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NPR finds "no sign" of Polymarket at its Panama HQ address
- ChrisMarshallNY 5mo agoSo Polymarket is a Web3 outfit?
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- jcgrillo 5mo ago"Court filings show the law office also did work for FTX" If the shoe fits..
- londons_explore 5mo agoIt might as well be a regular website. The crypto bit adds nothing since 99.9% of users just use the webUI.
- skywhopper 5mo agoPolymarket engages in scammy behavior?? Wait, isn’t that their entire business model?
- EdwardDiego 5mo agoThe part where all their legal troubles went away when one of the President's sons became an "advisor" says "yes".
- forshaper 5mo agoI don't get it. Most companies registered in the state I live in, for example, are not actually located here. They simply receive mail through their registered agent there. Why would this be news?
- Carioca 5mo ago> Why would this be news? Mostly because international litigation is, let's say, fraught issues (as in "good luck!")
- forshaper 5mo agoYes. Is that news?
- Extropy_ 5mo agoThey acknowledge this in the article as well, surprisingly enough. > Corporate law experts say while there is nothing illegal about housing a business inside a shell company, the practice is often a strategic move to protect a firm's wealth or shield it against lawsuits and action from government regulators. What is the thought process of someone writing this? Does this article have any meaningful or critical thought behind it?
- forshaper 5mo agoI guess we're scratching our heads, and even we clicked.
- janalsncm 5mo agoIt isn’t newsworthy for people who believe the laws around corporate transparency and accountability are good enough. Many people do not, which is why it is noteworthy, even if it is standard.
- horacemorace 5mo agoThey’re avoiding editorializing. PBS news has the same dry “facts only” flavor. Legitimate reporting takes the high road; corpo-media too often take the low road. Unfortunately human information consumers tend to gravitate toward sources of maximum opinion.
- ThomW 5mo agoWhy are Americans allowed to invest in a business that would be illegal if based in the US? Why can they be patrons? Idgi
- kube-system 5mo agoBreaking the law doesn’t follow the transitive property. Many businesses that people interact with have done illegal things. You typically can do business with someone as long as you aren’t breaking the law in doing so.
- kristopolous 5mo agoMost of the things you buy are manufactured under conditions that aren't legal in the US as well. It doesn't make it acceptable, just endemic
- fc417fc802 5mo agoWhy wouldn't they be allowed to? If (suppose) the UK completely banned the sale of tobacco under any circumstances should a UK citizen be forbidden from investing in a US tobacco company? Why? Polymarket is forbidden to sell their product within the US. That doesn't mean they can't take investment from or employ or even be headquartered in the US.
- NooneAtAll3 5mo agoto be fair, empty non-existing official office is nothing new. iirc, Delaware has a warehouse that's official residence of hundreds of corporations (for tax reasons) I don't understand the rest of the article, tho... It complains that company that (officially) left the US market and already blocks US ips from participating... isn't doing enough? Officially there's no ground to demand more If you really want to solve the problem - start hunting down unofficial means. Investigate influencers that started mentioning Polymarket out of the blue. Look into news outlets that decided to start mentioning polymarket as supposed proxy of popular opinion. Start advertizing campaigns against gambling addiction the same way as against smoking
- anikom15 5mo agoIt’s not for tax reasons. It’s for legal reasons. You can’t escape taxes just by putting your headquarters in a certain location, but where your registered agent is controls your jurisdiction for disputes.
- hx8 5mo agoI'm sure this is true for thousands and thousands of companies.
- EA-3167 5mo agoMaybe that should be discouraged? Even if you don't think so, most companies aren't de facto attempts to skirt gambling regulations while also incentivizing corruption and fraud in everyday life.
- OutOfHere 5mo agoExactly. It is true for every out-of-state Delaware registered firm. Those who don't understand it don't know even the basics of business.
- dweez 5mo agoIf you follow Apple's official address to a lawyer's office in Delaware, don't be surprised that Tim Cook isn't there to greet you.
- EA-3167 5mo agoFor what it's worth the only "official address" I could find was Apple Park in Cupertino.
- kibwen 5mo agoApple is registered in California, as both their website ( https://investor.apple.com/faq/default.aspx https://investor.apple.com/faq/default.aspx ) and their most recent form 8-K ( https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320193/beb2c243-4eda-4029-b91d-123de22558be.html https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320193/beb2c24... ) confirm.
- kjkjadksj 5mo ago[flagged]
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- dewey 5mo agoThey have 6000 employees located in Ireland including most of their support staff for the EU. They just opened another office in Dublin. They are also there for 45 years already, so not sure where "just a po box" comes from. https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/apple-to-open-dublin-city-office-with-300-strong-team-planned https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/apple-to-open-dubli...
- rsynnott 5mo agoBig PO box; it's a little under 100,000sqm.
- trollbridge 5mo ago
- gordian-mind 5mo ago"the wildly popular prediction market site that has flourished in President Trump's second term." The only purpose I could see for this intro is to prime the reader negatively before any argument.
- fc417fc802 5mo agoThat statement is both accurate and relevant. They provide a revenue comparison and some relevant regulatory context in the article.
- xiphias2 5mo agoThere's an easy way for polymarket to have a nice office in a nice city in USA: legalize it there and have nice enough regulations and incentives for it to move there. It would help a lot actually for protecting people's money instead of driving it offshore. But it doesn't look like making USA compete in this $15B market is NPR's goal with this article.
- BowBun 5mo agoGood on NPR. These markets are a cancer on society and should be outlawed further.
- sophrosyne42 5mo agoI have yet to see an argument against them that isn't more than personal disgust
- otterley 5mo agoHow hard are you looking? "I haven't seen arguments" doesn't mean much if you're not looking for them. You might as well have had a blindfold on. It's as meaningful as saying "I haven't seen arguments as to why Rust eliminates memory safety bugs." Here's an example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK230628/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK230628/ This is another excellent article that discusses some of the problems, and has links to other such articles: https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/polymarket-kalshi-betting-profits-prediction-markets-eb23ac11?st=g8z5G6&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/polymarket-kalshi-bett...
- sophrosyne42 5mo agoI'm not looking, I am sharing my observations on what people here and other discussion forums tend to be saying. I don't really see what you have presented as an "argument" against polymarket. [1] tells us that it has costs and benefits. Well everything has costs and benefits, but those are subjective anyway. That is not an argument against it and cannot be, because no science can tell you what is good or bad (i.e. what counts as benefit or cost), let alone whether the good outweighs the bad. [2] tells us that polymarket exhibits the same property as any other securities market, which is that only a very small amount of players tend to make a profit. Again, that is not an argument against it unless you want to include some kind of resentment or digust that some profit more than others. Inequality of profits is both expected and unconcerning. The social function of the stock exchange is not to ensure everyone receives a fair or equal profit, but to ensure that the pricing of ventures and assets is correctly (as is possible) adjusted to expected future demand of consumers. For polymarket, the function is to express information about expectations of future events. There are straightforward economics reasons why polymarket and similar institution tends towards expressing our expectations about future events.
- NDlurker 5mo agoWater is wet
- tick_tock_tick 5mo agoWhat happened to the quality of NPR over the last dozen or so years it's just gotten worse and worse.
- otterley 5mo agoI'm shocked--shocked--that a company with the integrity and upright moral character of Polymarket would have their registered agent located in Panama. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers#Illegal_activities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers#Illegal_activiti... https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/the-panama-papers-how-the-worlds-rich-and-famous-hide-their-money-offshore https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/the-panama-pape... (Wow. It's only been 10 years since the leak occurred? How time flies.)
- exogeny 5mo agoPolymarket is based in NYC, in Soho, on Crosby Street. Knock yourself out if you want to go find anyone there.
- dayyan 5mo ago"NPR finds 'no sign' of Polymarket's office; sources say the reporting team was 'deeply unsettled' to find a company operating without a mandatory 40-minute 'Land Acknowledgment' in the lobby."
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- fooqux 5mo agoIsn't this grounds for having their domain name revoked?
- NDlurker 5mo agoWut?
- fc417fc802 5mo agoPresumably it's grounds for the registrar to send them a notice to update their information. But also having a domain name shouldn't require an impressum. The current domain registration system is complete BS.
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- OutOfHere 5mo agoThere is nothing to see here. Thousands of businesses, based both inside and outside the country, use a legal address where they don't have an office. Literally every out-of-state Delaware-registered firm does it.
- balderdash 5mo agoIt’s such clickbait to purposely conflate the word headquarters with legal domicile / registered agent. I mean Garmin, Medtronic, Accenture, Aon etc are all non-us businesses but no one shows up in Switzerland looking for Garmin, they go to Kansas…
- fc417fc802 5mo agoBut if you did show up to their Swiss address presumably the representative there would know who you were talking about and be able to confirm that they are in fact a client.
- balderdash 5mo agoThen why not write that story?
- fc417fc802 5mo agoWhat story? "Garmin registered agent successfully confirmed" seems much less likely to be of interest than "polymarket registered agent fails confirmation, possible fraud afoot".
- sidewndr46 5mo agoIs that giant building you can see from the highway in Kansas their headquarters? I was surprised to see it.
- Yizahi 5mo agoSwitzerland is a tax evasion heaven too. Companies don't go there for the "predictable legal framework" lol, they go there to do shady schemes of tax "optimization".
- Yizahi 5mo agoNot the first time. Tether's "bank" for multiple years had been a tiny house at Bahamas, barely barely as big as a gas station shop. And supposedly it held 100+ billions real US dollars :) . These scammers aren't concerning themselves with even a false facade, as long as government explicitly allows them to operate. And no bribes... ahem... lobbying is involved.