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Just wait until they start killing people to win bets. It's going to happen. It'll happy by proxy too. When they figure 90% of Tesla's or SpaceX's valuation i

by echelon 6mo ago

Just wait until they start killing people to win bets. It's going to happen. It'll happy by proxy too. When they figure 90% of Tesla's or SpaceX's valuation is tied to Elon, suddenly he becomes your mark.

lostlogin 6mo ago
Not sure that he has done wonders for Tesla sales over the last few years, and he collected enemies quicker than most.
- sixothree 6mo ago
  It's fine. People quickly forget the "bad stuff".
dlenski 6mo ago
> Just wait until they start killing people to win bets. Quite likely it has already happened. There's been an enormous amount of betting on various military strikes by the Trump administration, much of which looks like insider trading. Almost certainly there have been insiders with money on the line who were financially motivated to launch lethal attacks, which they might have otherwise paused or delayed.
- Dylan16807 6mo ago
  Why almost certainly? It's much more effective to make the decision first and the bet second.
  - dlenski 6mo ago
    > It's much more effective to make the decision first and the bet second. What did I say that contradicts this? > Why almost certainly? Because I haven't seen any clear reporting with evidence documented down to the level of individual decision-making.
    - Dylan16807 6mo ago
      > What did I say that contradicts this? I'm pointing out that the version where the market causes the decision is the much less effective way to do things. So I don't think it's so certain to have happened. When the decision comes first it's still a problem but it's a very different problem. I should make this explicit, I guess: If you make the decisions before betting, you don't really care what the market says beforehand, you'll make plenty of money either way.
      - dlenski 6mo ago
        (Having seen your edited and clarified comment, I think we basically agree.) > the version where the market influences the decision is the much less effective way to do things. Okay, so two possible scenarios: "market influences decision" and "decision influences market." 1. Polymarket offers a contract called something like: "Will the US launch any lethal boat strikes in the Caribbean on April 30, 2026?" A commander of a drone unit for the US military bets $500 on "yes". At 11:51pm on April 30, he's trying to decide whether or not to issue an order to fire on a boat, or to wait 15 minutes for better visual identification of the target. As a result of his bet on Polymarket, he's strongly incentivized to issue the order right now. 2. It's 11:51pm on April 30. A commander of a drone unit for the US military is reviewing images of a potential target boat. He idly opens a browser tab to Polymarket. Lo and behold, he sees that the odds of "Will the US launch any lethal boat strikes in the Caribbean on April 30, 2026?" are at only 0.3%. He's strongly incentivized to issue an order to strike right now and to quickly buy that Polymarket contract before news of the strike breaks. Does it matter which of these two scenarios might actually be taking place? I don't think so.
  - e28eta 6mo ago
    Sure, but then what if in the several hours before the decision is executed, new information comes in? Your decision maker is now going to make decisions differently than they would if they hadn’t made the bet, due to the financial incentive. It hopefully won’t be blatant, but they’re going to be more committed to the original decision.
  - fwip 6mo ago
    The payout is much higher if you make an unlikely thing happen. "Unlikely things" in politics & warfare are probably highly correlated with irrational or irresponsible decisions.
    - Dylan16807 6mo ago
      If you're in a decision-making position you have lots of events passing by. Your limits are in trying not to get caught, not in searching for the biggest ratios for single bets. Also there's plenty of things that are unlikely because they're specific, not because they're irrational. Things happening in specific date ranges are an easy one.
ipython 6mo ago
In a sense, that's already happened. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/kalshi-sued-over-ouster-iran-leader-prediction-market-2026-03-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/kalshi-sued-over-o... and https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/18/iran-war-bets-ethics-concerns https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/18/iran-war-bets-... > Later, a single user would make over $550,000 after betting that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would topple, just moments before his assassination by Israeli forces.
- ianferrel 6mo ago
  It hasn't happened in this case. Your example has causality reversed. Khamenei wasn't killed because there was a prediction market about the political leadership of Iran.
  - dhosek 6mo ago
    On the other hand, given the regime’s desire to keep internal communications secret, maybe the causality does stem from the bet.
  - ipython 6mo ago
    It is interesting, though, that a large bet was placed not long before the assassination attempt that paid out $550k. By definition, killing the leader does imply that they are no longer the political leader of the country. It is entirely possible that there was causality in the forward direction if the bettor had inside information about the assassination operation beforehand.
    - kqr 6mo ago
      Inside information is not the same as causing the outcome. I knew my previous employer was getting acquired before the markets did -- I had inside information -- but I had no way to make the deal go through. Revealing inside information through prediction markets is mostly fine. You may think people shouldn't need a financial incentive to do so but clearly they do, and clearly other people are willing to put up with that money for it.
peterbonney 6mo ago
The total open interest of all major prediction markets is barely over a billion dollars. (1) That's the total amount of money currently wagered on ALL contracts across all platforms. There are roughly 2,500 individual companies listed in the US alone with a market cap that exceeds 1 billion dollars. Tesla's market cap is 1.4 trillion - about 1,000 times the size of all prediction markets put together. In other words, to the extent this incentive is of societal concern, it is not because of prediction markets - that is the tail wagging the dog. Edit: to be clear I think these markets are a scourge as they currently operate, but not for this reason. (1) https://predik.io/en/blog/open-interest-mercados-prediccion-record-historico-2026-en https://predik.io/en/blog/open-interest-mercados-prediccion-...
gizajob 6mo ago
Don’t even need a gambling marketplace for that - could already put a massive short on TSLA and have a pop at Elon if you were so motivated.
- avidiax 6mo ago
  I don't think you even need to attack anybody to do this. Just have an AI media package ready for the top-N CEOs, and wait for any incident involving their name and "injured", "hospital", "attacked", etc. Then short the stock, go to social media and show the CEO being transported in an ambulance, or a gurney with a sheet over it, "X still missing", whatever. Probably automatable, and simply counting on automated systems and panic selling. Might be possible just with the AI package these days (not even requiring a traditional media article).
jsw97 6mo ago
This hypothetical situation had existed since the dawn of capital markets, or at least since the dawn of short selling. I don’t think we’ve ever seen anyone get assassinated to make a short bet pay off though.
- AnthonyMouse 6mo ago
  And there is an obvious reason for this. Murder is very illegal. You therefore don't need short selling to be illegal because if someone sells short without killing anyone then that's fine, and if they do assassinate someone then you don't need to be able to charge them with short selling because you can charge them with murder. Notice also that the murder (or tampering with sensors etc.) is the thing you don't want happening in your jurisdiction, so that's the thing you have to prohibit anyway, because even if you ban short selling or prediction markets in your jurisdiction, having them in any other jurisdiction in the world would allow anyone to just place their bet there and you're right back to needing to deter that by punishing the murder rather than the bet.
GolfPopper 6mo ago
Assassination markets where being discussed back in the 1990s.[1] I think it's been pretty clear for a while that "prediction" markets were going to arrive at the same place. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market
clifdweller 6mo ago
That has proven not to be the case with sports betting. Otherwise every major league pitcher would be needing armed guards to stop all the people with pipes trying to disable them. Seems there is at least some morality to not harm people but no issue in harming temperature sensors so where is the split line? Some really annoying ones like trains being on time can impact thousands yet i could see someone stepping out on tracks to make a train break to delay it to win a bet
- dlenski 6mo ago
  > That has proven not to be the case with sports betting. Otherwise every major league pitcher would be needing armed guards to stop all the people with pipes trying to disable them. This is a ridiculously over-broad claim. First of all, prediction markets shift incentives in a pernicious way; they don't magically erase or override all pre-existing incentive structures. And secondly, professional athletes of all stripes appear to be receiving a lot more threats of violence from gamblers (including "prediction market traders") than they were a few years ago.
- alwa 6mo ago
  In fact sports bodies are complaining of exactly that being the case, and in much more obscure leagues than Major League Baseball (whose pitchers are presumably accustomed to, and compensated for, the hazards of celebrity): 'Decapitated bodies, death threats, that's our daily life': Tennis players, helpless targets of angry gamblers [ https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/12/08/decapitated-bodies-death-threats-that-s-our-daily-life-tennis-players-helpless-targets-of-angry-gamblers_6748257_7.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/12/08/decapita... ] https://www.wtatennis.com/news/4288181/wta-and-itf-release-abuse-report-call-on-gambling-industry-to-act https://www.wtatennis.com/news/4288181/wta-and-itf-release-a... When the vice industry kept gamblers mainly confined to their own community, it was ugly enough (see the “people with pipes” debt collection trope you refer to). I don’t care too much about how people get their jollies. But I don’t see much good in letting vice behaviors and motivations slop out onto the wider world uninvited. To your question, then: I’d draw the moral line at “don’t base forecasting gambles on any indicator produced by someone who didn’t agree to be used that way.” If I—as the entity or constituency who incurs the cost to produce an indicator—want to hire the prediction market to run bets on it at arms’ length from me, fine. If not, no. The burden should be on the gambling interests to prove they’re contributing value to a specific domain, not on everyone else in every domain to prove gambling’s specific negative externalities.

by echelon 6mo ago

lostlogin 6mo ago

Not sure that he has done wonders for Tesla sales over the last few years, and he collected enemies quicker than most.

sixothree 6mo ago
It's fine. People quickly forget the "bad stuff".

dlenski 6mo ago

> Just wait until they start killing people to win bets. Quite likely it has already happened. There's been an enormous amount of betting on various military strikes by the Trump administration, much of which looks like insider trading. Almost certainly there have been insiders with money on the line who were financially motivated to launch lethal attacks, which they might have otherwise paused or delayed.

Dylan16807 6mo ago
Why almost certainly? It's much more effective to make the decision first and the bet second.
- dlenski 6mo ago
  > It's much more effective to make the decision first and the bet second. What did I say that contradicts this? > Why almost certainly? Because I haven't seen any clear reporting with evidence documented down to the level of individual decision-making.
  - Dylan16807 6mo ago
    > What did I say that contradicts this? I'm pointing out that the version where the market causes the decision is the much less effective way to do things. So I don't think it's so certain to have happened. When the decision comes first it's still a problem but it's a very different problem. I should make this explicit, I guess: If you make the decisions before betting, you don't really care what the market says beforehand, you'll make plenty of money either way.
    - dlenski 6mo ago
      (Having seen your edited and clarified comment, I think we basically agree.) > the version where the market influences the decision is the much less effective way to do things. Okay, so two possible scenarios: "market influences decision" and "decision influences market." 1. Polymarket offers a contract called something like: "Will the US launch any lethal boat strikes in the Caribbean on April 30, 2026?" A commander of a drone unit for the US military bets $500 on "yes". At 11:51pm on April 30, he's trying to decide whether or not to issue an order to fire on a boat, or to wait 15 minutes for better visual identification of the target. As a result of his bet on Polymarket, he's strongly incentivized to issue the order right now. 2. It's 11:51pm on April 30. A commander of a drone unit for the US military is reviewing images of a potential target boat. He idly opens a browser tab to Polymarket. Lo and behold, he sees that the odds of "Will the US launch any lethal boat strikes in the Caribbean on April 30, 2026?" are at only 0.3%. He's strongly incentivized to issue an order to strike right now and to quickly buy that Polymarket contract before news of the strike breaks. Does it matter which of these two scenarios might actually be taking place? I don't think so.
- e28eta 6mo ago
  Sure, but then what if in the several hours before the decision is executed, new information comes in? Your decision maker is now going to make decisions differently than they would if they hadn’t made the bet, due to the financial incentive. It hopefully won’t be blatant, but they’re going to be more committed to the original decision.
- fwip 6mo ago
  The payout is much higher if you make an unlikely thing happen. "Unlikely things" in politics & warfare are probably highly correlated with irrational or irresponsible decisions.
  - Dylan16807 6mo ago
    If you're in a decision-making position you have lots of events passing by. Your limits are in trying not to get caught, not in searching for the biggest ratios for single bets. Also there's plenty of things that are unlikely because they're specific, not because they're irrational. Things happening in specific date ranges are an easy one.

ipython 6mo ago

In a sense, that's already happened. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/kalshi-sued-over-ouster-iran-leader-prediction-market-2026-03-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/kalshi-sued-over-o... and https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/18/iran-war-bets-ethics-concerns https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/18/iran-war-bets-... > Later, a single user would make over $550,000 after betting that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would topple, just moments before his assassination by Israeli forces.

ianferrel 6mo ago
It hasn't happened in this case. Your example has causality reversed. Khamenei wasn't killed because there was a prediction market about the political leadership of Iran.
- dhosek 6mo ago
  On the other hand, given the regime’s desire to keep internal communications secret, maybe the causality does stem from the bet.
- ipython 6mo ago
  It is interesting, though, that a large bet was placed not long before the assassination attempt that paid out $550k. By definition, killing the leader does imply that they are no longer the political leader of the country. It is entirely possible that there was causality in the forward direction if the bettor had inside information about the assassination operation beforehand.
  - kqr 6mo ago
    Inside information is not the same as causing the outcome. I knew my previous employer was getting acquired before the markets did -- I had inside information -- but I had no way to make the deal go through. Revealing inside information through prediction markets is mostly fine. You may think people shouldn't need a financial incentive to do so but clearly they do, and clearly other people are willing to put up with that money for it.

peterbonney 6mo ago

The total open interest of all major prediction markets is barely over a billion dollars. (1) That's the total amount of money currently wagered on ALL contracts across all platforms. There are roughly 2,500 individual companies listed in the US alone with a market cap that exceeds 1 billion dollars. Tesla's market cap is 1.4 trillion - about 1,000 times the size of all prediction markets put together. In other words, to the extent this incentive is of societal concern, it is not because of prediction markets - that is the tail wagging the dog. Edit: to be clear I think these markets are a scourge as they currently operate, but not for this reason. (1) https://predik.io/en/blog/open-interest-mercados-prediccion-record-historico-2026-en https://predik.io/en/blog/open-interest-mercados-prediccion-...

gizajob 6mo ago

Don’t even need a gambling marketplace for that - could already put a massive short on TSLA and have a pop at Elon if you were so motivated.

avidiax 6mo ago
I don't think you even need to attack anybody to do this. Just have an AI media package ready for the top-N CEOs, and wait for any incident involving their name and "injured", "hospital", "attacked", etc. Then short the stock, go to social media and show the CEO being transported in an ambulance, or a gurney with a sheet over it, "X still missing", whatever. Probably automatable, and simply counting on automated systems and panic selling. Might be possible just with the AI package these days (not even requiring a traditional media article).

jsw97 6mo ago

This hypothetical situation had existed since the dawn of capital markets, or at least since the dawn of short selling. I don’t think we’ve ever seen anyone get assassinated to make a short bet pay off though.

AnthonyMouse 6mo ago
And there is an obvious reason for this. Murder is very illegal. You therefore don't need short selling to be illegal because if someone sells short without killing anyone then that's fine, and if they do assassinate someone then you don't need to be able to charge them with short selling because you can charge them with murder. Notice also that the murder (or tampering with sensors etc.) is the thing you don't want happening in your jurisdiction, so that's the thing you have to prohibit anyway, because even if you ban short selling or prediction markets in your jurisdiction, having them in any other jurisdiction in the world would allow anyone to just place their bet there and you're right back to needing to deter that by punishing the murder rather than the bet.

GolfPopper 6mo ago

Assassination markets where being discussed back in the 1990s.[1] I think it's been pretty clear for a while that "prediction" markets were going to arrive at the same place. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market

clifdweller 6mo ago

That has proven not to be the case with sports betting. Otherwise every major league pitcher would be needing armed guards to stop all the people with pipes trying to disable them. Seems there is at least some morality to not harm people but no issue in harming temperature sensors so where is the split line? Some really annoying ones like trains being on time can impact thousands yet i could see someone stepping out on tracks to make a train break to delay it to win a bet

dlenski 6mo ago
> That has proven not to be the case with sports betting. Otherwise every major league pitcher would be needing armed guards to stop all the people with pipes trying to disable them. This is a ridiculously over-broad claim. First of all, prediction markets shift incentives in a pernicious way; they don't magically erase or override all pre-existing incentive structures. And secondly, professional athletes of all stripes appear to be receiving a lot more threats of violence from gamblers (including "prediction market traders") than they were a few years ago.
alwa 6mo ago
In fact sports bodies are complaining of exactly that being the case, and in much more obscure leagues than Major League Baseball (whose pitchers are presumably accustomed to, and compensated for, the hazards of celebrity): 'Decapitated bodies, death threats, that's our daily life': Tennis players, helpless targets of angry gamblers [ https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/12/08/decapitated-bodies-death-threats-that-s-our-daily-life-tennis-players-helpless-targets-of-angry-gamblers_6748257_7.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/12/08/decapita... ] https://www.wtatennis.com/news/4288181/wta-and-itf-release-abuse-report-call-on-gambling-industry-to-act https://www.wtatennis.com/news/4288181/wta-and-itf-release-a... When the vice industry kept gamblers mainly confined to their own community, it was ugly enough (see the “people with pipes” debt collection trope you refer to). I don’t care too much about how people get their jollies. But I don’t see much good in letting vice behaviors and motivations slop out onto the wider world uninvited. To your question, then: I’d draw the moral line at “don’t base forecasting gambles on any indicator produced by someone who didn’t agree to be used that way.” If I—as the entity or constituency who incurs the cost to produce an indicator—want to hire the prediction market to run bets on it at arms’ length from me, fine. If not, no. The burden should be on the gambling interests to prove they’re contributing value to a specific domain, not on everyone else in every domain to prove gambling’s specific negative externalities.