We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

cat-turner

Let's make a bet on how bad it can get I can place a bet that by 2027 we will have 1 bet and a payout on a bet that predicts a horrible catastrophe.

hydroflame7

'Predictions' market is the silliest loophole for gambling. Honestly, more surprised Fanduel, DraftKings and the like who have spent millions on lobbying and buying licenses, are not fighting tooth and nail on this.

sghiassy

The amount of suspicious bets around international politics is disturbing One data point of many: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/24/politics/iran-war-bets-predic... Fact: Donald Trump Jump Jr is an advisor of polymarket

GenerWork

I'm sorry, but all this handwringing just smacks of moral Puritanism. If you want to do it, do it. If you don't, then don't.

dheera

> Two-thirds of Americans now believe that professional athletes sometimes change their performance to influence gambling outcomes. I'm not sure this is a bad thing. It's just bringing to public visibility exactly what happens across the stock market. Public companies do this all the time -- engineer their performance end earnings to influence <strike>shareholder</strike> gambler expectations on earnings day.

echelon

Assassinations markets are what's next. eg. someone will bet $1M that Elon Musk will be assassinated in 2026. But these don't themselves even have to be legal. Second order wagers will be placed on SpaceX and Tesla stock prices, bets that "a hundred billionaire will die in 2026", etc. A bet that Putin will be assassinated could be encoded in, "there will be regime change in Russia."

kevinsync

Assuming everything physical gets tokenized (as occasionally gets predicted), people could soon literally lose their house on a bet! Maybe even a bet placed by their swarm of agents. The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades!

JumpCrisscross

"where key decision makers in government have the tantalizing options to make hundreds of thousands of dollars by synchronizing military engagements with their gambling position" To wit: where key decision makers in government can get paid to reveal war secretes to our enemies.

cowpig

Just game-theoretically, suppose you bet $100 on some disaster. That disaster causes $10,000,000 of harm, but only causes you $90 of harm individually. You've gained $10, but your $10 gain is a millionth of the harm caused. Generally-speaking, there's an enormous asymmetry between the cost to create/build and the cost to destroy. So now we have a mechanism by which individuals have a financial incentive to cause harm... Don't these markets create a mechanism for society to race to self-destruction?

yieldcrv

> I don’t think people have thought hard enough about how bad this could get. given that the crypto anarchist papers from the 90s that these markets are built on are very well thought out instruction manuals about how bad it could get, this title implies users are gullible idiots as opposed to the creators and power users An individual's susceptibility to a vice is an individual problem. So I take issue with all the flippant comments about this being a "gambling loophole", like, who cares? I don't think any financial game should be seen as a different category than the other. Even the "positive expected value" framework masquaraded as a distinction between trading and a casino game is completely false and entirely a cultural distinction. There are many equities and bond trades that have lower expected value than a casino game, even this forum is populated by people that receive shares and derivatives as compensation, who will earn nothing - even lose money - under positive outcomes. Exhibit A. Not everyone needs to care how a particular financial game is perceived. Not all cultures need any social segregation of gambling versus another way of making money from money. I'd rather be part of those cultures. And in the US/Western gambling regulatory frameworks and prohibitions, prediction markets don't fit, that isn't a loophole to me. They are structurally different and I'm not entirely sure what people want to happen and how it is supposed to be enforced. I don't get the impression they've looked at all, and are just operating on a feeling that I find irrelevant. And on the insiders, yes, that's the point of prediction markets. They are intended to be distributed bounties with plausible deniability. That's literally what Jim Bell's 1995 crypto-anarchist paper was about. In the natural course of finance, every asset, including information, should be tradable, as long as improvements in liquidity continue to come.

seydor

Why do we need to reinvent the wheel again. There's a reason why these things are banned. And by the way, shame on all the podcasters and VCs who advertised those abominable 'platforms'. To name one, the cast of the All-in podcast

amazingamazing

More doomer takes. The world survived two world wars and a cold war. This stuff is nothing. Engagement bait as usual.

ed_balls

Any sort of gambling should be limited to, say 20% of your average yearly tax (last 5 years). Prediction market should be banned.

juleiie

Today Integrity is merely means to score more views and likes That’s how far we have fallen. We are all painfully aware how corrupted all sorts of people are but instead of actual action we give each other likes on social media under carefully crafted anger bait. So much everything online is fake that it is tempting to just throw your phone away. The genuineness is the highest luxury I try to make sure to get truly downvoted to hell every other week on social media. It resets the addicted brain and stops hive mind progress bar for a little while at least. Also get banned - this is good for you too precisely because it feels slightly uncomfortable. That’s how I try to survive online landscapes anyway.

paulpauper

I like prediction markets because they offer much more diverse markets compared to stocks/options and sports betting, which are far more limited. The downsides are limited liquidity and fraud, but this is endemic to other markets too.

kylehotchkiss

Sounds like good ol' fashioned developing country style corruption to me! Anti-intellectualism 1, liberal democratic values 0.

seatac76

Prediction market creators making the case that their existing is some sort of a market efficiency play is the most laughable thing I have ever heard. SC made a mistake in the Draft King/Fan duel saga and has unleashed the worst kind of market, takes up may too much money and time especially from young people.

blitzar

Americans may be shocked to hear that in the rest of the world gambling has been a thing for centuries. We also have people under the age of 20 drinking alcohol. I am not suggesting in any way that gambling is good - but it wasnt invented last week in america

dash2

An argument not mentioned here and which I didn’t appreciate until I actually took part in these markets myself, is that you need a supply of stupid/uninformed people to take the other side of the informed people’s bets.(In economic terms, no-trade theorems apply.) That suggests to me that the dream of perfect information revelation isn’t going to come true. Instead, the liquid markets will be those with a large supply of marks, who bet for identity reasons or who are simply ignorant and naive. (Currently polymarket gives a 16% ish probability that Trump will lose office this year. Sounds like wishful thinking to me?)