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> as they incentivize people with power to manipulate the real world I would argue that the ratio between "power" and "money to be won" is too big (at least ri
by WarmWash 5mo ago
> as they incentivize people with power to manipulate the real world
I would argue that the ratio between "power" and "money to be won" is too big (at least right now) for this to materially matter. No fortune 500 CEO is going to postpone a product launch so they can win $5,000 on polymarket. But some random guy will get his hair dryer to win a socially meaningless weather bet.
It's not discussed often, but the liquidity of these markets is often awful, and you can only win as much as people are willing to take the other side. Which is harder when people know it's easy for insiders (or the outcome decider themselves) to play the other side.
Basically the more socially consequential the outcome you control, the less likely you care about a betting market, and the less the betting market cares about you.
The real winners are people with little or no power to effect outcome, but with insider knowledge. And athletes.
- jubilanti 5mo ago> No fortune 500 CEO is going to postpone a product launch so they can win $5,000 on polymarket. No, but a low paid frontline worker with the ability to throw a last minute wrench into the gears absolutely would.
- WarmWash 5mo agoThey can already do this easily with the stock market. Usually though people's pay/power directly correlates with how badly they can screw the company if they go (legally) rogue. But anyone can get a job at XYZ, buy puts, and go and set the factory on fire the next day. Betting markets don't change the fact that you'll be arrested, except that you'll be arrested for a few thousand dollars rather than whatever you can squeeze out of options.
- bluGill 5mo agoThe difference is if someone sets fire to a factory that fire will be investigated and odds are that person will be caught (not always, but few people know how to set a fire that large and cover their tracks). By contracts someone who works in the factory is much more likely to be able to figure out how to "have an accident" doing something they normally do, everyone knows it is then but they just get a "do better next time" talking to, and the factory throws up some more guards.
- WarmWash 5mo agoAgain, you can already do this with the stock market.
- bluGill 5mo agoI am not rich enough to make a difference in the stock market. Some can but only a tiny minority.
- WarmWash 5mo ago>Some can but only a tiny minority. Anyone who can figure out "how to have an accident" can do it. A fire at an aluminum plant last year tanked Ford stock 6%. For a relatively boring stock like Ford, the right options would have moved 1000%+.
- freejazz 5mo ago> No fortune 500 CEO is going to postpone a product launch so they can win $5,000 on polymarket They would win a lot more than a trivial amount by taking adverse positions, no? Seems like you're making up your own hypothetical
- entropicdrifter 5mo agoYeah, they unironically just attacked a strawman and sat of their laurels
- WarmWash 5mo agoThey can take any position they want and do whatever they want, the point is that these oddball markets are very thin so there just isn't much money there to harvest. You can only bet $50M at your chosen risk if you can find enough people to take the other side, and these markets simply don't have many participants betting much money. Think of it like kids betting pennies what subject the teacher will open with the next day. The teacher doesn't care about winning $0.89, but the kids do.
- freejazz 5mo agoIt seems like it's a huge assumption on your part that the bets you are describing are in the "0.89" range and not something significantly higher, even disregarding what others pointed out about this having already provably occurred.
- solenoid0937 5mo agoI don't think the markets are thin, there are some bets that have made people many millions.
- somenameforme 5mo agoIt depends on the market of course. In looking it up the only markets that have ever come even close to that sort of payout are things like presidential elections where the risks of insiderism or gaming are negligible, and there's extremely large public interest in it. Nobody's making millions betting on things like the weather.
- ambicapter 5mo ago> It's not discussed often, but the liquidity of these markets is often awful, and you can only win as much as people are willing to take the other side. Which is harder when people know it's easy for insiders (or the outcome decider themselves) to play the other side. You're basically arguing that there aren't enough fools to go around, when we're talking about gambling enterprises.
- cyanydeez 5mo agoSo, what you're discussing is basically, whales are going to be the bettors and it sucks that there'll always be a bunch of marks but: No ones going to stop the whales because there'll always be suckers. Welcome to the grift economy, take a number.
- PowerElectronix 5mo agoNot fools, these bets are usually very close to a fair market price. But people are not willing to wager millions of dollars on the temperature registered in a certain place at a certain time. Or on if hezbollah missiles impact Israel land or whatever.
- bobthepanda 5mo agoThe latter kind of prediction has become less desirable to bet on ever since the shenanigans around whether or not Maduro's kidnapping counted as an invasion of Venezuela.
- ambicapter 5mo agoWhat fair market price are you talking about? The price decided by the prediction market?
- zeroonetwothree 5mo agoIf you compare prediction market implied odds to the actual odds that ended up they match very closely
- AtNightWeCode 5mo agoThe CEO of Coinbase finished an earnings call by reading all the buzzwords you could bet on to be mention during the call. So a CEO can manipulate these things and who knows if it was just a marketing thing or if he shared his plans.
- AtNightWeCode 5mo agoDownvotes on HN is always fascinating. Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/coinbase-ceo-s-bizarre-final-words-on-q3-call-just-paid-off-a-lucky-few/ar-AA1PxxSZ https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/coinbase-ceo-s-bizar...
- lxgr 5mo ago"I don't want to consider possibly living in a world in which this might be true" is definitely a specific genre of downvote.
- BeetleB 5mo agoAs long as he didn't place any bets, I think what he did is totally fine. If I find out my friends placed bets on whether I'll say X tomorrow, I'm not obligated to act as if I didn't know.
- epolanski 5mo agoHalf this board makes way more than the head of the federal reserve or the CIA director (225k/year). There's plenty of people able to influence events to whom these barely liquid bets can still amount to huge pay offs. That includes many CEOs whose compensation is tied to stock performance.
- daemin 5mo agoThere was a good Perun video on this topic which goes through the various ways in which a betting market can distort or affect a war effort (and can be applied to a larger organisation like a company) https://youtu.be/6lz3vTUbClc?si=_zLD1wI3TJ_ozbQZ https://youtu.be/6lz3vTUbClc?si=_zLD1wI3TJ_ozbQZ
- tombert 5mo agoDonald Trump made a fake school where he was telling single moms to max out their credit cards so that they could eventually take a photo in front of a cardboard cutout. This would be for like $5-10 grand Single moms historically don't have tons of extra money, and Trump was ostensibly a billionaire.