You’re sitting in your living room trying to make a few bucks by guessing the date Israel will next strike Lebanon. Meanwhile, someone with inside knowledge of that date is planning to use it to take your money. Meanwhile, the prediction markets are taking a cut of the transaction and using it to buy lobbyists to keep oversight down, brand partnerships to make them look legitimate, and advertising to keep you gambling. Meanwhile, someone in Lebanon is sitting in their apartment hoping their building doesn’t explode.
Activity tagged "prediction markets"
Issue 98 – The world’s most corrupt crypto startup operation
Terra’s Do Kwon gets 15 years, crypto banks get the green light, and the Trump family’s crypto grift expands even as one of their treasury companies goes off the rails
Prediction markets are booming. Oversight is barely there.
Prediction markets once lived on the academic fringe. Now they’re trading billions on politics, sports, and celebrity gossip — under rules never designed for retail gamblers.
Trump Jr.-advised prediction markets invite bets on president’s demise
President Trump’s deregulatory agenda emboldened prediction markets to push boundaries around permitted event contracts. Now sites advised by his son are allowing bets on his death.
The betting platforms can't open markets on Trump's death for obvious reasons, but Kalshi just so happened to open up a "Trump out as President" market on Saturday
Polymarket opened their own on September 1.
Unlike Polymarket, on Kalshi these markets do not resolve to "yes" if the person in question dies (they settle at the last traded price). I suspect many bettors don't read the fine print, though.
Donald Trump Jr. is an adviser to both Kalshi and Polymarket, btw. (This is deeply weird for all of the many reasons having Don Jr. as an adviser is deeply weird, and also because the companies are the two major competitors in the prediction markets space)