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I had a little insight into the esports gambling world at one point and it answered some questions for me about why there's so much money being thrown around th

I had a little insight into the esports gambling world at one point and it answered some questions for me about why there's so much money being thrown around there. I'm guessing (no evidence, but a strong hunch) there are a ton of shenanigans going on, as that whole side of things has a very wild-west feel yet there's a lot of money moving around. Some folks at the same place helped me figure out what Venmo's social transaction messages are useful for: illegal gambling pools. I'd been wondering why those features exist or who'd want them, then saw it used for that purpose. Suddenly made sense.

lozaning 7y ago
Can you explain more by what you mean about the Venmo stuff, its sounds super interesting. Are you saying that someone out there is doing crowd sourced intelligence for increased win modeling, based on the messages people put in their venmo transactions? Or that the default public nature of the ledger is such that people can see that the bookie (I think im using that right) is getting money from other counter parties and proves their ability to pay out in the future?
- karatestomp 7y ago
  The latter. I saw an email thread go around to organize a betting pool, using venmo (with the obvious warning not to say it was for gambling in the memo) and had a huge "ah ha" moment for why that feature exists. It's perfect for ensuring collections & payouts happen correctly and no money goes missing, or "missing". It'd be hard to crowd source for better odds on there, I'd think, since people disguise those kinds of transactions. Same as with drug purchases, which are also prohibited on Venmo so you can't mention them but are, obviously, some part of the activity on there, though unlike with betting pools Venmo's (previously, to me) weird social ledger thing isn't a killer feature for that. Probably they could spot betting pools and put some rules in place to make it annoying enough to use the platform for that purpose that people would stop, though I don't know why they would. I'd guess illegal activity's far from a majority of their revenue, but I bet it's still significant. Probably certain transaction patterns get really common on either side of major sports events.

lozaning 7y ago

Can you explain more by what you mean about the Venmo stuff, its sounds super interesting. Are you saying that someone out there is doing crowd sourced intelligence for increased win modeling, based on the messages people put in their venmo transactions? Or that the default public nature of the ledger is such that people can see that the bookie (I think im using that right) is getting money from other counter parties and proves their ability to pay out in the future?

karatestomp 7y ago
The latter. I saw an email thread go around to organize a betting pool, using venmo (with the obvious warning not to say it was for gambling in the memo) and had a huge "ah ha" moment for why that feature exists. It's perfect for ensuring collections & payouts happen correctly and no money goes missing, or "missing". It'd be hard to crowd source for better odds on there, I'd think, since people disguise those kinds of transactions. Same as with drug purchases, which are also prohibited on Venmo so you can't mention them but are, obviously, some part of the activity on there, though unlike with betting pools Venmo's (previously, to me) weird social ledger thing isn't a killer feature for that. Probably they could spot betting pools and put some rules in place to make it annoying enough to use the platform for that purpose that people would stop, though I don't know why they would. I'd guess illegal activity's far from a majority of their revenue, but I bet it's still significant. Probably certain transaction patterns get really common on either side of major sports events.