dead on arrival.
Yes randos are gonna gamble because they either don’t understand the game they are playing or are simple degenerate gamblers who want something else to gamble on. Others are going to think they know better or have limited insider information that isn’t worth as much as they think, or is not as accurate as they believe. And the delusional who simply think they know better for no logical reason but have convinced themselves otherwise.
My point isn't that an unregulated prediction market (Polymarket non-US markets are non-CFTC certified) can obscure insider trading. My point is that Brent has enough liquidity that an insider can trade without moving markets. There's plenty of insiders that work on a contract basis and aren't required to disclose trades by STOCK Act provisions for public disclosure.
And honestly we aren't even out of the 45 day window around disclosures that would surface any Brent or WTI trades around the current Iran conflict anyway.
0. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/03/23/volume-in-stock-and-oil-...
But why? You can trade Brent or WTI and do the same exact thing with much less scrutiny. $800k of Brent futures is nothing, and instead of having to risk your entire bet going bust like in prediction markets and their binary outcomes you can just take a loss on your investment instead if you time your exit incorrectly.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/23/volume-in-stock-and-oil-futu...
I realize for some the whole appeal of this kind of story is "look Trump bad" and then to get into the comments about how bad he is to play political sportsball, but insider trading is sadly a bipartisan phenomenon. No question though that this admin is the most brazen about its corruption in my lifetime though.
There are no missiles and draft in Western Europe and the shops are open on every holy day.
Unfortunately this leaves the holy land to the fanatics.
The only ones who choose to stay back are folks fresh into Aliyah, who might've received a lot of incentives from the government to settle in the illegal West Bank settlements. Or those who really believe in Zionism. The former are typically guys who couldn't make the cut even in their home countries, so they're certainly not adequate replacements for the ones leaving.
Not to mention, it's mostly the liberal cities like Tel Aviv which have faced the brunt of Iranian barrages. Jerusalem has been barely hit. Folks staying in those cities, working actual jobs contributing to the economy and not Torah studies, are likely the ones leaving - I know many of my acquaintances who've left Tel Aviv for the US or Dubai.
On the other hand, there is no way to "destroy Trump's career". The US system doesn't have confidence votes. You're stuck with him.
Edit: it is an unfortunate aspect of the minor World War that the Iran war has overshadowed the war in Lebanon, whatever is happening in Syria, and the weird UAE backed war in Sudan.
If they lose the senate, then impeachment becomes possible, no?
Imagine an era where the majority leans in on a balance of compassion for self and others.
> Eight accounts, all newly created around 21 March, bet a total of nearly $70,000 (£52,000) on there being a ceasefire.
Is that anomalous? Are these numbers large in context?
> They stand to make nearly $820,000 if such a deal is reached before 31 March.
Yes that is indeed how prediction markets work for unlikely events?
> An account that made the same bet was created shortly before the US struck Iran on 28 February. It also placed a winning bet on those strikes, which raised similar questions around insider trading, and so far has bet on nothing else.
Is that anomalous? If I was betting 5 figure sums I would also stick to my areas of expertise. That doesn't mean I'm an insider.
> The new accounts all appear to have been created late last week, around the time when the US president, Donald Trump, appeared to first double down on war with Iran, then suggest in an after-markets Truth Social post that he was considering “winding down” military operations.
So what??? Is anything about that anomalous? What is that supposed to tell us about the accounts?
> The wallets “definitely [look like] someone with some degree of inside info”, said Ben Yorke, formerly a researcher with CoinTelegraph, now building an AI trading platform called Starchild.
"Some random fucking guy said this thing", OK?
> But online crypto watchers and experts suggested that the bets bore the signs of insider trading – both because they bought their positions at market price,
What the fuck does that even mean?
> and because some of the accounts looked like they could belong to a single investor attempting to conceal their identity by splitting their bet between multiple wallets.
This is just repeating a former claim that was not backed up with any rationale. And note the very next sentence provides an alternative motive for traders to split wallets, aside from insider trading.
> “Typically, when you see wallet-splitting and deliberate attempts to obfuscate identity, it’s one of two scenarios: either a very large investor trying to shield their position from market impact, or insider trading,” said Yorke.
But we haven't been presented with any evidence that we're seeing either of those things?? And also I can't help repeating, why the fuck are we supposed to listen to this guy's opinion?
> Polymarket’s own rating of the probability of a ceasefire before 31 March increased significantly in the past few days, from 6% on 21 March to 24% by Monday. More than $21m is currently being wagered on this outcome.
Again, this is just describing the normal and intended mechanics of the market. It's not anomalous and it's not evidence of wrongdoing.
Also it makes the $70k figure from the beginning look pretty small.
Having been a semi-pro sports bettor for a short stint as it went through legalization in the U.S., I’ve personally had tens of thousands wagered on sports teams I’ve never heard of before. Over the course of thousands of bets it becomes statistically inevitable that you have wagers placed right before major news (both for and against you).
It’s even entirely possible this individual has some or all their position hedged on another platform effectively capture a tiny arbitrage in the market.
There’s tons of upstart market makers on these prediction markets doing hundreds of thousands in volume a week as they provide liquidity, grinding out small edges in a way you’d never be able to know their true exposure to any one market across platforms.
It’s of course entirely possible this is an insider, but as a journalist you need something more than a large bet + good timing. Out of millions of wagers there will inevitably be plenty of random people who bet on a football game 5 minutes before the quarterback gets injured purely out of dumb luck.
https://www.pay.gov/public/search/global?formSearchCategory=...
Note that in addition to specific programs that accept donations, this list includes "Gifts to the U.S. Government" with no strings attached and "Gifts to Reduce the Public Debt".
"A ceasefire looks very unlikely, why they hell would anyone bet on that? That's very suspicious" is obviously a completely fucking idiotic statement to you and me ("why would you buy this ugly empty lot in Manhattan? There's no buildings on it!"). Maybe to a 25 year old Guardian journo with a history degree from Oxbridge it's just common sense.
You either allow a free for all, or they should be simply outright banned. I mean, they should probably be banned either way - but without the prediction part this is not a single redeeming factor for them to exist.
The consequences for someone betting on classified information would need to come from the agency/government/etc. that finds out their staff is engaging in betting on privileged information. The market itself is simply taking bets and doing what it's designed to do. The bettor gets to decide if the risk is worth it.
placing bets on polymarket is a cheap way to influence the whole market
If Israel is still bombing them? Certainly.
This will put incredible international pressure on Israel to stop. It's one thing when the US wrecks the world's economy, and it's hard to push back on. It's an entirely different thing when a country of 10 million people is wrecking the world's economy. International opinion has been turning against it for years, already.
I do think it's very unlikely to continue the war if the bombing stopped, and only the proxy war continued.
Now it's not very effective now, but if the US packs up and leaves they can keep doing it. "Trade in Yuan or we drone strike your ships" would lead to every company that operates there doing it provided it actually kept risk and insurance rates down.
What people are looking for is anti-corruption enforcement not market regulation. The problem isn’t that the admin is using advanced knowledge, all commodities trading involves that, it’s that the officials have an obligation to the public as part of their governmental service.
Of course this admin _also_ gutted the anti-corruption offices in the government along with the market regulators.
If someone has news they want to get out they can just use the media.
What I'm not sure of is whether disclosure regulations would apply to all government officials who could plausibly have insider knowledge (probably not?), whether oil futures would be covered by those regulations (probably?), whether it's possible to be fully anonymous to the brokerage (probably not?), and how much access law enforcement has to information regarding who is making what trades (not much without a court orders?).
I don't think that is a trivial amount of research to do, and I would guess the vast majority of people viewing this thread don't know the answers and will not try to find them out. I was hoping an expert would be able to enlighten us, so we can share informed opinions rather than uninformed opinions.
Remember that even if you make USDC on Polymarket, at some point you need to turn that into spendable fiat. Even if you move USDC over to Coinbase, if you move over $800k+, there is no way your new gains will not be met with scrutiny. Once you have that much USDC and no good explanation on how you made it you essentially need to launder the money. There's low hanging fruit to spend crypto on like VPNs and compute, but there's very few ways to launder that much money easily and most importantly cheaply.
> What I'm not sure of is whether disclosure regulations would apply to all government officials who could plausibly have insider knowledge (probably not?), whether oil futures would be covered by those regulations (probably?), whether it's possible to be fully anonymous to the brokerage (probably not?), and how much access law enforcement has to information regarding who is making what trades (not much without a court orders?).
Yeah if you search around you'll find that this is covered by the STOCK Act [1]. Pretty simple, cursory search.
> The brokerage knows who they are acting on behalf of, but not who is on the other side of the transaction. The public doesn't automatically know, except for government officials who are obligated to disclose their trading.
Borkerages don't build knowledge graphs of their users and the things these users can and cannot trade even if they know who they are. If you've ever held RSUs, there are companies that put trading restrictions on your RSUs but this is a brokerage platform concept, and isn't even universal across brokerages. For the most part brokerages don't care what you make money on. This only becomes a problem if the SEC chooses enforcement action.
One of the simplest ways that insiders come under scrutiny is taking large positions that make the news or move markets (or otherwise soak up lots of liquidity.) Oil is traded in futures, which means each contract is for 1000 barrels. CBK26 right now is priced at $103.73, which means a single contract is worth $103,730. A position of $800k is a pretty standard amount in Brent (though this is a future, so you'll need to post margin which makes this more expensive.) From there it's a game of how likely it is to be caught trading and then prosecuted. If you tell nobody and come under no scrutiny you're golden; sell your position when the time comes and make $$$. Plenty of government positions, like contractors, are not required to disclose under the STOCK Act and so there's almost no likelihood those insiders will come under any scrutiny.
And unlike a Polymarket bet you don't end up making the news when you trade $800k of contracts nor will you run the risk of mistiming your bet and losing your entire bet and then go through the headache of laundering your money out.
> I don't think that is a trivial amount of research to do, and I would guess the vast majority of people viewing this thread don't know the answers and will not try to find them out.
No offense but this is a low bar to have. It's all a few web searches away. I'm pretty sure you can get an LLM to teach you this in a few turns of conversation. What is the "appropriate" amount of knowledge we should expect an internet commenter to have? I mean posting on HN has to mean something right? Or maybe those days are gone on here.
[1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/senate-bill/203...
The US simply doesn't have the military capability to invade Iran. It's surrounded by mountains so there's no land staging area like we had for Iraq in 1991. Am ambphibious landing would have to be on the scale of D-Day. Personnel-wise, the military is a lot smaller than it was in 1991 too.
This is why I laugh when people panic "they're going to invade" when 5000 Marines and 2-3 amphibious landing ships are moved to the Gulf. Those are so incredibly irrelevant and wholly insufficient for any kind of ground invasion that the worse they can do is be the Bay of Pigs 2.0.
The Iranian national project has been to resist American imperialism for the past almost 50 years. The military is distributed. Lots of it is under mountains or otherwise reinforced from air bombardment and missiles. Drones are incredibly cheap to produce and there's no viable path to stop the production and launch of ballistic missiles and drones.
That's how bad a decision this is. There is no viable military path to "victory" (whatever that means here). There is no way to invade, no way to hold the country militarily and no way to manufacture regime change.
Other countries in the region are way more vulnerable to loss of infrastructure (eg desalination plants). Iran has desalination plants too but it also gets a lot of drinking water from snowmelt. Many Americans are surprised by that. Iran has ski resorts. That's how mountainous it is.
Israel has been begging the US to topple Iran for 40+ years and every president has refused. Because it's completely unviable. Until this one.
There are really three wars being fought here and the objectives are different in every case. Israel wants to turn Iran into Somalia, which is to say a fail-state. The US wanted regime change. Iran simply wants to survive. And it will.
So this is why you see Israel escalate to drag the US into a war it doesn't really want. And if Israel succeeds and somehow the regime does topple it will create a massive refugee crisis that will likely topple the governments of most of Iran's neighbours. Israel is completely fine with that. The US isn't.
Every country in the Gulf had essentially been converted into a US client state other than Iran. We went so far as to put a former al-Qaeda lieutennant in charge of Syria. A likely consequence of this move is US influence in the region is going to massively decrease because the myth of the American security guarantee has been broken.
While the war is still poular with Trump's base we'll see how long that lasts when gas hits $8/gallon and food inflation hits 20%.
Head hurts to think how this will play out.
> I AM PLEASED TO REPORT THAT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE COUNTRY OF IRAN, HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. BASED ON THE TENOR AND TONE OF THESE IN DEPTH, DETAILED, AND CONSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS, WHICH WILL CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, I HAVE INSTRUCTED THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR TO POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A FIVE DAY PERIOD, SUBJECT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ONGOING MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1162782323629...
the "interesting case" is how he somehow managed to convince the average american that he has anything in common with them, even as he insulted everything they stand for, constantly. there is the real psychological case study.
Unless you have dealt with a narcissist in real life you don't really get to comprehend the reality of them and their methods. On the other hand, once you know, most of them are so transparent.
Her scandal was not being subtle enough with the theft of government funds for Trump's taste, and he found a way to get rid of her that he could claim he had no part in.
she should be tried for corruption and manslaughter.
maybe I'm dumb but I thought gambling is the whole point
People find gambling fun. Owners of gambling services make a lot of money. The prediction markets both run ads that present themselves as gambling products.
Both of these things are points that can sustain large businesses.
Gambling is a billion dollar business.
If the market that is taking the bet also filled the jar, then sure it’s just outright fraud at that point. But the market exists to get the real information into the open. Betting that an insider just isn’t going to play is a variable you consider when placing your bet imo.
An efficient "prediction market" would more quickly resolve to its expected outcome due to not only skin-in-the-game bets by experts, but also the influence of insiders.
Furthermore, bets are likely to shape outcomes. Betting someone will be assassinated (not allowed on Polymarket) would likely increase the probability of that outcome had there been no bet at all.
Ignorance is strength.
Openly corrupt markets that feature insiders with secret knowledge taking money from gambling addicts and rubes is actually good cause the crowd is now wiser.
Someone must have just mistakenly put in regulations against insider trading before, for no good reason. Luckily this isn’t anything like the normal tech play of figuring out a loophole or flat out ignoring the law and hoping you get too big before the regulators catch up.
I think we're using different scales to measure competency.
I mean, Christ, we have good spray tans, I know we do.
Everything since has just been an inability to admit he was in over his head, plus trying to get out of trouble for all the crimes he did. He (and Clinton) just underestimated how susceptible the US was to a demagogue. If you look at his face after the win was announced on election night, and after the first meeting with Obama for the transition, I think it shows plainly on his face.
they're doing a fine job of screwing the world for their own gain, and/or working as sock puppets of foreign governments.
at no point was there ever a true belief, except for the "idjit" demographic, that trump would ever do anything meaningful in a governance sense.
With these betting markets, do you think it's critical that they exist, but with bans on insider bets? Because I'm not sure anyone you are moralizing at is taking up the argument that it's critical that they exist.
No, I don’t think they should exist at all.
You cannot have an open-ended prediction market with the same protections. It's just impossible from a practical standpoint, much less theoretical one.
I don't think these should be legal since it's just enabling more random gambling, fraud, etc. or even worse for no clear societal gain. But if they do exist, the only purpose for them is to lure out insider information into the open. Pretending they are just folks gambling on 'random' outcomes like a fair coin flip is naive at best.
If there was, I think you'd see quite a few public figures on the list.
And I think it _would_ cause folks to die. Which is why it's banned or regulated. (I'm actually not sure what the legal status is, just that Polymarket and US prediction markets disallow it.)