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Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling

• DeathArrow 8mo ago
  I wonder if you can bet on stock prices on prediction markets.
  • littlecranky67 8mo ago
    Yes, we just call it the "options market".
• uoaei 8mo ago
  The internet is too connected and communication too instantaneous for Polymarket to be anything but a system to be gamed by those with money and influence. Bet appears on Polymarket? You have the ability to direct people and resources to enact the under? Congrats you're rich!
  • weregiraffe 8mo ago
    >You have the ability to direct people and resources to enact the under? Congrats you're rich! If you have the ability, you are already rich.
    • dev1ycan 8mo ago
      Yeah, they historically don't like to keep increasing their wealth, Elon musk going from 350bn to nearly 800bn in like 2 years is definitely not an example of that.
    • _bohm 8mo ago
      Rich people continually attempting to accrue even more money is not exactly an unheard-of phenomenon
    • uoaei 8mo ago
      What happens to rich people when they get more money, do you think they just stop further attempts at acquiring more?
      • goldcd 8mo ago
        Sometimes they go on a ketamine binge shrugs
      • lazide 8mo ago
        Occasionally they make historically bad bets and blow up their fortunes, and it gets eaten up it all the smaller sharks circling behind them. It used to be most billionaires only lasted (as billionaires) for 3-7 years before collapsing. The current stock market insane binge has changed that a bit.
  • zvqcMMV6Zcr 8mo ago
    Rich might be overstatement, but WNBA dildo stir show that people are ok with risking jail time over relatively low amounts of money.
• drob518 8mo ago
  The writer obviously hasn’t done any deep study of prediction markets and why they often provide greater insight than other polling techniques. Are they perfect? No. They predicted Hillary would win in 2016.
  • linhns 8mo ago
    Had they existed then, prediction markets would have picked Hillary to win also
    • drob518 8mo ago
      They did exist and they did predict Hilary.
  • dh2022 8mo ago
    You obviously missed the point of the article. The point is that validating and advertising Polymarket on national news outlets will have ugly consequences.
    • bink 8mo ago
      It's amazing how many people on HN didn't bother to actually read the article.
    • drob518 8mo ago
      I did not miss the point of the article. You obviously missed my point, however.
• AbstractH24 8mo ago
  Why is polymarket any more or less dangerous than NFTs or naked option trading? Fool and his money are quickly separated…
  • nemomarx 8mo ago
    Marketed to a broader audience with more users, like sports betting? And to be fair options trading used to be pretty limited in users too, until apps like robinhood tried to democratize it.
    • shimman 8mo ago
      Replace the word "democratize" with "unleash" and that's a far more accurate descriptor. It's not democratic if you can't destroy it, and believe me a majority of people want to destroy it.
  • chrononaut 8mo ago
    Naked option trading is certainly the worst of the three from a financial risk perspective for the beginner. Although polymarket would do the best at "attraction" towards the average uninformed consumer because the bets and how to place them are far more understandable than the various option trading strategies.
  • bmitc 8mo ago
    It bother lowers the threshold and increases the breadth of things that can be bet in. It's a gambling addiction nightmare.
    • MengerSponge 8mo ago
      Exactly! Friction matters a lot.
  • dh2022 8mo ago
    The article’s point was not that Polymarket is the problem-the point is validating and advertising Polymarket on national news outlets will have ugly consequences.
• deleted 8mo ago
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• networkadmin 8mo ago
  The whole nation is eaten up by gambling and other vices at this time. It's not the first time such a thing has happened in a nation's history. Generally it occurs just after widespread monetary debasement and just before major, world shaking disasters. (You Are Here.) Reference: Andrew Dickson White (first president of Cornell) "Fiat Money Inflation In France", published 1896: "The government now began, and continued by spasms to grind out still more paper; commerce was at first stimulated by the difference in exchange; but this cause soon ceased to operate, and commerce, having been stimulated unhealthfully, wasted away. Manufactures at first received a great impulse; but, ere long, this overproduction and overstimulus proved as fatal to them as to commerce. From time to time there was a revival of hope caused by an apparent revival of business; but this revival of business was at last seen to be caused more and more by the desire of far-seeing and cunning men of affairs to exchange paper money for objects of permanent value. As to the people at large, the classes living on fixed incomes and small salaries felt the pressure first, as soon as the purchasing power of their fixed incomes was reduced. Soon the great class living on wages felt it even more sadly. Prices of the necessities of life increased: merchants were obliged to increase them, not only to cover depreciation of their merchandise, but also to cover their risk of loss from fluctuation; and, while the prices of products thus rose, wages, which had at first gone up under the general stimulus, lagged behind. Under the universal doubt and discouragement, commerce and manufactures were checked or destroyed. As a consequence the demand for labor was diminished; laboring men were thrown out of employment, and, under the operation of the simplest law of supply and demand, the price of labor--the daily wages of the laboring class--went down until, at a time when prices of food, clothing and various articles of consumption were enormous, wages were nearly as low as at the time preceding the first issue of irredeemable currency."
  • networkadmin 8mo ago
    "The mercantile classes at first thought themselves exempt from the general misfortune. They were delighted at the apparent advance in the value of the goods upon their shelves. But they soon found that, as they increased prices to cover the inflation of currency and the risk from fluctuation and uncertainty, purchases became less in amount and payments less sure; a feeling of insecurity spread throughout the country; enterprise was deadened and stagnation followed. New issues of paper were then clamored for as more drams are demanded by a drunkard. New issues only increased the evil; capitalists were all the more reluctant to embark their money on such a sea of doubt. Workmen of all sorts were more and more thrown out of employment. Issue after issue of currency came; but no relief resulted save a momentary stimulus, which aggravated the disease. The most ingenious evasions of natural laws in finance which the most subtle theorists could contrive were tried--all in vain; the most brilliant substitutes for those laws were tried; "self-regulating" schemes, "interconverting" schemes--all equally vain. All thoughtful men had lost confidence. All men were waiting; stagnation became worse and worse. At last came the collapse and then a return, by a fearful shock, to a state of things which presented something like certainty of remuneration to capital and labor. Then, and not till then, came the beginning of a new era of prosperity. Just as dependent on the law of cause and effect was the moral development. Out of the inflation of prices grew a speculating class; and, in the complete uncertainty as to the future, all business became a game of chance, and all business men, gamblers. In city centers came a quick growth of stock-jobbers and speculators; and these set a debasing fashion in business which spread to the remotest parts of the country. Instead of satisfaction with legitimate profits, came a passion for inordinate gains. Then, too, as values became more and more uncertain, there was no longer any motive for care or economy, but every motive for immediate expenditure and present enjoyment. So came upon the nation the obliteration of thrift."
• deleted 8mo ago
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• bluecalm 8mo ago
  Isn't Polymarket very low stakes? For example "Will Trump acquire Greenland before 2027" market (the main one for this issue) has only 14m USD volume. This is like 2 orders of magnitude less money than is bet on El Classico 2 times a year. There are risks connected when prediction markets run wild but Polymarket ain't it. There is also utility. It has high predictive value (it beats polls for elections from a little sample I've looked at) and allows you to make better decisions.
  • toss1 8mo ago
    It beats polls for elections ONLY until someone notices it is being used as the basis of news stories and figures out it will be four orders of magnitude cheaper to manipulate that small market and make the news idiots broadcast that opinions have changed than to actually deploy all the adverts needed to change the opinions. The very low stakes you point out make this even easier to put a thumb on the scales. Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" The point of the article is that as soon as the "news" started reporting on prediction markets or corporatized gambling as if it was a measure of sentiment, it ceased to become a good measurement. That point has long passed.
    • bluecalm 8mo ago
      News already broadcast tons of nonsense. Political commentary is just brain rot. Economic commentary might be just as well generated by one of those Markov chain string generators - it would make as much sense. >>out it will be four orders of magnitude cheaper to manipulate that small market and make the news idiots broadcast that opinions have changed than to actually deploy all the adverts needed to change the opinions. It will then become more expensive. Out of all the manipulation news and journalists do every day I am not sure why "people bet money at 1 to 4 odds that Trump takes Greenland before 2027" is particularly problematic. It's true people bet money on it at those odds. How is that more problematic that news running pro or anti Trump segments or broadcasting some random crystal ball readings to justify stock price fluctuations of the day? You can see how much money is bet on the market as well. It's not like you can spend 5 figures and suddenly shape the narrative.
• keiferski 8mo ago
  I’m increasingly convinced that the single most important concept to understand in the 21st century is Chesterton’s Fence: "Chesterton's fence" is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_... Gambling isn’t a new problem, but apparently we thought it would turn out differently this time, for some vague unclear reason. I think the simplified version of that reason is: no one really believes in anything anymore, except in the value that acquiring money by any means necessary is a good thing.
  • valiant55 8mo ago
    The powers that be have always saught wealth. At some point they gained enough power to start usurping the law that was supposed to keep them in check.
    • mcphage 8mo ago
      We should have made it clearer that monied interests have a choice: be kept in check by the law, or by the guillotine.
      • deleted 8mo ago
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      • valiant55 8mo ago
        I'm too entralled by TikTok to build a guillotine.
        • mcphage 8mo ago
          Is that why the TikTok ban fell through?! …figures.
      • elzbardico 8mo ago
        The problem is, the guillotine solution to regulation only becomes feasible after the monied interest have thoroughly fucked society, to a level that would make living as blue-collar working in Detroit downtown today feel like being a banking executive living in Geneva.
• jonstewart 8mo ago
  Doesn’t seem like slow-walking so much as a mad-rush. I saw a Kalshi ad on tv last night.
• koolba 8mo ago
  > A billionaire congressional candidate can’t just send a check to Quinnipiac University and suddenly find himself as the polling front-runner, but he can place enormous Polymarket bets on himself that move the odds in his favor. Maybe not with a specific pollster depending on their scruples, but you can definitely pay to be part of the poll. And that’s the first step to getting any stats whatsoever.
  • shimman 8mo ago
    It doesn't really work, up until a few weeks before the NYC mayoral election. Polymarket had Andrew Cuomo winning by double digits. It's a trash platform.
    • pgodzin 8mo ago
      There are much better ways to tell if a prediction market is well calibrated than a single anecdote. And if it works so poorly, there's a lot of easy money to be made.
      • shimman 8mo ago
        But this isn't a prediction market... those are highly regulated. This is just making money off of insider info. So yeah, not only does it work poorly it's entire reason for existing is to help people get richer while fucking over others.
• vlark 8mo ago
  Stop calling them "prediction markets" and start calling them what they really are: corporatized bookies.
  • mathgeek 8mo ago
    They're also heavily, heavily fixed of course. There's nothing stopping anonymous folks from betting on things they control/influence.
    • woah 8mo ago
      That's the point. To surface non-public information as a price signal.
      • mathgeek 8mo ago
        Disagree here. That's the stated goal and the point for some folks, but the subset I explained above also exists and their point is to benefit from a false sense of security.
  • _DeadFred_ 8mo ago
    At least in gambling they don't let the sports referees and players gamble. This is just another racket for those in power to continue making the world worse for just a little bit more gain for themselves. Edit: Throttled like always, you guys hate me (and reality/law in this instance) https://www.nbcnews.com/sports/sports-gambling/20-charged-basketball-game-fixing-scandal-rcna254197 https://www.nbcnews.com/sports/sports-gambling/20-charged-ba...
    • bluecalm 8mo ago
      >>At least in gambling they don't let the sports referees and players gamble. Oh c'mon now. This is completely impossible to police. Players and referees are not under constant supervision. They have families, friends, partners. Some of them got caught but you can be certain most weren't because it's just very difficult to catch. There are always multiple people who know about key players' injuries, illness, other factors. The game is negative sum and additionally insiders take a a chunk for themselves. It's worse then roulette which at least doesn't pretend to be fair.
• stickfigure 8mo ago
  The only material objection mentioned in the article is that prediction markets are easy to manipulate. Well, only if they are thinly traded. If they get mentioned a lot more on CNN and CNBC, that is likely to change.
  • zozbot234 8mo ago
    They really aren't. Every attempt at manipulation just turns into easy money for those who predict the right odds.
    • etiam 8mo ago
      That only really holds if reporting on the manipulation bets is not turned into effective propaganda for skewing events towards the manipulation outcome. So the main argument of the article holds IMO. Edited to add: I'd like to rephrase that a bit actually. It doesn't even have to help bring about the particular outcome being bet on. It's enough that it can be used to shift public opinion in some way that's worth the cost to the manipulator.
      • zozbot234 8mo ago
        Sure, but events where that kind of "skew" is effective are going to be quite rare. And even then, the incentive is just for everyone to try and "skew" the event as early as possible, where factors other than monetary cost or reward then become dominant. No different from what usually happens with no prediction market at all. > It's enough that it can be used to shift public opinion in some way that's worth the cost to the manipulator. This has been tried in the real world and is just not very effective. It's just too hard to move the price in ways that will shift public opinion when literally anyone else has a huge incentive to bet against you.
  • giantg2 8mo ago
    "Well, only if they are thinly traded." Right now, they're all thin traded at their open. As soon as they are created is when you see the volatility that makes them enticing. Once you get volume, there doesn't seem to be as much value to be had.
• cft 8mo ago
  If insiders trade, the market becomes more accurate, which is good for society. Like WikiLeaks. Thus the MSN panic, the legacy establishment wants Polymarket to follow Assange's path.
  • andrepd 8mo ago
    Yep, some WH member trading 400k$ an hour before an attack sure did wonders for "the good of society". So does media showing rates on gambling websites as if they were an oracle and not something that can be gamed for cheaper than a TV ad. For fucks sake...
    • SirMaster 8mo ago
      Sounds like for those paying attention it could give an early heads up of what's about to happen.
  • toss1 8mo ago
    The problem discussed in the article was NOT insiders trading on secret information — it is the nearly opposite problem of manipulators trading and skewing the odds. Insider trading seeks to trade with secret information and minimally obvious trades to avoid moving the markets until their position is locked in, in order to profit when the previously secret information becomes public and the market finally moves to a different price level. Manipulators seek to move the market to create a false narrative that market-moving info exists when actual market-moving does NOT exist; the expectation is that people will see the price change and ASSUME there is information behind it, when there is actually just a manipulator willing to lose money to create that impression. In a small market, such manipulation can be more cost-effective (make more of an impression for the same cost) vs buying advertisements.
    • skippyboxedhero 8mo ago
      I am guessing you must have made huge amounts of money from this irrational behaviour then. Congrats.
  • 8mo ago
• Buttons840 8mo ago
  This is a problem, a net negative and a sign of a weakening society. But, one silver lining, maybe, is gamblers are a little less likely to fall for fake news. Maybe? It seems hard to be a climate change denier when you're about to gamble on it. Or maybe people will find a way to gamble while still living in completely different reality bubbles. Probably. If you thought your neighbor was politically extreme last election, just wait until next election when he also has $100,000 on the line...
  • sowbug 8mo ago
    But, one silver lining, maybe, is gamblers are a little less likely to fall for fake news. Maybe? Only in a truth-agnostic sense. Good gamblers in player-banked games (poker; rock, scissors, paper) vs house-banked games (slots) are good at figuring out what the other guy is representing. The actual truth is much less significant.
    • mminer237 8mo ago
      Well, assuming they're paid out truthfully, it does incentivize learning the actual truth. Unless you're saying that the oracles are falling for fake news? Or you're saying people are intentionally buying the wrong option, getting other people to believe it, and then selling before it becomes worthless? That seems harder than just buying the right option unless you already have a ton of influence to burn.
      • sowbug 8mo ago
        Closer to the second than the first, but traders probably have less agency than the way you're putting it. They benefit from misdirection, but they don't need to be the ones doing the misdirection. Their special skill is recognizing the effect of misdirection (or simply how events unfold) sooner and more accurately than others.
  • andrepd 8mo ago
    > But, one silver lining, maybe, is gamblers are a little less likely to fall for fake news. Maybe? 5 minutes browsing polymarket comments will dispel that notion really fast.
• kledru 8mo ago
  chaos-for-profit incentive is what terrifies me
• nullc 8mo ago
  Why is polymarket worse than cell phone games? At least polymarket essentially self identifies as gambling and isn't specifically marketed to children.
  • Tadpole9181 8mo ago
    Cell phone games are knowingly losing money for fun. Polymarket is a sign of a failing, rapidly deregulatory economy. And that's before we get into discussing the social damage to country that already sees more school shootings than weeks in a year (actually, 4x more), with rising political and civil tensions including assassinated politicians, adding potential "lose your house" to random events. As if it'll help calm things down and let us all keep a level head. Or the implications of news companies reporting on these odds as if they reflect actual statistical likelihood, and how that gives the ultra wealthy yet another lever to control the view of reality the common people have.
• giantg2 8mo ago
  What is the legality for US residents? Right now Polymarket is subject to a federal agreement that they don't let US people participate. Apparently this is just a checkbox for the user to attest to. They don't even do IP geolocation, never mind payment checks. So it's currently illegal for them to run this in the US. But is it illegal for users to participate?
  • shimman 8mo ago
    It's okay, when the next administration enforces the laws we'll see all the VC ghouls attack and decry the government for having the audacity to protect citizens from abuse.
    • giantg2 8mo ago
      Polymarket has been around for a while. I thought the agreement happened under the Biden admin, but I could be wrong.
      • shimman 8mo ago
        Prediction markets are highly regulated, it's just not being enforced... This is just a way to launder money to those with insider info to profit from. Also who the fuck cares if it happened under Biden? Is that some sort of gotcha you conjured up? Democratic members hate the democratic party more than Trump, no one cares about Biden or what he did but they sure do care what he failed to do.
        • giantg2 8mo ago
          "Also who the fuck cares if it happened under Biden?" Your comment said the next administration will enforce it. It seems that administrations from either party have not.
  • 0x3f 8mo ago
    They do check geolocation on order submit. You can read the site from anywhere, though.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 8mo ago
  Text-only, no Javascript: https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1Upfdb https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1Upfdb
• abetusk 8mo ago
  "Why prediction markets aren't popular" [0] gives some compelling arguments (to me) about why prediction markets haven't caught on and probably never will. As I understand it, the main argument is that for prediction markets that aim to incentivize the thing they're predicting, better to invest in the thing directly. Otherwise, "prediction markets" are successful precisely when they can't influence the outcome, like sports betting. I remember finding the election betting interesting last presidential election, but I also remember that it was spiked when Musk invested to change the odds. [0] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-prediction-markets-arent-popular/ https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-prediction-markets-aren...
  • strken 8mo ago
    Musk, being the world's richest person, is something of an outlier. He can afford to give free money to the market for longer than anyone else, and the size of the market might not be big enough to handle the imbalance. There's a level of irrational spending which only institutional investors can counterbalance, and they might not have the risk appetite to get into a single market on a relatively less regulated platform that could rug pull them.
    • contravariant 8mo ago
      It's somewhat interesting how the wisdom of the crowd and economic theory for rational actors are usually combined as an argument for free markets. While the reverse is not used as an argument against unchecked wealth.
      • lovich 8mo ago
        I’ve used it. There’s no functional difference in how markets work when 99% of wealth is owned by a handful of kings vs 99% of wealth being owned by a handful of oligarchs.
        • Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
          I don't really think so. You just swapped the term king to Oligarchs. In fact the Oligarchs are even worse because people think that they have freedom when they might not in fact have such freedom in the first place.
• d--b 8mo ago
  since financial speculation exists, the news has been about gambling. Regular people just didn’t know it cause the ticket to entry was to expensive.
• smeej 8mo ago
  > The irony of prediction markets is that they are supposed to be a more trustworthy way of gleaning the future than internet clickbait and half-baked punditry, but they risk shredding whatever shared trust we still have left. The suspiciously well-timed bets that one Polymarket user placed right before the capture of Nicolás Maduro may have been just a stroke of phenomenal luck that netted a roughly $400,000 payout. Or maybe someone with inside information was looking for easy money. I'm trying to understand what the criticism is here, because the example seems to support the point that these are meant to be a way of learning the future, not oppose it. I thought the whole point was that yes, people with inside knowledge will bet large sums of money on things they expect to happen, and that's what makes the prediction useful. The market is meant to incentivize people who know things to act on them in a way that makes them known. If I knew someone wanted me dead, of course I would want a prediction market on it, and if the odds suddenly shifted dramatically in favor of my death, I would use that as a trigger for whatever defense strategies I had in place. Someone has really good reason to bet a lot of money on the prospect that I'm about to die. It's probably someone who knows of an active plot in motion to try to kill me! The sooner I can find out about that, the better. I would much rather give them an incentive to make that known somewhat earlier than wait. I feel like there must be some big piece of this puzzle that I'm missing that makes it so these cannot operate the way I imagine them, but I haven't heard anyone explaining what it is. Someone fill me in on what I'm missing here?
  • gpm 8mo ago
    If the prediction market is for a non-trivial amount, it's likely someone is going to kill you in exchange for the money the prediction market offered them. The prediction market isn't acting as a prophet here, it's acting as a plausibly deniable murder for hire service and you are its victim. The people "betting against" you dying just paid to have you killed.
    • echoangle 8mo ago
      Yes, OOP might have chosen a suboptimal example here. But for general newsworthy events, people aren’t going to be in positions to manually make them happen. And no person in a position to start a war would do it to affect a Polymarket bet.
• mcintyre1994 8mo ago
  I don’t really understand the argument for prediction markets if you don’t have inside information. The reason they beat other forms of news is because insiders are incentivised to bet, that makes some sense. But surely an investor without insider knowledge will always make less money on a market where they’re trading against insiders than one where they’re not.
  • cortesoft 8mo ago
    The argument is not that you should bet on prediction markets, the argument is that you should use the odds from the market to make decisions about the future.
    • mcintyre1994 8mo ago
      But they don’t work without someone making the argument that some non-insiders should bet on them right? Because the insiders aren’t going to bother moving the market for us if there’s nobody to take money off.
      • ChadNauseam 8mo ago
        The traditional way to square that circle is to say that someone who's interested in the answer should subsidize the market. Essentially they provide liquidity to the market which essentially pays people with accurate information to bet. Some work has been done to figure our effective ways of doing that. In practice, it seems like gamblers often provide enough liquidity that this is not needed
  • dghlsakjg 8mo ago
    You forget that people are not necessarily doing this for rational reasons. Some people do it for for entertainment, some people are gambling addicts, some people think they have a strong grasp or inside knowledge when they don't. It is, at root, a casino. Apply your lens to any casino game, and it shouldn't exist (some very narrow exceptions apply in the casino).
• morshu9001 8mo ago
  Part of me wishes there were prediction markets for flight delays. The ETAs are wildly inaccurate, like last time the counter staff suggested I not reschedule cause our plane was arriving in 15min, when I could see on a slightly hard to find site that the plane was still grounded 500mi away. Part of me is careful what I wish for, starting with passengers bothering staff even more.
  • kshacker 8mo ago
    Isn't travel insurance one form of this?
    • morshu9001 8mo ago
      Do you mean the kind that pays for cancellations? The scenario I'm sometimes in is the flight is delayed, I can switch for free anyway, but I don't want to have to wait a whole day or something. So it becomes a game of, stick with current flight or switch, and which one do I switch to.
  • kpierce 8mo ago
    Flightly or flightradar24 listens to air traffic control and updates the app before any announcements are made. Huge help for delays or gate changes.
    • morshu9001 8mo ago
      I'll try that one. Last time was frantic and tried like 5 bad sites before finding at least where the plane was. But maybe the passengers or crew on that plane had a better idea of why they were delayed, which I'm not sure any site would show. I've been on the other end too, knowing my plane isn't taking off due to a jammed door and texting updates to someone who was supposed to pick me up on the other end.
• akomtu 8mo ago
  "Accounts payable: 11111. In 1 hour. John Wick. Excommunicado." The essence of prediction markets.
• 827a 8mo ago
  Prediction markets have an alluring quality that they become a pulse-check on what humanity believes is going to happen, putting your money where your mouth is, and when they work like this they work pretty well and are an interesting instrument. Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, has even gone so far as to say that Insider Trading is a necessary source of data for prediction markets, if the goal of prediction markets is to be an accurate prediction of the future [1]. However, it seems increasingly clear that even this function of prediction markets doesn't behave how the silicon valley elite seem to think it does. In multiple markets throughout 2025, we saw insiders "snipe" correct predictions at the last minute, while odds were still against the correct outcome, moments before some finalizing event or news became public. In theory, insiders give correct signal. But in practice, their volume is often too low to meaningfully move the market in the correct direction, and the timing of their order flow can be too late for that signal to actually be useful as a tool for predicting the future. Its also critical to note that insider trading laws don't just exist to protect investors. They exist to protect the organizations the insiders belong to. The order flow on both prediction markets and the stock market is public information. Its one thing to short the company you work at because you know they're going to announce bad earnings. Its another thing entirely to take out a million-dollar position on "US Strikes Venezuela before Jan 3: Yes" on January 2nd. Sophisticated geopolitical opponents are monitoring these order flow feeds, and it begins to become a genuine matter of national security. Overall, I am fine with prediction markets. I think they're an improvement over sports betting in the sense that they better-align incentives between the participants and the market-maker. In typical sports betting, the casinos running them set the odds, and participants take out positions against the casino; which means the casinos are incentivized against allowing anyone to actually make money on their platforms. This has surfaced many times in "professional sports betters" getting blacklisted. In comparison, PMs are a contract between participants, and the market-maker only takes a fee on each transaction (Robinhood's is 2.5%; quite high), which means the market-maker is only incentivized to increase PM order book volume and provide interesting markets. There's more opportunity for actual skill and dedication to shine through. But, KYC is critical. [1] https://x.com/itslirrato/status/2008184149450891724 https://x.com/itslirrato/status/2008184149450891724
• uyzstvqs 8mo ago
  Prediction markets are not considered gambling for the same reason that stock markets aren't. There's no fixed odds or random chance. A skilled analyst can make consistent returns. Unlike stock markets, prediction markets also provide valuable data on important world events, such as elections. It's wisdom of the crowd with financial incentive.
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  • jart 8mo ago
    Equities markets allow society to collective allocate labor resources and they incentivize the public discovery of business intelligence. Prediction markets reward the public discovery of gossip. Any kind of trading can be gambling depending on how you do it. But with equities the odds are usually almost guaranteed to be in your favor if you long them and wait. I can't remember ever seeing a prediction market where I felt I could have a thesis on its outcome, unless I was spying on people. So I really don't see how they could be anything but gambling for most people.
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  • nkzd 8mo ago
    > A skilled analyst can make consistent returns. So can a skilled coach make consistent returns in his sport. But sportsbetting is considered gambling.
  • TrackerFF 8mo ago
    Depends on the scope. If you take stock movement, and zoom in close enough, the fluctuations can be considered random. And suddenly you have people putting their money on things like binary options. Surely, in the prediction market, it is possible to set up prediction bets which are practically impossible to predict. And with binary outcome, your odds will be 50/50.
  • mminer237 8mo ago
• gizzlon 8mo ago
  Polymarked has a 3% chance of Jesus returning _this year_ : https://polymarket.com/event/will-jesus-christ-return-before-2027 https://polymarket.com/event/will-jesus-christ-return-before... Good example to show when people tout how great these are at predicting.
  • StrayTint 8mo ago
    The Jesus market is really a bet on interest rates. You should bet that Jesus will return if interest rates are >3% because "No" holders will sell to put their money in the bank instead.
    • gizzlon 8mo ago
      You are probably right, but I believe it's a failure of prediction whatever the reason is.
      • Hammershaft 8mo ago
        It is, but it's a well known systemic error that has to do with the rate of return from certain accuracy improving predictions falling below the rate of return of anything else. You can learn a lot more about whether these markets are accurate at this great resource: https://calibration.city/introduction https://calibration.city/introduction
• rifty 8mo ago
  In theory I like the idea of prediction markets but how they are done right now makes a bunch of markets too insecure to put much stock into or informationally unvaluable to inform other decisions There is little incentive for someone with significant information, reason, or intuition to reveal it early leaving the market dumb for most of its existence or also open for someone influencing the outcome late. They also aren't currently that reliable for gauging the wisdom of the crowds for situations where trust in the market effects its outcome. It's easy due to the scale of them for someone to just burn money to skew the perception of it for rhetorical and influential benefits. I feel like there is no getting off this train though because news media companies are still desperate for revenue. Gambling around news will either increase advertising revenue for them, or if they do real information uncovering journalism, drive subscriptions because there's now incentive for getting news early on more than just financial news.
  • Kinrany 8mo ago
    > There is little incentive for someone with significant information, reason, or intuition to reveal it early Yes but only if they know no one else has the same information and enough money to move the market
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• vagab0nd 8mo ago
  Is insider betting illegal? I know it's illegal in the sports context, but not necessarily in other areas. Even for insider trading, it's illegal not because it's unfair, but because the insider is considered to be stealing information from shareholders. For example, it's not illegal for a company to buy back stocks while holding insider information. Not legal advice of course.
• thm 8mo ago
  https://archive.is/gFUry https://archive.is/gFUry
• TrackerFF 8mo ago
  The gamblification of the country will go down as one of the darker chapters of USA.
  • joe_mamba 8mo ago
    Gamblification is everywhere, not just in US. Eastern Europe is cooked in this regard. LATAM the same probably.
    • teaearlgraycold 8mo ago
      I hear bad things about the state of Australia’s gambling industry
      • popopo73 8mo ago
        Yep. Can't get a drink in NSW without seeing people wasting their pay check on the pokies.
  • sieabahlpark 8mo ago
    [dead]
  • nnevatie 8mo ago
    The US will be the last casino he'll bankcrupt.
  • hippo22 8mo ago
    The gamblification of everything is just another stepping stone on the path to the financialization of everything. Many of our best and brightest dedicate their lives to “financial innovation”. It’s sad.
    • loeg 8mo ago
      Gamblification is very, very different from financialization.
• misja111 8mo ago
  I read the article but failed to grasp what exactly the disaster is that America would be walking into. Is the reliability of Polymarket predictions overhyped? Sure. Is there manipulation of Polymarket odds by some people? Most likely there is. But to say that this is a disaster that America is walking into is nothing else but clickbait.
  • elar_verole 8mo ago
    I think you are underappreciating how "manipulation of poly market odds" can be destructive when you are betting on geopolitics. Here this means that every decision is now a conflict of interest, and that doing the unpredictable (politically, economically etc) has a financial incentive for potential insiders. Sounds pretty dangerous to me.
    • bawolff 8mo ago
      On the other hand we have had stock markets forever. Sure you couldn't directly bet on e.g. if trump would invade iran, but you could indirectly bet on it by betting on things like the price of oil. I dont think this is a new threat.
      • newdee 8mo ago
        Comparing crusty old stock markets to the mass appeal of shiny, low-barrier-to-entry Polymarket is somewhat naive.
        • terminalshort 8mo ago
          Polymarket is way higher barrier to entry than the stock market. For starters you need to sent ETH over the Polygon network. Stock market is in dollars.
          • mminer237 8mo ago
            I don't think Polymarket even allows US people yet, but Kalshi you can fund with a credit card even.
• cjs_ac 8mo ago
  > These markets are also manipulable. In 2012, one bettor on the now-defunct prediction market Intrade placed a series of huge wagers on Mitt Romney in the two weeks preceding the election, generating a betting line indicative of a tight race. The bettor did not seem motivated by financial gain, according to two researchers who examined the trades. “More plausibly, this trader could have been attempting to manipulate beliefs about the odds of victory in an attempt to boost fundraising, campaign morale, and turnout,” they wrote. The trader lost at least $4 million but might have shaped media attention of the race for less than the price of a prime-time ad, they concluded. Reminiscent of PG's essay about the submarine[0]: it's another way of attaching credibility to a 'news' item you're pushing. [0] https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
  • frenzcan 8mo ago
    >As this new kind of writing draws readers away from traditional media, we should be prepared for whatever PR mutates into to compensate. When I think how hard PR firms work to score press hits in the traditional media, I can't imagine they'll work any less hard to feed stories to bloggers, if they can figure out how. I think it's safe to say they figured it out.
  • terminalshort 8mo ago
    This is just implausible. Nobody with a brain is going to throw away 4 million on the speculative hope that a prediction market price is going to magically manipulate media coverage on the election.
    • Rover222 8mo ago
      4 million is absolutely nothing for vested interests trying to steer a US presidential election.
    • bradleyankrom 8mo ago
      That's a lot of money for an individual, but if the (dark) money originates from a donor or PAC, it's just another campaign expense.
• thecupisblue 8mo ago
  Not just America, everything is. With stock market, at least we can somehow stop the bad actors, insider traders, corporate manipulation, pumps and dumps - with prediction markets, there is no way. With prediction markets? Next to impossible. The markets being tied to crypto makes it even worse - things get harder to track, jurisdictions get blurry, proving becomes a ping pong between bureaucracy. And proving something becomes moreso a question of free will - if I decided to do X and then someone bets millon dollars on me doing X when odds are low, how do you prove I haven't decided to do X before? Will you prevent me from exercising my free will because of suspect insider trading? What if I am a president/senator? Years ago, I was a kid who discovered online betting - often it was the only time I could place bets on MMA events, especially because it wasn't as popular as it is now. Even then, the gambling sites had "Other" options where you could bet on presidents, popes, landing on mars etc. The new markets aren't that much different, but are just using a nicer way to talk about it. It isn't gambling, it's prediction. You aren't a gambler, you're a "hyperinformed high iq individual predicting the geopolitical moves". Just like crypto gave people the identity crutch of a "tech investor", this gives them the identity crutch of a "geopolitical strategist". But in the end, it is still just gambling - wrapped in a nice ego stroking suit, but gambling none the less.
  • entropyneur 8mo ago
    Stock market integrity is important because of their function in the economy. Scamming of gambling addicts is tragic but not detrimental to society.
    • bradhe 8mo ago
      Except when "gambling adicts" end up as a cover for money laundering and funneling cash to people to buy influence.
      • butlike 8mo ago
        People do that with drugs too. I'm not pro gambling, but what's your point?
    • 8mo ago
• NedF 8mo ago
  [dead]
• ndsipa_pomu 8mo ago
  Having a "betting" market whereby someone is in complete control of the outcome is just asking for it to be gamed. Betting should be on unpredictable events.
• Traster 8mo ago
  I'm kind of surprised the article doesn't spell out why these are "prediction markets". They're prediction markets because it used to be that what they were doing was illegal. It was illegal to just set up a gambling website in the US and so these "prediction markets" were the same thing as crypto, masking what was really happening behind some tech speak. In the same way that in the crypto market you regularly get behaviour that would get you locked up if it were to occur on the CME, what happens on these prediction markets would be illegal if you were just a betting company. The reason they're getting big now though, is because we know none of those regulations are going to be enforced. So through regulartory arbitrage, these gambling sites are just going to eat the entire regulated industry until nothing is left. It used to be Harry Enten's former boss would joke about Scottish teens, when talking about betting markets because frankly, the betting markets didn't seem predictive and were so niche, it seemed like the people on them were generally just betting with no idea what they were betting on. But today, let's face it, soon we're going to see a contract on whether the S&P goes up or down tomorrow, and when you have that contract, gamblers are going to be betting on it instead of going to Robinhood and buying some Puts. It's a real test to see if what all those people who talk about the halo effect of trusted well regulated markets are actually correct. The conventional wisdom is that most of the users of these sites are going to get their faces ripped off, and the companies will get very rich doing that.
  • TZubiri 8mo ago
    The top markets: Polymarkets and Kalshi are regulated and in US jurisdiction, so your whole analysis is wrong.
    • b40d-48b2-979e 8mo ago
      Regulation without enforcement is no regulation at all.
• botacode 8mo ago
  I am broadly in favor of the existence of prediction markets. They are powerful tools for forecasting complex events that can help enrich and empower folks from across a range of backgrounds. The article has two core points, but fails to go deep enough in addressing either. This leads to a _somewhat_ incorrect scapegoating of prediction markets rather than acknowledging head on some more core issues with the state of American journalism. Bullet (1) addresses this core issue while bullet (2) tries to suggest some ways in which these prediction markets can better harnessed to serve the interests of journalists and readers/viewers. IMO the first point is far more important than the second to understand the broader challenges. 1. The centralization and roll-up of American media has led to a dangerous monoculture where truth and accuracy risk being compromised by pressure from big business as well as politicians. This is by design. It is important for folks to recognize that these are systematic efforts to denigrate and marginalize critical/skeptical voices by individuals with tremendous amounts of wealth and power. A prime non-journalism example of this is the persecution and harassment of short sellers (like Andrew Left) in public markets. 2. Prediction markets are not being described / addressed with sufficient uncertainty. The article touches on this, but fails to go so far as to suggest a fix. Prediction markets should, as the editors/implementers at orgs in the article suggest they do, serve as another data point rather than the whole story. They should be addressed with the skepticism applied to any source (a lot of "journalists" don't even do this anymore though) with the source, values and market depth questioned. Editorial standards need to be improved to accommodate this (don't report on very thin markets, acknowledge high amounts of uncertainty, signs of manipulation, and provide a bit of market structure analysis education to readers. All of this is more feasible than ever with good analysis tooling that can be re-appropriated from what professional market analysts (and gamblers) use to assess their odds. If journalists want to add market information to their reporting then great, just do it responsibly instead of yeeting some number from strangers on the internet. -- Fight back by voting with your dollars and speak up in favor of the truth. Boycott garbage sources and platforms that are trying to one-shot your friends/parents and support strong investigative and local journalism with your money. Talk to your friends and family and encourage them to do the same. Voting with your dollars and presence is one of the most powerful tools you have in our heavily market based society.
  • fnands 8mo ago
• nusl 8mo ago
  I've seen a lot of weird stuff out of this. People now get angry about things they didn't get angry about before, or get angry with people/players where that didn't exist before. If you're just someone playing a game of Chess, and someone decides to bet on you via some platform, and then you lose, you now face the fury of random strangers where none existed before. This applies to all sorts of things. I've seen live streamers get bad treatment because people bet on some outcome on their streams, like innocent Track of the Day races in Trackmania; not even a commercial event. This sort of thing will suck the fun out of literally everything, and then replace that fun with stress/anxiety/anger/frustration when outcomes aren't met, and when they are met, dangerous monetary/emotional/brain-chemical feedback. Even disregarding the dangers of gaming the system with insider trading or other fraud, the way that everything is increasingly having a monetary value attached to it is destroying that thing just being itself. I really, really hate how money corrupts literally everything. In part I think the current financial fuck-ups causing living expenses to be unsustainable leads many to find other ways to make some money, but people have always done this even when times were better. So I guess it's somehow human nature combined with greed and opportunity. Other things like Pokemon cards are also increasingly about money and not at all about Pokemon itself anymore. People buy packs of cards, look for the high-value ones, then throw the rest out. It's fucked. I don't really know where this is going but the Cyberpunk 2077 feels like a good predictor. Literal corpo hellscape, and much of it is self-induced by grubbing for the next buck at every innocent opportunity. Similar to the VC/investment landscape. Take a good product/company, add some VC/investment, and now the incentives are aimed at satisfying shareholders over providing value to customers.
• Yemoshino 8mo ago
  Its just gambling, for the stupid to loose there money, for the rich to have a little bit of fun, for the smart ones to take it from others while having some way of moral excuse to justify it. The stock market at least gives you ownership/partial of a real thing. The depressing thing is, when you see all these cliches in real: Go to some casino and you will see the guy having a coke nail talking gambling garbage like 'were is the bank teller? My luck is coming back' :(
• thelastgallon 8mo ago
  > s one viral post on X recently put it, “Got a buddy who is praying for world war 3 so he can win $390 on Polymarket.” This is how most people are these days! Or probably thats how human nature is!
  • louthy 8mo ago
    It’s “these days”, because we’ve exited the period where the last world war was in living memory. Nobody who lived through a world war would be so crass. Unfortunately, that also means we’re likely due another one any time now.
    • RGamma 8mo ago
      Silver lining: We will answer Einstein's question about what weapons will fight WW3 in detail. /s
      • louthy 8mo ago
        Every mushroom cloud has a silver lining?
        • RGamma 8mo ago
          I meant there's autonomous drones and space warfare now, and Einstein didn't know about those. It's a really terrible silver lining, I know.
• gyanchawdhary 8mo ago
  Some of the comments here read like fear of the “wisdom of crowds” itself .. i mean yes, prediction markets can be manipulated .. but every information system can ...
• tantalor 8mo ago
  > MoviePass announced that it will begin testing a betting platform. Huh. That's interesting. Given futures markets on box office receipts are illegal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act
  • lordgrenville 8mo ago
    Matt Levine discussed this a couple of weeks back: "It’s probably fine, though; you can bet on Netflix streaming numbers or Rotten Tomatoes scores. It is fun to think that everything is gambling except onions and movies, but it’s probably not true."
    • tantalor 8mo ago
      Nice, found that article: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-01-08/moviepass-is-back-with-betting https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-01-08/mov...
• topspin 8mo ago
  Is this better or worse than a world in which "news" becomes about "tweets?"
• arter45 8mo ago
  Game fixing is a known crime in many jurisdictions. If you are a football/baseball/soccer player and you bet your team will lose, you have an obvious way to drastically increase your odds (especially if you are a top player) - playing bad. Other people are completely unaware of this deal. Having fire insurance and burning your car is in most jurisdictions illegal. Yes, you should be paid if your car is burned, but if you do it intentionally, you are obviously increasing the chances of getting paid, unless of course the insurance company finds out you did it. And so on. I don't see why these situations would be illegal and, say, betting against the survival of a regime when you're actually working against it, would be legal. Things are even harder if you coordinate multiple people. For example, let's say 100 people bet that there will be a riot in town X by the end of the year. X is normally a quiet town so most people bet against. These 100 people bet this will happen 10 minutes before actually starting a riot themselves. Yes, someone could observe last minute trends and might predict reality, but last minute or huge bets are not necessarily true - someone could bet on random things for a variety of reasons. So it's not even useful as a way to get insights into the reality.
  • TZubiri 8mo ago
    In the context of the events talked about the article and events covered by these markets, sports are irrelevant, not a concern, they influence 0 on how these markets should be regulated. Sports might be fixed? People might gamble with sports? I don't give a shit man, these markets bet on democratic elections and war, the concerns are whether military action is effected for money or leaked for money, everything else is an infitesimal rounding error.
    • arter45 8mo ago
      I agree. What I'm saying is that, especially because way less critical applications of this "bet and act to win the bet" rule (sport, insurance,...) are notoriously illegal, I don't see why worse use cases (bet on a military action and lead it) should be ok.
      • TZubiri 8mo ago
• TZubiri 8mo ago
  Didn't read past the paywall, but if your take on this is not "Whoah, Greenland might actually be bought by the US" and is instead "wow gambling is bad" I'm at awe. There's potential problems that might come from the benefits of prediction markets, like insiders getting incentivized to change the outcome or leak info. But gambling is an old problem which emerges in many scenarios, casinos, card games, sports betting, financial markets, crypto. This take is like a new hooters opening up on the moon and people complaining that there's alcohol addiction, food addiction, sexism, wage exploitation... yeah I know man, but it's on the moon!
• JKCalhoun 8mo ago
  "…time, there was a 36 percent chance that the president would annex Greenland. “Whoa, way up there!” Enten yells, slapping his hands together. “My goodness gracious!” The ticker at the bottom of the screen speeds through other odds: Will Gavin Newsom win the next presidential election…" Like reading some kind of Twilight Zone episode script [1] starring William Shatner… [1] https://youtu.be/405IKLIMvJo https://youtu.be/405IKLIMvJo
• maaaaattttt 8mo ago
  Wouldn't these markets be the perfect "crime crowdsourcing" platform? Let's say a bad actor wants XYZ to happen so they organise a bet on XYZ not happening. Then make sure as many different accounts that they control directly or indirectly bet a lot of money in the same way. Now anyone willing to win the prize can decide to make sure it does happen and get the money (at least a high multiplicator of what they bet themselves). Am I missing something? Maybe it's already being used in that way... in that case, it would be quite scary.
  • CodesInChaos 8mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market
  • djeastm 8mo ago
    Could be the plot of one of the Bond movies
• MrOrelliOReilly 8mo ago
  I believe there are valid critiques to be made of prediction markets, particularly on the morality of allowing bets on events with serious/market outcomes (the market could create an incentive for an insider to actualize that bad outcome, hence we should ban the market as it increases the odds of a bad outcome occurring) or on the negative repercussions of gambling addiction. Instead of making either of these valid arguments, the article instead decides to critique the epistemic value of prediction markets. It comes off to me as ill-informed handwringing and tribal signaling, rather than bothering to engage critically with the topic and offering a meaningful critique.
• sureglymop 8mo ago
  How is it not obvious to the players how much more easily corruptible these markets are?
• JohnMakin 8mo ago
  Prediction markets to me are a natural consequence of the post-truth world we live in. For one, it creates insanely imbalanced systems where two sides of a 50/50 market have completely opposite world views that when the market resolves may have access to sources, whether completely fake or misinfo'd, that lead them to believe the market should be settled in their favor. This then puts the prediction market in a place where it is the "arbiter" of reality - in a world where media has become so corrupt and full of noise, finding out what actually happened can be really hard. So then, a market such as this seems inevitable to me because you can then point to markets and say "see, it resolved this way." It does not perfectly align with truth but with market forces would probably lead to more truth than a reality where you just cherrypick whatever biased source that makes you feel good does. And of course, the market itself can become corrupt.
  • elcritch 8mo ago
    If those prediction markets can be used as an alternative way to put resources into "reporting" then it could be valuable. The downfall of journalism has been preceded by the loss in economics from newspapers with M&As causing cultural inbreeding. Stock markets aren't too different in that they help predict which companies will be valuable in the future.
  • alphazard 8mo ago
    Your criticism applies to any epistemic institution. Prediction markets are far more robust than any epistemic institution that humans have come up with so far. Contrary to what you insinuate, we don't have 2 parallel markets for each issue, where each groups bets in their own echo chamber market to feel good about their beliefs. The law of one price holds and we have a single market per event, and it almost always resolves such that >> 50% of people agree with the result retrospectively. The resolution mechanism affects the price. If the market is expected to be biased towards a certain outcome, then that outcome will trade at a higher price. You could easily prove your theory by giving an example of two markets about the same issue, with different arbiters, where the price significantly diverges. Or where the arbiters disagreed after the fact. There will be examples, but how much Volume traded in those markets, compared to the markets where it didn't happen?
• whimsicalism 8mo ago
  I consider myself a progressive because I strongly support taxation and redistribution, but the modern media’s tendency to pearl-clutch over every new technological/market development is pretty alienating to me. Nothing in this article seems at all catastrophic.
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• throwaway5752 8mo ago
  It's stupid gambling, nothing more and nothing less. Sports gambling is at all-time highs, also, because people have money to waste and haven't faced consequences for their poor decision making. When people have less money - and understand, this is imminent, at least in the US - they'll have less ability to stupidly waste the money they have. Prediction markets have gotten attention lately because it's so easy to manipulate them with small amounts of money and get signal amplified in subsequent reporting of the prediction markets "counterintuitive" signals. It is a form of reality shaping. To that extent, they'll continue to exist, with just sock-puppet level activity until they are ignored.
• alphazard 8mo ago
  The headline is part of a widespread trend of the word "gambling" being used as synonymous with "betting". This new use isn't constructive, as it makes it difficult to talk about either precisely. Betting (risking something known for a payout which is uncertain), is ubiquitous in life, and really any game where the participants don't have perfect information. You are betting even if you don't realize it. You can't opt out, it's part of the human condition. Gambling refers to taking on risk for the feeling it brings. The fact that humans can gamble reveals a quirk of human neurology. If we evolved to be more rational, then the phenomenon probably wouldn't exist. We know the feeling is valuable (to gamblers) because they are willing to place negative EV bets to bring about the feeling. Anytime people criticize betting, it looks to me like some kind of utopian scheme, where everyone can have everything without risk.
  • hypeatei 8mo ago
    > Anytime people criticize betting, it looks to me like some kind of utopian scheme This is how I feel, too. Life is all about risk management and a life where you take no risk is one where you have nothing. People make bets all the time: areas they move to, people they ask out, jobs they take, what foods they eat, etc. which is clearly different than going to the casino and putting it all on red.
  • II2II 8mo ago
    > Gambling refers to taking on risk for the feeling it brings. Is there much of a difference when it comes to placing bets on the news? To play off the article's opening example: investing in mineral exploration in Greenland, with an American invasion opening up opportunities for resource extraction, would be taking a risk with an unknown payout due to imperfect information. That is to say, it is taking a risk to build a business. A business where the payout may exceed what is going in. Betting on the news is just an exchange of money, with the intermediary taking a cut. Risks are being taken, but no value is being created. It is all about emotional involvement.
    • alphazard 8mo ago
      Investing in a business is also a bet. The capital you provide is a known quantity, you risk it for an uncertain outcome (the future value of the shares). If your informational edge is just America invading Greenland, let's say you know that for sure. Then you could invest in the business, but you might actually be diluting your edge if you don't know more than the market does about the fundamentals of the business. The business could already have a lot of debt, and unable to get more to finance an expansion into Greenland. It would be less risky in that instance to just bet on the invasion, since that is where your edge is.
• nomilk 8mo ago
  I find predication markets the most accurate form of 'news'. For example, if I want to understand if a claim (e.g. a news headline) has merit, I check the prediction market and easily dismiss/confirm it. Recently it has been useful to understand the situation in Iran. It has also informed my travel decisions to other countries based on geopolitical dangers. Are prediction markets perfect? Of course not. But the difference is in prediction markets someone has something to lose (real money), whereas legacy news values sensationalism over accuracy and sobriety.
  • blurbleblurble 8mo ago
    The realer the money, the more incentive there is to "make it so".
  • volkk 8mo ago
    i don't know much about prediction markets aside from just a very high level view but i bumped into a thread on twitter that talks about how game-able they are as well if you have a decent chunk of money. e.g i throw 100k into "yes" and now bots/people think some insider has real info, and more shares get thrown into "yes" and then last minute the bot undoes the trade and throws a bunch of money into "no" and no resolves and they made a lot more money. again, i don't know enough about prediction markets, but this feels like i can't really trust lower liquidity "predictions" (i guess very similar to penny stocks). One can argue that main news headline predictions will have so much volume that it's impossible to rig it this way, but what's stopping state actors from manipulation?
    • tehjoker 8mo ago
      It really will become about rich people swaying narratives or even making reality comport to their desires when practical. Poor people without insider info will just lose their savings on gambling. A cheaper stock market.
• rohit1729 8mo ago
  we need a black mirror episode on this
• hephaes7us 8mo ago
  Sounds like we might have a new way to fund reporting!
• snowwrestler 8mo ago
  Prediction markets are another way to monetize attention. The typical notion of the “attention economy” is that you build your audience by getting attention—doesn’t much matter how—and then you get paid to advertise things to them. Could be white label retail like supplements or hats, or could be “content partnerships,” or just straight up ads a la “this episode brought to you by Squarespace.” Prediction markets only make real money if there is attention. I can predict when my neighbor will take out their trash cans, but without attention, no one will take the counter or put up funds. Conversely if something does have a lot of attention, then literally anything about it can be predicted, bet, funded, and fulfilled. I can’t think of a way to stop this, any more easily than I can think of a way to stop people from getting paid to shit-post ragebait slop on YouTube, X, TikTok, etc. Attention is the complement of free expression. If we let people say whatever they want, then people can also pay attention to whatever they want.
• clpmsf 8mo ago
  my mental model: guess about the future (no money involved) = "prediction" guess about the future (money involved) = "gambling"
• epolanski 8mo ago
  The number of people defending prediction markets here is mind boggling. Any moderately intelligent people should realize why insider trading, banning athletes from betting, etc measures have been put in place. One should understand why without those (and even with) those there's perverse incentives to act in destructive ways. Yet people here would be trying to discuss philosophy, semantics and tell you this is good because an insider betting on an attack on Venezuela 4 hours before it happened increases the accuracy of the prediction and the information being public, ignoring the elephant in the room of having the perverse incentives to influence destructive events. Just think about it: there might be people with incentives of attacking Greenland because they bet on it. This is madness. This is the worst degeneracy of gambling and dangerous incentives combined, and it's all for nothing else but money. Just look at whose behind these projects: bs crypto adjacent fintechs and gambling companies. I know we live in numb times where people have thrown in the towel of any hope for a better world, but ffs.
• squidoai123 8mo ago
  This is really amazing tool
• VanshPatel99 8mo ago
  I am more worried about how it trivializes a lot of news which should affect you positively or negatively. It removes the reality and gravity of things happening to just "I won the bet or I lost". Especially when there are bets on war. Are people who better for war, supposed to feel happy that they predicted right? Of course it depends on the individual, and certain kind are more likely to bet on war than other but it still incentivizes a lot of people. I usually wouldn't bet on war but I was thinking the other day about betting on Valorant. I could hedge my emotions. I could bet against my team and be in a win win situation. If they win, I am happy. If they lose, I earned lunch money.