I'm willing go bet a lot of people making weird bets like this are doing the equivalent of insider trading. The whole concept of betting on random news is ripe for the opportunity for people with insider knowledge to always win big off of the losses of gambling addicts.
Yeah unlike sports where at least the games are ostensibly fair, heavily scrutinized, and managed by organizations that try to stop this. Even then it still happens sometimes.
This system is just completely unenforceable insanity.
This is the least of it. Representatives entire families are set for life. Somehow, everybody in their family gets stinking rich after election, and their book is always a "NYTimes best seller" because they are bought by the campaign (and dumped in a landfill), insider trading is rampant, super-PACs.
I'm okay with someone in the military picking up some extra cash. Family has to eat, whether government is "shut down" or not. I hope it was some smart ass buck private.
In the USA politics is the number three easiest way to achieve "financial security", only inheritors and prosperity gospel preachers have it easier.
Social Media is its own beast, but there people can talk shit near anonymous, talk is cheap. With these betting sites, people are putting money in front, which people won't do without some inside info.
Selection bias. Bad people die all the time, and then we forget about them (or never learn about them) because they stop being in the spotlight.
Nobody talks about the Koch Brothers or the Waltons anymore, as they've degraded to irrelevance. Nobody talks about the Carnegies or Fords or Hoovers anymore, for the same reason.
Steve Jobs was an evil fuck and he's gone now, so he's off the radar.
Meanwhile, nobody had Lucky Palmer pegged as a sociopath ten years ago and now he's doing James Bond Villain tier war crimes.
The one who bets for Thiel being dead collects the money if that happens. They would also benefit from actually carrying out the deed. These markets are essentially crowdfunding for dirty stuff.
You have to be an idiot to gamble at these sites. I already feel like an idiot for having money in the stock market with all the insider trading, but thanks to inflation you're fucked if you do and fucked if you don't.
It's a ponzi scheme supporting millions of people's retirements, myself included.
Ideally we have social security, which is a much more regulated and carefully managed ponzi scheme but the people in power use it like a piggy bank because it's not like they're going to be around when it runs dry.
I live in a country with a quite strong social security scheme, but the money in our social security funds, like pensions, is mostly invested in the stock market anyways.
The fact that you end up potentially gambling against insiders like this is one thing that makes these bet on anything sites so dumb to interact with in the first place. Which also makes me not really care about this particular grift.
Gambling on something like this is definitely risky, but it's not as risky if you're using it to bet on something more defined like sports or who will win the next presidential election.
If someone is going to rig the sports game, then it's now rigged for all people betting on that game at all locations, not just here.
And at a decentralized platform like this, that should ultimately be safer than the alternatives.
Tbf it's not that weird, the death was so suspicious some theorized at the time that he wasn't even killed, the pics faked his death and the state "confirmed" it but in reality they shipped him off somewhere quiet to continue his Mossad blackmail ring.
Idk if that's true but honestly we're talking about a Mossad agent that had dirt on everyone and state level actors who would have been the help, it is possible, very possible, that it's true, but afaik there's no evidence other than speculation, so it probably isn't. I'm agnostic on it personally.
I guess I was just expecting to see that one. But there's something fun about these conspiracy theories being open to gambling. I'm gonna bet on steel beams not being able to melt with jet fuel. Gonna mortage my house on that!
Their point is interesting, though. There's a lot of important stuff in the far future for which accurate odds would help society, but it's effectively impossible to bet on because of high inflation and rug pulls.
Right now we only have secondary indicators, like homeowners insurance pulling out of Florida.
You can't really stop it when you make a decentralized platform like that.
It's like saying we made cash and we knew people would fund terrorism with it but oh well.
A decentralized betting platform has benefits. It also has detriments.
Any website involved is really just a front end. It's on the blockchain and can be used regardless of website and its there forever now, but the website definitely makes it easier to use.
Grifting and and inequality is a baked in part of capitalism. I don't think you can get around it without fundamentally shifting your approach to money
If the owners do have a way to prevent something at the smart contract level, and that was ever compromised (e.g arrested by FBI) and someone was able to just prevent all bets, absolutely nothing is stopping someone else from copying the contracts, removing that ability, and re uploading it.
The real answer is nuanced, but a combination of "it wasn't, until bribary", "enforcement is difficult", "it's built to be nuanced around regulation", "it depends where", and "it's decentralized"
Legally they are not betting against the house. People are betting against each other on if a certain event will happen, and the site takes a set percentage for facilitating the bets. This makes it legal under gambling laws in most US States.
It probably can't be stopped either at this point.
Assuming it was illegal, they could arrest the developers because they are earning money on it, but arresting them and taking the website down won't stop people from using it as it's smart contract based on a blockchain. The website is just the front end, the blockchain/smart contract is the backend.
So now you gotta go after the individuals using it, who could annonymize their funds through something like Tornado Cash, making it pretty hard to stop.
No, roulette is still betting against the house. A more apt comparison is poker, the house has nothing to do with the outcome or the game and has no stakes in the winner or loser when legal. This is why many will either take a percentage of the pot to recoop the cost of facilitating the game and dealer, about 2% I think, or have a membership fee. In many states poker only card houses or card clubs are completely legal.
Polymarket, Kalshi and others are Insider trading systems camoflauged as a "Truth Seeker" but at the end, It is a gamble even worse than a gambling casino.
The insider trader has a incentive to stack odds against oneself and "beat" a better likelihood in the market.
Even as a truth finder, It works at the last second before the actual reveal.
Anyone can dispute a proposed market resolution if they feel it was proposed in error. Once a market is proposed for resolution it goes into a challenge period of 2 hours. If no one challenges the proposal the resolution is deemed valid and the proposer receives their bond back plus the reward. During the 2-hour challenge period, anyone may dispute the proposal on the UMA dapp by posting a challenge bond of the same amount as the proposer bond (usually $750). This begins the debate period of 24-48 hours (votes happen every other day and there will always be at least 24 hours for discussion). Anyone wishing to contribute evidence to the discussion can do so in the Uma Discord server in the #evidence-rationale and #voting-discussion channels. After the debate period, Uma token holders vote (this process takes approximately 48 hours)
I also read that there's some rule chaneges (on what is considered yes/no) by polymark on some bets and general complaints, don't know if those are just sore losers or valid but I'd read up on that if you want to bet on the platform, I've never used the service.
If you offer enough odds, someone would take it just to make you shit your pants and prove it. A one penny bet with $10,000 payout? Maybe you forget about it and come 2026 some idiot takes you for a wad-o-cash.
eh, when there's large discrepancies it's more so about making $ on the swings up until the event passes. it's called arbitrage, it's not gambling if you know the actual likely result...then it's just mathing out the risk/reward and win/loss ratios
Till Jan 5th or earlier would have been suspicious. Jan 31 is the safe bet. The US had sent a carrier group and some people mentioned that the costs dictate that they had to act within one month.
How does that platform work? Can you still place bets when rockets hit Venezuela? Can you still place bets when people speculate he was already abducted?
You can still bet on near certain events / events in progress, but there's not necessarily a benefit in doing so as the odds shift. If something is believed to have a 50% chance of occurring then theoretically the bet would cost 0.5 for a payout of 1 (of you win). As the outcome becomes more (or less) likely, the cost of the bet changes to reflect that. In a prediction market, it's similar to stock market in that in order for you to buy a share / place a prediction bet, someone has to be selling a share/taking the other side of the bet and the prices shift based on perceived value of the underlying thing being traded (stocks or predictions).
But I still don't see the problem with the way the guy won. The actual problems are the gambling website itself and people being stupid/gullible/addicted enough to waste money on it.
In a regulated market this sort of thing would be called "insider trading" and is highly illegal, usually. Then again betting on unregulated "markets" is just asking to be ripped by people with insider info
they should have been trying to alert people to it
They would probably end up being criminally prosecuted for leaking the info, and I doubt some rando would be believed this stuff anyway, or even be able to reach any relevant audience. Unless they were a journalist (apparently some knew about it but kept silent), but again, leaking this would be suicidal.
They profited off having good connections in a powerful imperialist state, and the naïve gamblers; dead civilians were irrelevant for the outcome. There's way too many layers of rot at play for me to find this story in specific to be notably bad.
I prefer seeing these as predictive markets than (only) degenerate gambling. They've been shown to be pretty accurate in predicting a lot of things. Can be useful crowdsourcing gut checks.
So you can predict that rich assholes will come out on top every single time and with that metric sure it can be a predictive market. But not accurate.
I'm willing go bet a lot of people making weird bets like this are doing the equivalent of insider trading. The whole concept of betting on random news is ripe for the opportunity for people with insider knowledge to always win big off of the losses of gambling addicts.
That's the point of those platforms, to bribe the people with that knowledge to reveal it.
They would still make money since they take a cut off every bet. Just not as much as selling their insider data.
Which, fwiw, night be a feature not a downside? Transparency if the fact is juicy enough.
Yeah unlike sports where at least the games are ostensibly fair, heavily scrutinized, and managed by organizations that try to stop this. Even then it still happens sometimes.
This system is just completely unenforceable insanity.
Of course it is and the creators know that. But it's profitable
This is the least of it. Representatives entire families are set for life. Somehow, everybody in their family gets stinking rich after election, and their book is always a "NYTimes best seller" because they are bought by the campaign (and dumped in a landfill), insider trading is rampant, super-PACs.
I'm okay with someone in the military picking up some extra cash. Family has to eat, whether government is "shut down" or not. I hope it was some smart ass buck private.
In the USA politics is the number three easiest way to achieve "financial security", only inheritors and prosperity gospel preachers have it easier.
It's not fucking military leaking unless they came in with Drunk Pete Hegseth.
*Pete Kegsbreath
400k seems relatively low for the usual scum. Could be a lower rank military personnel, or a staffer.
Yeah, the bet was only 32k. Honestly surprising more people didn't have this idea
Or a team of them
This is huge opsec issue from now on. Basically you can start seeing military operations before they happen.
Has been for a while now. One of my buddies works in military intelligence. He combs social media for soldier whereabouts to inform military ops.
Social Media is its own beast, but there people can talk shit near anonymous, talk is cheap. With these betting sites, people are putting money in front, which people won't do without some inside info.
Can we all go on polymarket and start a betting pool that Peter Thiel will not be violently assassinated by the end of the year?
Bad people don't die. The more evil you absorb the longer you live. Like Kissinger living to 100.
I suspect it's the lack of stress due to being a sociopath. Not caring about others has to make life pretty easy in some respects.
Selection bias. Bad people die all the time, and then we forget about them (or never learn about them) because they stop being in the spotlight.
Nobody talks about the Koch Brothers or the Waltons anymore, as they've degraded to irrelevance. Nobody talks about the Carnegies or Fords or Hoovers anymore, for the same reason.
Steve Jobs was an evil fuck and he's gone now, so he's off the radar.
Meanwhile, nobody had Lucky Palmer pegged as a sociopath ten years ago and now he's doing James Bond Villain tier war crimes.
Because it has to be here.
There are exceptions to the rule for example Rush Limbaugh and maybe soon Scott Adams.
Do I vote for or against to make it more likely?
The one who bets for Thiel being dead collects the money if that happens. They would also benefit from actually carrying out the deed. These markets are essentially crowdfunding for dirty stuff.
Or insurance against bad things continuing to happen.
You can, but you're going to want to have him in your sights before you place the bet
When there is no punishment, the system must be working perfectly.
You have to be an idiot to gamble at these sites. I already feel like an idiot for having money in the stock market with all the insider trading, but thanks to inflation you're fucked if you do and fucked if you don't.
The stock market is a global suicide machine, change my mind
It's a ponzi scheme supporting millions of people's retirements, myself included.
Ideally we have social security, which is a much more regulated and carefully managed ponzi scheme but the people in power use it like a piggy bank because it's not like they're going to be around when it runs dry.
I live in a country with a quite strong social security scheme, but the money in our social security funds, like pensions, is mostly invested in the stock market anyways.
Good Take
Gambling is for idiots, so it works out.
Unless you had an active decision in oar were privy to the making of the attack happen.
The fact that you end up potentially gambling against insiders like this is one thing that makes these bet on anything sites so dumb to interact with in the first place. Which also makes me not really care about this particular grift.
IMHO there ought to be a peer-to-peer version so we can buy Trump Insurance without getting fucked from above.
Gambling on something like this is definitely risky, but it's not as risky if you're using it to bet on something more defined like sports or who will win the next presidential election.
If someone is going to rig the sports game, then it's now rigged for all people betting on that game at all locations, not just here.
And at a decentralized platform like this, that should ultimately be safer than the alternatives.
TIL there’s a website where anyone can bet on anything.
What?! What are the odds?!
Put me down for a tenner
You lost
Fuck
Hey, gimme another ten bucks. Your luck can only get better, right???
I'll bet you 10 bucks that I'll lose this 10 bucks I'm betting you.
https://youtu.be/Klr1BKO1MKM
Fuck! I owe you $10, but I've only got this $20. Hey, give me two tens for a $20.
Ooh, without even looking I suspect it’s close to even?
Edit: just looked and couldn’t find it? I tried searching “Trump (dies, dead, death, deceased)” and it didn’t come up.
I don't think they allow for that sort of bets. But I found this bizarre one
Tbf it's not that weird, the death was so suspicious some theorized at the time that he wasn't even killed, the pics faked his death and the state "confirmed" it but in reality they shipped him off somewhere quiet to continue his Mossad blackmail ring.
Idk if that's true but honestly we're talking about a Mossad agent that had dirt on everyone and state level actors who would have been the help, it is possible, very possible, that it's true, but afaik there's no evidence other than speculation, so it probably isn't. I'm agnostic on it personally.
I guess I was just expecting to see that one. But there's something fun about these conspiracy theories being open to gambling. I'm gonna bet on steel beams not being able to melt with jet fuel. Gonna mortage my house on that!
Are there any bets on whether or not the Twin Towers are still there and David Copperfield only made it look like they'd been destroyed?
Of course there aren't. Everyone knows Chris "The Mindfreak" Angel did that
That bet is really dumb to take, since locking your money up for 1 year to win 3% isn't worth it
You silly goose. The current chance of winning is listed at 3%, not the earnings.
Their point is interesting, though. There's a lot of important stuff in the far future for which accurate odds would help society, but it's effectively impossible to bet on because of high inflation and rug pulls.
Right now we only have secondary indicators, like homeowners insurance pulling out of Florida.
Grifter’s gonna grift.
Ever since "Predictive markets" were made legal in 2015 has unfortunately made gambling much more degenerate in the US.
Well yea, is it not blatantly obvious to everyone that bad actors will use this "bet on anything" bullshit to grift the system?
I'm certain the people who run the websites know this and don't give a shit, because it's profitable.
The weird thing is that it provides OPSEC to US opponents. Simply watch polymarket for a yolo bet
You can't really stop it when you make a decentralized platform like that.
It's like saying we made cash and we knew people would fund terrorism with it but oh well.
A decentralized betting platform has benefits. It also has detriments.
Any website involved is really just a front end. It's on the blockchain and can be used regardless of website and its there forever now, but the website definitely makes it easier to use.
Grifting and and inequality is a baked in part of capitalism. I don't think you can get around it without fundamentally shifting your approach to money
Also worth adding...
If the owners do have a way to prevent something at the smart contract level, and that was ever compromised (e.g arrested by FBI) and someone was able to just prevent all bets, absolutely nothing is stopping someone else from copying the contracts, removing that ability, and re uploading it.
How is this legal
Crime is legal now
I hate that I was primed for a world with rules when there are none.
Well, you still have to follow the rules. Unless you want to get shot of put into a box for the rest of your life.
Always has been if you're rich.
The real answer is nuanced, but a combination of "it wasn't, until bribary", "enforcement is difficult", "it's built to be nuanced around regulation", "it depends where", and "it's decentralized"
Gambling.
It's disgusting but not necessarily illegal.
It's unrelated gambling to be specific. You can fix the results or have insider knowledge
I bet you a dollar that the ratio of votes on your post will be some number by January 11th.
I bet you a dollar that President Trump will not live to see 2037.
We're just two people making bets here. Anyone want to sidebar on this action?
I'll make a bet on how many bets you get!
Legally they are not betting against the house. People are betting against each other on if a certain event will happen, and the site takes a set percentage for facilitating the bets. This makes it legal under gambling laws in most US States.
It probably can't be stopped either at this point.
Assuming it was illegal, they could arrest the developers because they are earning money on it, but arresting them and taking the website down won't stop people from using it as it's smart contract based on a blockchain. The website is just the front end, the blockchain/smart contract is the backend.
So now you gotta go after the individuals using it, who could annonymize their funds through something like Tornado Cash, making it pretty hard to stop.
So if I opened a physical casino with let's say roulette without 00 but a commission charge to play it's legal?
No, roulette is still betting against the house. A more apt comparison is poker, the house has nothing to do with the outcome or the game and has no stakes in the winner or loser when legal. This is why many will either take a percentage of the pot to recoop the cost of facilitating the game and dealer, about 2% I think, or have a membership fee. In many states poker only card houses or card clubs are completely legal.
Polymarket, Kalshi and others are Insider trading systems camoflauged as a "Truth Seeker" but at the end, It is a gamble even worse than a gambling casino. The insider trader has a incentive to stack odds against oneself and "beat" a better likelihood in the market. Even as a truth finder, It works at the last second before the actual reveal.
Corrupt politicians are corrupt. More at 11.
This is an interation above simply taking a few hundred stuffed into a potato chip bag.
My question is what are the other predictions
I still want to know who made $$millions shorting American and United Airlines before 9/11.
It was $5 million, and the money is unclaimed on the Chicago stock exchange.
Someone has to know who placed the order.
all that is confidential unless SEC form 4.
The obvious question is: what other bets did they make? (though those may of course be decoys)
Barron is doing this shit.
Can we make a bet on that ?
How does one bet on random things like this. What’s the website? I have a few predictions of my own…
It seems to be this site: https://polymarket.com/
How does this work?
Who verifies, that a bet is done and which statement was correct?
https://docs.polymarket.com/polymarket-learn/markets/how-are-markets-resolved
https://docs.polymarket.com/polymarket-learn/markets/dispute
I... what? And they're using Discord to discuss stuff? Sounds legit
Thank you very much for the explanation!
Although I find 2h a bit short, especially for small betting pools, where there is a high chance that mostly people sleep, work or do something else
I also read that there's some rule chaneges (on what is considered yes/no) by polymark on some bets and general complaints, don't know if those are just sore losers or valid but I'd read up on that if you want to bet on the platform, I've never used the service.
Its even worse than that
https://coinmarketcap.com/academy/article/polymarket-reports-unprecedented-governance-attack-by-uma-whale-on-bet-resolution
The whales can manipulate the bets and make themselves win even if it doesn't happen.
I love crypto, but this shit is a pure scam.
So, I can bet on whether I'm gonna shit my pants this year? Great way to lift my spirits if I were to shit my pants.
You'd have to convince enough people that you aren't going to shit your pants first "@[email protected]"
Hey y'all. It's been a while since I've shit my pants. And I really think I can make it a full year this time!
If you offer enough odds, someone would take it just to make you shit your pants and prove it. A one penny bet with $10,000 payout? Maybe you forget about it and come 2026 some idiot takes you for a wad-o-cash.
I'm wondering the same thing as well, seems very risky
So goodbye to your money for me
There's some bets I wouldn't mind losing.
Hate to have to break it to you, but placing bets doesn't alter the outcome.
When the total amount wagered is large relative to the event, it creates an incentive for people to do things about it.
eh, when there's large discrepancies it's more so about making $ on the swings up until the event passes. it's called arbitrage, it's not gambling if you know the actual likely result...then it's just mathing out the risk/reward and win/loss ratios
Is that what you're going to do?
By myself? Too poor.
Kalshi is the other big one
Till Jan 5th or earlier would have been suspicious. Jan 31 is the safe bet. The US had sent a carrier group and some people mentioned that the costs dictate that they had to act within one month.
Could be the name of the website. Close your eyes. Walk away from the screen.
This is just a big Stellaris simulation. It's just that we haven't founded the United Nations of Earth and reached the year 2200 yet.
Seems sus
What were the vets before it. It's a dumb bet.. but those may point
Why is the date of the post omitted? When was "last night"?
Inside tips! Like with the stocks couple months back? Sit and watch like you always do and our feature will stay the same.
How does that platform work? Can you still place bets when rockets hit Venezuela? Can you still place bets when people speculate he was already abducted?
You can still bet on near certain events / events in progress, but there's not necessarily a benefit in doing so as the odds shift. If something is believed to have a 50% chance of occurring then theoretically the bet would cost 0.5 for a payout of 1 (of you win). As the outcome becomes more (or less) likely, the cost of the bet changes to reflect that. In a prediction market, it's similar to stock market in that in order for you to buy a share / place a prediction bet, someone has to be selling a share/taking the other side of the bet and the prices shift based on perceived value of the underlying thing being traded (stocks or predictions).
What's sick about that, though? Guy had reliable insider info and made money off a cancerous gambling site. Good for him.
No, they made money off the people predicting the opposite. The gambling website simply skims off the top for the privilege of setting up the bet.
Fair enough.
But I still don't see the problem with the way the guy won. The actual problems are the gambling website itself and people being stupid/gullible/addicted enough to waste money on it.
In a regulated market this sort of thing would be called "insider trading" and is highly illegal, usually. Then again betting on unregulated "markets" is just asking to be ripped by people with insider info
The website is made for people with knowledge to leak sensitive info.
They would probably end up being criminally prosecuted for leaking the info, and I doubt some rando would be believed this stuff anyway, or even be able to reach any relevant audience. Unless they were a journalist (apparently some knew about it but kept silent), but again, leaking this would be suicidal.
They profited off having good connections in a powerful imperialist state, and the naïve gamblers; dead civilians were irrelevant for the outcome. There's way too many layers of rot at play for me to find this story in specific to be notably bad.
I prefer seeing these as predictive markets than (only) degenerate gambling. They've been shown to be pretty accurate in predicting a lot of things. Can be useful crowdsourcing gut checks.
I prefer seeing them regulated out of existence because it‘s just unchained sports bets in the worst way possible and poison to society.
This is why I only pay attention to manifold, it's funny money only, salty bet style, actually just fun instead of a horrifying gambling addiction.
You can regulate them down, but they'll always exist on the dark web.
They've also had whales manipulate the odds to win even if they actually loose.
https://coinmarketcap.com/academy/article/polymarket-reports-unprecedented-governance-attack-by-uma-whale-on-bet-resolution
So you can predict that rich assholes will come out on top every single time and with that metric sure it can be a predictive market. But not accurate.