8 ms·

The insiders ruin a market like this. Unlike in sports/stocks there are no rules / punishment for insider trading.

by ipaddr 7mo ago

aleph_minus_one 7mo ago
If some specific prediction market can easily be manipulated by someone with insider knowledge, you better should not gamble in it.
kasey_junk 7mo ago
Prediction markets as a useful tool are predicated on insider information. The punters without edge are the bait incentivizing the insiders. And in the US prediction markets are regulated like commodities which have much more lax insider rules, because again, insider trading is the point.
- hrimfaxi 7mo ago
  > insider trading is the point Says who?
  - Ajedi32 7mo ago
    It's in the name: Prediction market. The point is to predict an outcome, insiders will naturally be better at that than non-insiders. Though I think where things start to get a bit more insidious is when the "insiders" have access not merely to inside information, but the ability to change the outcome. That type of insider trading should be banned IMO because it works against the purpose of prediction markets as a tool. (Though the extent to which banning that is possible is debatable.)
    - hrimfaxi 7mo ago
      Who cares what they call themselves? They're not prediction markets, they are just gambling on events. The "point" of prediction markets is not an accurate prediction in the same sense that the "point" of sports betting isn't that your bet means the team will win.
      - Ajedi32 7mo ago
        Betting markets are actually pretty good at predicting the outcomes of sports games. But you're correct that that's not the point of those markets; accurately predicting the outcome of a sports game has no real-world value, people are just placing bets for their personal entertainment. Accurately predicting the outcome of a war, election, or other nationally important event though can potentially have immense value.
        hrimfaxi 7mo ago
        > Accurately predicting the outcome of a war, election, or other nationally important event though can potentially have immense value. I don't contest that, but again, you haven't explained why "predictions" is the point of prediction markets. People place bets on things they want to be true as much as things they believe to be true. They can market themselves as whatever they like but no one has made a case that this is any different from sports betting.
        mr_00ff00 7mo ago
        It’s different because the prediction markets companies don’t make money on spreads. You aren’t betting against the house. Sports betting, every bet you take has a house edge. Polymarket, for example, makes money on the data. So it must be worth something because people are paying for that predication data. They don’t take a slice of the winnings.
        hrimfaxi 7mo ago
        Platforms like polymarket can be used to bet on the outcome of sporting events. Does the fact that you are betting against another bettor change that from sports betting to a prediction market? If I am playing poker am I still gambling even if the house is just another player in the hand?
        mr_00ff00 7mo ago
        Yeah I guess that’s fair, but I wouldn’t say that predictions aren’t the point of the market. My point was more that the predictions must be the point, because people are paying polymarket to get that data. They don’t make money by taking a spread, they make it by providing information. And people bet on emotion for sure, but “wisdom of crowds” suggests that generally that will balance out to somewhat accurate odds.
    - atmavatar 7mo ago
      That isn't very convincing, as the stock market itself is largely a prediction market. People buy stock to bet on future success, whether that manifest in the form of stock price increases, splits, and/or dividends. It's merely a much more narrowly-focused prediction market. For that very reason, insider knowledge, and especially the ability to influence future outcomes, become the subject of heavy regulation. And, the lack of such regulation for congressional members is also why their net worth tends to skyrocket once entering office.
      - Ajedi32 7mo ago
        That's fair. Insofar as the purpose of the stock market is to allocate capital to companies the market predicts are most likely to succeed, you could argue that trading stocks based on insider information should be legal (though not insider trading by those with the ability to influence outcomes). But I think the way our current system solves this is by forcing companies to disclose important insider information to shareholders all at once, rather than by letting insiders profit by leaking the information through their market transactions. (The one possibly being related to the other, because insiders who could legally profit by keeping information secret rather than disclose it would be incentivised to do so.) I don't think a similar restriction is feasible for prediction markets, because often the thing you're trying to predict is not something that can be legally cajoled into giving up its secrets.
        jpfromlondon 7mo ago
        >you could argue that trading stocks based on insider information should be legal Before Salman vs US (2016) it basically was, how do you think the oracle made bank?
      - TimPC 7mo ago
        It's easier to define safeguards and the definition of inside information for stock markets than for prediction markets though. There is plenty of information that should ban someone from prediction markets that also wouldn't meet the definition of material non-public information.
      - 7mo ago
  - monero-xmr 7mo ago
    If I use a drone to look over a fence to count the amount of inputs and outputs of a factory, and only I know this, it is perfectly legal for me to trade on it. Not insider trading! I'm just a really good information-finder and I'm morally just in how clever I am at finding an edge. If I work at the company and count the inputs and outputs, and trade on it, I am a morally bankrupt scumbag and I have hurt society and all of the traders in the market. Hmmmmmmm
    - hananova 7mo ago
      Or a reasonable door number three: Trading on it should not be allowed, without exception.
    - nilamo 7mo ago
      Yes that is correct. Or if you're a player on a team, you could just... tank a game.
    - KPGv2 7mo ago
      This is a troll post, and I'll bite. The reason insider trading is illegal is because it undermines confidence in the markets by establishing a pattern by which insiders with privileged, secret information leverage it to profit off people who cannot access this information. It also incentivizes insiders to leverage their position within a company to manipulate the business in order to profit. This also undermines integrity of markets. Your second example, setting aside all your troll bait inflammatory verbiage about moral bankruptcy, is an illustration of this risk. I don't care if it rises to the level of moral bankruptcy, it is harmful to a capitalist society in a serious way. Your first example is a depiction of someone leveraging information that anyone can gather. It does not undermine the integrity of markets because it is just an investor acting on publicly-accessible information.
      - monero-xmr 7mo ago
        I don’t see the harm of insider trading. I would make the trades public and mark someone as an insider. The “cat and mouse” game played now leaves for endless suspicion
  - baq 7mo ago
    disagreeing with this statement is admitting it's gambling and not a market.
  - ordinaryradical 7mo ago
    > Robin Hanson, the economist who’s commonly known as the godfather of modern prediction markets, thinks that using inside information to place bets like this is actually necessary for these markets to work—making “insider trading” a feature, not a bug. > “The point of these markets is to get information, so the only reason you should ever be trading on them is if you think you have some information,” said Hanson, a professor of economics at George Mason University whose academic work inspired the founders of prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi. “People with more information should trade more and get more money because that's how they get paid for the information they contribute.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciapark/2026/01/09/why-prediction-markets-need-insider-trading-according-to-their-godfather/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciapark/2026/01/09/why-predi... Seems like you should read more about these markets.
    - hrimfaxi 7mo ago
      How is it at all a prediction if someone has insider knowledge? That's not a prediction that is knowing the facts. If I'm Trump and decide to capture Maduro tomorrow and then I bet on that happening, what did I predict? If someone close to me who knows my plans bets on it, what did they predict? That I will follow through on my word?
      - kasey_junk 7mo ago
        You externalized the answer to the question. That’s _the point_ of prediction markets. What you are describing is governmental corruption and that should be handled via corruption laws not insider trading laws.
  - variadix 7mo ago
    Insiders bring information to a market. Intelligent analysis and prediction also does, but obviously insiders have special information they are incentivized to bring to the market. Most people placing these bets are simply gambling, insiders and analysts at least have rational reasons for placing bets and add information to the market.
    - Terr_ 7mo ago
      > Insiders bring information to a market [...] special information they are incentivized to bring Simultaneously: Insiders have power to coerce an outcome, the market creates a corrupt payoff for them to abuse that power.
- cjonas 7mo ago
  How is it useful when what we are seeing is insiders place massive bets immediately before the event resolves. Does gaining this information a few hours early provide value to society that offsets the impact of normalizing gambling and attaching incentives to bad outcomes of war, politics, etc.
  - rwmj 7mo ago
    Can you make massive bets if there's no one to take the other side of the bet? In a prediction market that allowed insiders, if you don't have insider knowledge you shouldn't bet very much because you're probably going to lose to someone who is an insider.
    - tsimionescu 7mo ago
      If a million people bet 5$, even if it's 50-50, there's plenty of upside for an insider to take a massive bet on the known outcome.
      - rwmj 7mo ago
        In an iterated game, either people would be happy to lose occasionally small amounts like $5 (with the benefit to society that insider knowledge is revealed), or if they didn't like losing even small amounts they'd learn not to bet if they didn't have real insight.
        hrimfaxi 7mo ago
        Doesn't that assume that people are rational? How many gamblers have lost everything?
        watwut 7mo ago
        That is not true. That is not how gambling works at all. That is how theoretical mathematical construction works. Which has nothing to do with how real world people behave in iterated gambling games. And the less you regulate what the gambling company can or can not do, the less the real world version resembles the theoretical construction.
- datsci_est_2015 7mo ago
  > Prediction markets as a useful tool are predicated on insider information. The punters without edge are the bait incentivizing the insiders. And like any other gambling (see 1919 Black Sox), they can also incentivize behavior for actors who can influence the outcome of what’s being gambled upon. Personally, that’s a significant enough negative externality for me to not want to live in a society where “prediction markets” are popular.
  - kasey_junk 7mo ago
    I personally think it’s ridiculous that we have allowed these prediction markets to subvert our sports betting laws. And meaningful corruption legislation should exist to prevent government and military personnel from profiting from them. But if you are going to allow them at all, you want as much expertise as possible in them. Sharks eating minnows is what that looks like.
  - bentcorner 7mo ago
    Makes me wonder if there's a bet you can take on Polymarket that Polymarket will get shut down due to it negatively influencing behavior. The insider trading on that one should get interesting.
    - amelius 7mo ago
      Will it pay out if it is shut down though?
      - mr_00ff00 7mo ago
        1. I believe you can bet on this 2. If it’s only banned in the US, yes it pays out, you just need to get a VPN or go to another country. Also even it’s banned everywhere, the markets are blockchain contracts so you should be able to access it without the website, which is just the frontend. (this is where my technical expertise breaks down, someone who knows blockchain is a better expert)
      - deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
- venusenvy47 7mo ago
  Why would we want insiders to profit on a public decision like war? If some general has money on Iran's leader being taken out by March 1, he might not be acting in the best interest of the country. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwz8051y0lo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwz8051y0lo
  - cjrp 7mo ago
    For me that feels like the difference between insider trading and market manipulation.
  - mr_00ff00 7mo ago
    The idea is that prediction markets show the “odds” of an event occurring (that’s why it’s percentages after all). So if a war with Iran is going to happen, and so a general bets that it will, the odds will jump and go very high. Now at least theoretically, people in the Middle East can see the high odds, and travel elsewhere. After seeing how many people got trapped in the UAE, I might check these prediction markets in the future for similar things.
    - gus_massa 7mo ago
      It only work if you have a "good" passport and you can pack your income source and move it (i.e. easier for a web page designer than a goat farmer).
      - mr_00ff00 7mo ago
        Sure, but some people would get out, right? Surely you aren’t saying that because prediction markets can’t save every single life, that it’s somehow useless to save a few. Another example, if odds jump on a missile strike on a particular city, you might have the chance to move out of the way.
- gus_massa 7mo ago
  If the value is insider information, and assuming it's legal, wouldn't it be better if the major newspaper offer a big pile of money to insiders that leak the data? At least there will be some level of ethical checking.
  - chii 7mo ago
    > wouldn't it be better if the major newspaper offer a big pile of money to insiders that leak the data? so why would a newspaper pay money for information they cannot recover or monetize? Where would this money come from in the first place, because even if they wanted to do this out of altruism, they will simply run out of money after a while.
- airstrike 7mo ago
  This notion that price discovery is only possible with insider trading is demonstrably false yet somehow surprisingly pervasive.
  - kibwen 7mo ago
    In the same way that the crypto hucksters were desperate to invent legitimate reasons for NFTs to have trillion-dollar valuations, pathetic gamblers are desperate to invent legitimate reasons for there to exist some non-gambling cover for the existence of predictions markets.
amelius 7mo ago
Even in stock trading you can get away with it for a long time. See Epstein.
idiotsecant 7mo ago
Insider knowledge is essential, that's the whole point. Expose the most information possible. The real problem is people who try to influence the perception of outcome after the fact, like in this case. That is exactly the opposite of what is supposed to happen, but it's an unavoidable consequence of money being involved.
- ipython 7mo ago
  And hence why a prediction market including bets on the time and date of specific acts of violence… could present a moral hazard?
PaulHoule 7mo ago
Yeah there are all those stupid things like "what color of Gatorade will they pour over players at the end of the game" that are ultimately about some arbitrary decision an individual or small group. Probably a whole sports game is fair to bet on because it involves so many sub-events but people gamble on things that make no sense to be gambling on.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
nisegami 7mo ago
The insiders exposing their info to non-participants is also a feature of these markets.
JumpinJack_Cash 7mo ago
The stock market and the sports market are also honeypots . I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn if you believe that when you bet on the stock market or on the sports market for each and every particular bet involving millions of people the maximum profit is not reaped by a half a dozen of insiders who trade on inside informations and their only problem is not being too obvious about it. Also even if they get caught the millions of people wagering are still getting fucked because there is not a redo or making people whole when the insider traders get caught (which is a tiny percentage of the time)
tatersolid 7mo ago
> Unlike in sports/stocks there are no rules / punishment for insider trading. Wouldn’t the good old-fashioned fraud laws present in basically every jurisdiction apply?

The insiders ruin a market like this. Unlike in sports/stocks there are no rules / punishment for insider trading.

by ipaddr 7mo ago

The insiders ruin a market like this. Unlike in sports/stocks there are no rules / punishment for insider trading.

If some specific prediction market can easily be manipulated by someone with insider knowledge, you better should not gamble in it.

kasey_junk 7mo ago

Prediction markets as a useful tool are predicated on insider information. The punters without edge are the bait incentivizing the insiders. And in the US prediction markets are regulated like commodities which have much more lax insider rules, because again, insider trading is the point.

hrimfaxi 7mo ago
> insider trading is the point Says who?
- Ajedi32 7mo ago
  It's in the name: Prediction market. The point is to predict an outcome, insiders will naturally be better at that than non-insiders. Though I think where things start to get a bit more insidious is when the "insiders" have access not merely to inside information, but the ability to change the outcome. That type of insider trading should be banned IMO because it works against the purpose of prediction markets as a tool. (Though the extent to which banning that is possible is debatable.)
  - hrimfaxi 7mo ago
    Who cares what they call themselves? They're not prediction markets, they are just gambling on events. The "point" of prediction markets is not an accurate prediction in the same sense that the "point" of sports betting isn't that your bet means the team will win.
    - Ajedi32 7mo ago
      Betting markets are actually pretty good at predicting the outcomes of sports games. But you're correct that that's not the point of those markets; accurately predicting the outcome of a sports game has no real-world value, people are just placing bets for their personal entertainment. Accurately predicting the outcome of a war, election, or other nationally important event though can potentially have immense value.
      - hrimfaxi 7mo ago
        > Accurately predicting the outcome of a war, election, or other nationally important event though can potentially have immense value. I don't contest that, but again, you haven't explained why "predictions" is the point of prediction markets. People place bets on things they want to be true as much as things they believe to be true. They can market themselves as whatever they like but no one has made a case that this is any different from sports betting.
        mr_00ff00 7mo ago
        It’s different because the prediction markets companies don’t make money on spreads. You aren’t betting against the house. Sports betting, every bet you take has a house edge. Polymarket, for example, makes money on the data. So it must be worth something because people are paying for that predication data. They don’t take a slice of the winnings.
        hrimfaxi 7mo ago
        Platforms like polymarket can be used to bet on the outcome of sporting events. Does the fact that you are betting against another bettor change that from sports betting to a prediction market? If I am playing poker am I still gambling even if the house is just another player in the hand?
        mr_00ff00 7mo ago
        Yeah I guess that’s fair, but I wouldn’t say that predictions aren’t the point of the market. My point was more that the predictions must be the point, because people are paying polymarket to get that data. They don’t make money by taking a spread, they make it by providing information. And people bet on emotion for sure, but “wisdom of crowds” suggests that generally that will balance out to somewhat accurate odds.
  - atmavatar 7mo ago
    That isn't very convincing, as the stock market itself is largely a prediction market. People buy stock to bet on future success, whether that manifest in the form of stock price increases, splits, and/or dividends. It's merely a much more narrowly-focused prediction market. For that very reason, insider knowledge, and especially the ability to influence future outcomes, become the subject of heavy regulation. And, the lack of such regulation for congressional members is also why their net worth tends to skyrocket once entering office.
    - Ajedi32 7mo ago
      That's fair. Insofar as the purpose of the stock market is to allocate capital to companies the market predicts are most likely to succeed, you could argue that trading stocks based on insider information should be legal (though not insider trading by those with the ability to influence outcomes). But I think the way our current system solves this is by forcing companies to disclose important insider information to shareholders all at once, rather than by letting insiders profit by leaking the information through their market transactions. (The one possibly being related to the other, because insiders who could legally profit by keeping information secret rather than disclose it would be incentivised to do so.) I don't think a similar restriction is feasible for prediction markets, because often the thing you're trying to predict is not something that can be legally cajoled into giving up its secrets.
      - jpfromlondon 7mo ago
        >you could argue that trading stocks based on insider information should be legal Before Salman vs US (2016) it basically was, how do you think the oracle made bank?
    - TimPC 7mo ago
      It's easier to define safeguards and the definition of inside information for stock markets than for prediction markets though. There is plenty of information that should ban someone from prediction markets that also wouldn't meet the definition of material non-public information.
    - 7mo ago
- monero-xmr 7mo ago
  If I use a drone to look over a fence to count the amount of inputs and outputs of a factory, and only I know this, it is perfectly legal for me to trade on it. Not insider trading! I'm just a really good information-finder and I'm morally just in how clever I am at finding an edge. If I work at the company and count the inputs and outputs, and trade on it, I am a morally bankrupt scumbag and I have hurt society and all of the traders in the market. Hmmmmmmm
  - hananova 7mo ago
    Or a reasonable door number three: Trading on it should not be allowed, without exception.
  - nilamo 7mo ago
    Yes that is correct. Or if you're a player on a team, you could just... tank a game.
  - KPGv2 7mo ago
    This is a troll post, and I'll bite. The reason insider trading is illegal is because it undermines confidence in the markets by establishing a pattern by which insiders with privileged, secret information leverage it to profit off people who cannot access this information. It also incentivizes insiders to leverage their position within a company to manipulate the business in order to profit. This also undermines integrity of markets. Your second example, setting aside all your troll bait inflammatory verbiage about moral bankruptcy, is an illustration of this risk. I don't care if it rises to the level of moral bankruptcy, it is harmful to a capitalist society in a serious way. Your first example is a depiction of someone leveraging information that anyone can gather. It does not undermine the integrity of markets because it is just an investor acting on publicly-accessible information.
    - monero-xmr 7mo ago
      I don’t see the harm of insider trading. I would make the trades public and mark someone as an insider. The “cat and mouse” game played now leaves for endless suspicion
- baq 7mo ago
  disagreeing with this statement is admitting it's gambling and not a market.
- ordinaryradical 7mo ago
  > Robin Hanson, the economist who’s commonly known as the godfather of modern prediction markets, thinks that using inside information to place bets like this is actually necessary for these markets to work—making “insider trading” a feature, not a bug. > “The point of these markets is to get information, so the only reason you should ever be trading on them is if you think you have some information,” said Hanson, a professor of economics at George Mason University whose academic work inspired the founders of prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi. “People with more information should trade more and get more money because that's how they get paid for the information they contribute.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciapark/2026/01/09/why-prediction-markets-need-insider-trading-according-to-their-godfather/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciapark/2026/01/09/why-predi... Seems like you should read more about these markets.
  - hrimfaxi 7mo ago
    How is it at all a prediction if someone has insider knowledge? That's not a prediction that is knowing the facts. If I'm Trump and decide to capture Maduro tomorrow and then I bet on that happening, what did I predict? If someone close to me who knows my plans bets on it, what did they predict? That I will follow through on my word?
    - kasey_junk 7mo ago
      You externalized the answer to the question. That’s _the point_ of prediction markets. What you are describing is governmental corruption and that should be handled via corruption laws not insider trading laws.
- variadix 7mo ago
  Insiders bring information to a market. Intelligent analysis and prediction also does, but obviously insiders have special information they are incentivized to bring to the market. Most people placing these bets are simply gambling, insiders and analysts at least have rational reasons for placing bets and add information to the market.
  - Terr_ 7mo ago
    > Insiders bring information to a market [...] special information they are incentivized to bring Simultaneously: Insiders have power to coerce an outcome, the market creates a corrupt payoff for them to abuse that power.
cjonas 7mo ago
How is it useful when what we are seeing is insiders place massive bets immediately before the event resolves. Does gaining this information a few hours early provide value to society that offsets the impact of normalizing gambling and attaching incentives to bad outcomes of war, politics, etc.
- rwmj 7mo ago
  Can you make massive bets if there's no one to take the other side of the bet? In a prediction market that allowed insiders, if you don't have insider knowledge you shouldn't bet very much because you're probably going to lose to someone who is an insider.
  - tsimionescu 7mo ago
    If a million people bet 5$, even if it's 50-50, there's plenty of upside for an insider to take a massive bet on the known outcome.
    - rwmj 7mo ago
      In an iterated game, either people would be happy to lose occasionally small amounts like $5 (with the benefit to society that insider knowledge is revealed), or if they didn't like losing even small amounts they'd learn not to bet if they didn't have real insight.
      - hrimfaxi 7mo ago
        Doesn't that assume that people are rational? How many gamblers have lost everything?
      - watwut 7mo ago
        That is not true. That is not how gambling works at all. That is how theoretical mathematical construction works. Which has nothing to do with how real world people behave in iterated gambling games. And the less you regulate what the gambling company can or can not do, the less the real world version resembles the theoretical construction.
datsci_est_2015 7mo ago
> Prediction markets as a useful tool are predicated on insider information. The punters without edge are the bait incentivizing the insiders. And like any other gambling (see 1919 Black Sox), they can also incentivize behavior for actors who can influence the outcome of what’s being gambled upon. Personally, that’s a significant enough negative externality for me to not want to live in a society where “prediction markets” are popular.
- kasey_junk 7mo ago
  I personally think it’s ridiculous that we have allowed these prediction markets to subvert our sports betting laws. And meaningful corruption legislation should exist to prevent government and military personnel from profiting from them. But if you are going to allow them at all, you want as much expertise as possible in them. Sharks eating minnows is what that looks like.
- bentcorner 7mo ago
  Makes me wonder if there's a bet you can take on Polymarket that Polymarket will get shut down due to it negatively influencing behavior. The insider trading on that one should get interesting.
  - amelius 7mo ago
    Will it pay out if it is shut down though?
    - mr_00ff00 7mo ago
      1. I believe you can bet on this 2. If it’s only banned in the US, yes it pays out, you just need to get a VPN or go to another country. Also even it’s banned everywhere, the markets are blockchain contracts so you should be able to access it without the website, which is just the frontend. (this is where my technical expertise breaks down, someone who knows blockchain is a better expert)
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
venusenvy47 7mo ago
Why would we want insiders to profit on a public decision like war? If some general has money on Iran's leader being taken out by March 1, he might not be acting in the best interest of the country. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwz8051y0lo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwz8051y0lo
- cjrp 7mo ago
  For me that feels like the difference between insider trading and market manipulation.
- mr_00ff00 7mo ago
  The idea is that prediction markets show the “odds” of an event occurring (that’s why it’s percentages after all). So if a war with Iran is going to happen, and so a general bets that it will, the odds will jump and go very high. Now at least theoretically, people in the Middle East can see the high odds, and travel elsewhere. After seeing how many people got trapped in the UAE, I might check these prediction markets in the future for similar things.
  - gus_massa 7mo ago
    It only work if you have a "good" passport and you can pack your income source and move it (i.e. easier for a web page designer than a goat farmer).
    - mr_00ff00 7mo ago
      Sure, but some people would get out, right? Surely you aren’t saying that because prediction markets can’t save every single life, that it’s somehow useless to save a few. Another example, if odds jump on a missile strike on a particular city, you might have the chance to move out of the way.
gus_massa 7mo ago
If the value is insider information, and assuming it's legal, wouldn't it be better if the major newspaper offer a big pile of money to insiders that leak the data? At least there will be some level of ethical checking.
- chii 7mo ago
  > wouldn't it be better if the major newspaper offer a big pile of money to insiders that leak the data? so why would a newspaper pay money for information they cannot recover or monetize? Where would this money come from in the first place, because even if they wanted to do this out of altruism, they will simply run out of money after a while.
airstrike 7mo ago
This notion that price discovery is only possible with insider trading is demonstrably false yet somehow surprisingly pervasive.
- kibwen 7mo ago
  In the same way that the crypto hucksters were desperate to invent legitimate reasons for NFTs to have trillion-dollar valuations, pathetic gamblers are desperate to invent legitimate reasons for there to exist some non-gambling cover for the existence of predictions markets.

amelius 7mo ago

Even in stock trading you can get away with it for a long time. See Epstein.

idiotsecant 7mo ago

Insider knowledge is essential, that's the whole point. Expose the most information possible. The real problem is people who try to influence the perception of outcome after the fact, like in this case. That is exactly the opposite of what is supposed to happen, but it's an unavoidable consequence of money being involved.

ipython 7mo ago
And hence why a prediction market including bets on the time and date of specific acts of violence… could present a moral hazard?

PaulHoule 7mo ago

Yeah there are all those stupid things like "what color of Gatorade will they pour over players at the end of the game" that are ultimately about some arbitrary decision an individual or small group. Probably a whole sports game is fair to bet on because it involves so many sub-events but people gamble on things that make no sense to be gambling on.

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

nisegami 7mo ago

The insiders exposing their info to non-participants is also a feature of these markets.

JumpinJack_Cash 7mo ago

The stock market and the sports market are also honeypots . I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn if you believe that when you bet on the stock market or on the sports market for each and every particular bet involving millions of people the maximum profit is not reaped by a half a dozen of insiders who trade on inside informations and their only problem is not being too obvious about it. Also even if they get caught the millions of people wagering are still getting fucked because there is not a redo or making people whole when the insider traders get caught (which is a tiny percentage of the time)

tatersolid 7mo ago

> Unlike in sports/stocks there are no rules / punishment for insider trading. Wouldn’t the good old-fashioned fraud laws present in basically every jurisdiction apply?