Utah lawmakers form united front in push to ban prediction markets

jackp96

Neither conservative nor Mormon, but online gambling is an addictive scourge that ruins lives, and I'd love to see it banned broadly. And go ahead and ban paid loot boxes as well. I don't love casinos or lotteries, but at least there's the friction of having to travel to a physical location to feed your addiction. And then there's the whole "insider trading" and "gambling on war" angles that come into play with prediction markets.

carabiner

As I get older I'm starting to realize, the Christians were right about everything.

exabrial

can we stop calling them "prediction markets" and please call them what they actually are: gambling

throwaw12

Coming soon: * researchers found that prediction markets are actually good for your wellbeing * lobby group is lobbying to fight against Utah lawmakers who are working against the wellbeing of people in Utah

Sol-

Shame that prediction markets seem to have failed a bit, since they seem in principle like a good idea. You force participants to have skin in the game and remove the usual mood affiliation and ideological bias that afflicts the professional commentariat in the media. Perhaps a solution instead of banning them would be to create a class similar to accredited investors that are allowed to participate. And stuff like market manipulation should just be prosecuted in old fashioned ways like we prosecute any crime.

WarmWash

I think they should be legal, but the amount of marketing and pushing around them is so bad. It's like you make something legal, and some group of people try as hard as possible to push the limit as far as they can, and in turn ruin for everyone.

jcfrei

I'm surprised prediction markets don't get more support here on HN. There's a lot of benefit in having a probability estimate for various kinds of events. One example of many: https://polymarket.com/event/may-2026-temperature-increase-c These markets are a straightforward way to cut through all the noise of the current media conglomerates. Rather than getting bombarded by inflated headlines a glance at polymarket or kalshi is often enough to know whether something is actually happening or it's just the media corporations trying to get your attention. Of course there should be limits with regards to what kind of markets are allowed on these platforms. But in a lot of areas there's genuine price discovery happening that's not available anywhere else.

lizknope

I'd like to first see all advertisements for gambling banned. Then lets take a look at the data after 1-2 years. Or if you allow it put a warning like the surgeon generals warning on tobacco. Clearly state that most people lose money. Smoking is legal but advertising cigarettes is illegal. I grew up in the 1980's where smoking was everywhere. We even had a smoking area at school. Today I don't know anyone that smokes. Obviously people still do but it is much less common

sometimelurker

I think the biggest problem with prediction markets can be solved with some law that would remove anonymity from those who trade, from the perspective of some regulating body* . now I know what I just said and I'm sure to be downvoted to hell for suggesting such a thing, but this would make it much easier to fight insider trading, assassination markets/equivalents, ect You could just force the biggest entities in this space to comply and people wouldn't care enough about secretly betting on wars so it would all work out. * if you make it so that everyone sees what their neighbor betted on then overall predictions will become less accurate due to social signaling