5 ms·

I don't understand, what's so fundamentally wrong with this form of insider trading? Is the accusation that it makes degenerate gambling unfair? Is it necessary

I don't understand, what's so fundamentally wrong with this form of insider trading? Is the accusation that it makes degenerate gambling unfair? Is it necessary for degenerate gambling to be fair? The gamblers don't seem to care.

wodenokoto 6mo ago
> The gamblers don't seem to care. Which makes me wonder if it is actually just money laundering.
- amwet 6mo ago
  The obvious counter example is lotteries. People just like to gamble.
  - jessegeens 6mo ago
    Well, you can also use normal lotteries for money laundering: https://www.ftm.eu/articles/reynders-charged-in-money-laundering-probe https://www.ftm.eu/articles/reynders-charged-in-money-launde...
    - yorwba 6mo ago
      Because there's pre-existing demand for lottery tickets that provides some plausible deniability for the money-laundering use case. If prediction markets were primarily used to buy insurance against hard-to-avoid expensive events, that's what money launderers would trade in too, in order to blend in. Instead, most volume is in sports bets. People just like to gamble.
  - Quarrelsome 6mo ago
    people like hope. In Dickens era the hope was that you'd discover you were a long lost bastard child of some wealthy aristocratic family. These days, its that you win the lottery. We shouldn't conflate permitting lotteries which give a lot of people precious hope, with enabling the disease of gambling addiction. Gambling addiction transforms its victims into desperate degenerate messes, who will do anything in order to reverse the outcome of their losses. By popularising gambling on reality (instead of a sandbox like sport) we're creating a future where such people will harass journalists, which further threatens our increasingly precarious relationship with truth.
- xnx 6mo ago
  How would money laundering work with a prediction market?
sznio 6mo ago
beyond the general idea that we shouldn't normalize gambling, betting on some real-life events is horrid. think about insider trading on a polymarket bet for someone's death.
- CTDOCodebases 6mo ago
  Or even worse what happens when people start gambling that someone won’t die today? It opens the door to crowdsourced hits with plausible deniability.
- jstanley 6mo ago
  You missed out the reason that it's horrid, which is that it is a plausibly-deniable way to crowdfund assassinations.
  - Ray20 6mo ago
    So, the typical "It's only okay when the elites do it." Although, it's almost certain that such crowdfunding practices will lead to a radical democratization of society as a whole. Today, any bloody dictator, tyrant, or autocrat continues to kill people en masse simply because society lacks a sufficiently effective tool to guarantee the reliable transfer of funds to one of their henchmen should the issue with him be effectively resolved
    - jstanley 6mo ago
      I don't know how you got that from what I said. EDIT: Oh, I initially thought that you thought that I was saying that it's OK for the government to coordinate assassinations but not OK for other people to coordinate assassinations. Which is not what I said, I only said (implied) that it's not OK for other people to coordinate assassinations. I made no representation regarding whether I think it's OK for the government to coordinate assassinations. However, what I now think you're saying is that assassination markets would lead to fewer assassinations rather than more, because... if ordinary people could trade in assassination markets then they would choose to assassinate the government's assassins, and then the government would not react or respond in any way, so then the government would no longer be able to coordinate assassinations, and the general public would stop using the assassination market, and then the problem is solved. Is that right?
yen223 6mo ago
Matt Levine pointed out in a past article that the real danger of insider trading are company insiders being incentivised to damage the company to make a quick buck.
- Terr_ 6mo ago
  > insiders being incentivised to damage the company I'd like to emphasize that this incentive doesn't have to be an accidental find by the insider either: The "market" can end up facilitating anonymous crowd-sourced bribery by enemies or competitors, who create the potential for profit knowing that eventually an insider will take the other end of the implied deal. Every time I see someone dismissing these kinds of issues--especially someone whose salary depends on not-understanding it [0] --I imagine how their tune would change if the shoe was on the other foot. For example, if someone created a "prediction market" where people could anonymously bet on unusual deaths or serious injuries of... prediction-market executives. [0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/
  - DonHopkins 6mo ago
    Luigi, let’s-a go!!! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TvWbOKJvZmk https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TvWbOKJvZmk
- bluecalm 6mo ago
  How is it different than shorting or buying put options and then damaging the company? The tools are already there.
  - yorwba 6mo ago
    Yes, that's why insider trading is illegal.
  - DonHopkins 6mo ago
    What other GTA missions and Mossad operations should we democratize with a small personal computerized device? https://youtu.be/RmUQptXfiWs?t=485 https://youtu.be/RmUQptXfiWs?t=485 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...
Quarrelsome 6mo ago
because the long term outcome is that truth will start to be defined by money. There's already been tales of journalists being harassed to change stories in order for over-leveraged betters to win polymarket bets. I HIGHLY recommend going onto a sports subreddit match thread during a match and seeing what people say, versus the post match thread, a few hours after the match. The difference in tone is striking. While some people are probably just passionate, I'm pretty sure the depths of vitriol (that border on things like death threats) are a consequence of gambling.
- dzhiurgis 6mo ago
  Journalists are most likely to profit from this too
- neonstatic 6mo ago
  > truth will start to be defined by money I'm a firm believer in 'there's nothing new under the sun'. > There's already been tales of journalists being harassed to change stories in order for over-leveraged betters to win polymarket bets. So the only thing that has changed is who is doing the harassing. > I'm pretty sure the depths of vitriol (that border on things like death threats) are a consequence of gambling. People who are "passionate" about sports have always been the most aggressive and vulgar. I grew up around them, this does not surprise me at all.
  - Quarrelsome 6mo ago
    > People who are "passionate" about sports have always been the most aggressive and vulgar. Sure but I can't help but wonder if many of them have money riding on the games which makes their anger much more understandable. Perhaps those you grew up around were also having a bit of a flutter.
    - neonstatic 6mo ago
      Oh, for sure, I don't doubt that at all! My only point is causality. I do not agree that it's betting companies fault (whether they are on-chain or not). If there weren't ways to bet, these people would invent them.
seydor 6mo ago
But this is not insider trading, beause the insider event IS affected by the behavior of the gamblers. Normally the insider event should be uncorrelated and unknown to the gamblers
nicbou 6mo ago
If there is enough money on the table, gambles can influence real world events. Can you guarantee a fair trial when anyone can bet on the outcome, including the judge and the defense? It has changed the outcome of some sports matches. It could change the outcome of far more important events.
- charlieyu1 6mo ago
  A lot of trials aren’t fair anyway, they are just influenced in a different way that is not accessible if you are not rich and powerful
jcattle 6mo ago
There's a difference between insider trading and gambling no?
- pants2 6mo ago
  Is there? In gambling the house is the insider. They already know if you're going to win the next spin or not.
4gotunameagain 6mo ago
Insider trading by politicians means even more incentives for greedy people to pursue politics. The system is already very much like that, we should try to go in the other direction, not make it even more attractive for corrupt individuals. When someone in charge only cares about personal profit, it is only them that will benefit (and a couple of megacorps), to the detriment of millions, and humanity itself (look no further than the current events).
globular-toast 6mo ago
What's so fundamentally wrong with selling crack to addicts?
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
UncleMeat 6mo ago
Gamblers do care about losing their shirt. Appified gambling is just remarkably effective at getting humans to keep playing. It'd be one thing if we didn't hook up all of the dopamine feedback loops that we've developed over the past decade to a gambling machine but that's not the world we live in.
scarecrowbob 6mo ago
I mean, I certainly am looking forward to taking negative positions about the deaths of folks I am interested in... if I bet $50K that arowthway won't die suddenly then I am sure that probably won't happen, right?

wodenokoto 6mo ago

> The gamblers don't seem to care. Which makes me wonder if it is actually just money laundering.

amwet 6mo ago
The obvious counter example is lotteries. People just like to gamble.
- jessegeens 6mo ago
  Well, you can also use normal lotteries for money laundering: https://www.ftm.eu/articles/reynders-charged-in-money-laundering-probe https://www.ftm.eu/articles/reynders-charged-in-money-launde...
  - yorwba 6mo ago
    Because there's pre-existing demand for lottery tickets that provides some plausible deniability for the money-laundering use case. If prediction markets were primarily used to buy insurance against hard-to-avoid expensive events, that's what money launderers would trade in too, in order to blend in. Instead, most volume is in sports bets. People just like to gamble.
- Quarrelsome 6mo ago
  people like hope. In Dickens era the hope was that you'd discover you were a long lost bastard child of some wealthy aristocratic family. These days, its that you win the lottery. We shouldn't conflate permitting lotteries which give a lot of people precious hope, with enabling the disease of gambling addiction. Gambling addiction transforms its victims into desperate degenerate messes, who will do anything in order to reverse the outcome of their losses. By popularising gambling on reality (instead of a sandbox like sport) we're creating a future where such people will harass journalists, which further threatens our increasingly precarious relationship with truth.
xnx 6mo ago
How would money laundering work with a prediction market?

sznio 6mo ago

beyond the general idea that we shouldn't normalize gambling, betting on some real-life events is horrid. think about insider trading on a polymarket bet for someone's death.

CTDOCodebases 6mo ago
Or even worse what happens when people start gambling that someone won’t die today? It opens the door to crowdsourced hits with plausible deniability.
jstanley 6mo ago
You missed out the reason that it's horrid, which is that it is a plausibly-deniable way to crowdfund assassinations.
- Ray20 6mo ago
  So, the typical "It's only okay when the elites do it." Although, it's almost certain that such crowdfunding practices will lead to a radical democratization of society as a whole. Today, any bloody dictator, tyrant, or autocrat continues to kill people en masse simply because society lacks a sufficiently effective tool to guarantee the reliable transfer of funds to one of their henchmen should the issue with him be effectively resolved
  - jstanley 6mo ago
    I don't know how you got that from what I said. EDIT: Oh, I initially thought that you thought that I was saying that it's OK for the government to coordinate assassinations but not OK for other people to coordinate assassinations. Which is not what I said, I only said (implied) that it's not OK for other people to coordinate assassinations. I made no representation regarding whether I think it's OK for the government to coordinate assassinations. However, what I now think you're saying is that assassination markets would lead to fewer assassinations rather than more, because... if ordinary people could trade in assassination markets then they would choose to assassinate the government's assassins, and then the government would not react or respond in any way, so then the government would no longer be able to coordinate assassinations, and the general public would stop using the assassination market, and then the problem is solved. Is that right?

yen223 6mo ago

Matt Levine pointed out in a past article that the real danger of insider trading are company insiders being incentivised to damage the company to make a quick buck.

Terr_ 6mo ago
> insiders being incentivised to damage the company I'd like to emphasize that this incentive doesn't have to be an accidental find by the insider either: The "market" can end up facilitating anonymous crowd-sourced bribery by enemies or competitors, who create the potential for profit knowing that eventually an insider will take the other end of the implied deal. Every time I see someone dismissing these kinds of issues--especially someone whose salary depends on not-understanding it [0] --I imagine how their tune would change if the shoe was on the other foot. For example, if someone created a "prediction market" where people could anonymously bet on unusual deaths or serious injuries of... prediction-market executives. [0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/
- DonHopkins 6mo ago
  Luigi, let’s-a go!!! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TvWbOKJvZmk https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TvWbOKJvZmk
bluecalm 6mo ago
How is it different than shorting or buying put options and then damaging the company? The tools are already there.
- yorwba 6mo ago
  Yes, that's why insider trading is illegal.
- DonHopkins 6mo ago
  What other GTA missions and Mossad operations should we democratize with a small personal computerized device? https://youtu.be/RmUQptXfiWs?t=485 https://youtu.be/RmUQptXfiWs?t=485 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...

Quarrelsome 6mo ago

because the long term outcome is that truth will start to be defined by money. There's already been tales of journalists being harassed to change stories in order for over-leveraged betters to win polymarket bets. I HIGHLY recommend going onto a sports subreddit match thread during a match and seeing what people say, versus the post match thread, a few hours after the match. The difference in tone is striking. While some people are probably just passionate, I'm pretty sure the depths of vitriol (that border on things like death threats) are a consequence of gambling.

dzhiurgis 6mo ago
Journalists are most likely to profit from this too
neonstatic 6mo ago
> truth will start to be defined by money I'm a firm believer in 'there's nothing new under the sun'. > There's already been tales of journalists being harassed to change stories in order for over-leveraged betters to win polymarket bets. So the only thing that has changed is who is doing the harassing. > I'm pretty sure the depths of vitriol (that border on things like death threats) are a consequence of gambling. People who are "passionate" about sports have always been the most aggressive and vulgar. I grew up around them, this does not surprise me at all.
- Quarrelsome 6mo ago
  > People who are "passionate" about sports have always been the most aggressive and vulgar. Sure but I can't help but wonder if many of them have money riding on the games which makes their anger much more understandable. Perhaps those you grew up around were also having a bit of a flutter.
  - neonstatic 6mo ago
    Oh, for sure, I don't doubt that at all! My only point is causality. I do not agree that it's betting companies fault (whether they are on-chain or not). If there weren't ways to bet, these people would invent them.

seydor 6mo ago

But this is not insider trading, beause the insider event IS affected by the behavior of the gamblers. Normally the insider event should be uncorrelated and unknown to the gamblers

nicbou 6mo ago

If there is enough money on the table, gambles can influence real world events. Can you guarantee a fair trial when anyone can bet on the outcome, including the judge and the defense? It has changed the outcome of some sports matches. It could change the outcome of far more important events.

charlieyu1 6mo ago
A lot of trials aren’t fair anyway, they are just influenced in a different way that is not accessible if you are not rich and powerful

jcattle 6mo ago

There's a difference between insider trading and gambling no?

pants2 6mo ago
Is there? In gambling the house is the insider. They already know if you're going to win the next spin or not.

4gotunameagain 6mo ago

Insider trading by politicians means even more incentives for greedy people to pursue politics. The system is already very much like that, we should try to go in the other direction, not make it even more attractive for corrupt individuals. When someone in charge only cares about personal profit, it is only them that will benefit (and a couple of megacorps), to the detriment of millions, and humanity itself (look no further than the current events).

globular-toast 6mo ago

What's so fundamentally wrong with selling crack to addicts?

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]

UncleMeat 6mo ago

Gamblers do care about losing their shirt. Appified gambling is just remarkably effective at getting humans to keep playing. It'd be one thing if we didn't hook up all of the dopamine feedback loops that we've developed over the past decade to a gambling machine but that's not the world we live in.

scarecrowbob 6mo ago

I mean, I certainly am looking forward to taking negative positions about the deaths of folks I am interested in... if I bet $50K that arowthway won't die suddenly then I am sure that probably won't happen, right?