[HN Gopher] Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on t...
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Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war
Author : trocado
Score : 171 points
Date : 2026-04-18 18:36 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| hdhdhsjsbdh wrote:
| Yet more evidence of the rapid disassembly of the social contract
| and our collective ethics, aided of course by unregulated tech.
| If you work for - or are involved in the funding of - these
| unregulated gambling and insider trading platforms, you should be
| ashamed of yourself. Your greed and lack of concern for the
| health of the human world you live in is sickening. You can get
| bag after bag but it will never fill the void in your soul.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Isn't it more than the ability to manipulate global markets
| essentially means we're headed towards a global inflation
| crisis? No one with critical thinking skills believe Elon's
| valuations are a rational market concern.
|
| But if they _are_ rational, eg, a zimbawean inflation
| nightmare, then if you're not trying to "escape the permanent
| underclass" then _you_ are the irrational person.
|
| So ignoring all politics, we're really dealing with a zeitgeist
| of people who think wealth inequality is endless, and the only
| way to survive is to lobster bucket and YOLO every chance to
| gamble.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| This applies to almost everyone working on SaaS; not in all
| cases, but the absolute majority work on SaaS means creating
| artificial scarcity in order to extract value from people. It
| is a fundamentally evil, antisocial, anti human thing to do. If
| you believe that is okay to restrict access to infinite
| resources to preserve the status quo you deserve the same place
| in hell as the people pushing gambling.
|
| Don't create artificial scarcity. Don't play zero sum games.
| cmwelsh wrote:
| I've never heard "intellectual property" phrased as
| "artificial scarcity" and it isn't exactly wrong...
| com2kid wrote:
| > This applies to almost everyone working on SaaS;
|
| The original idea behind SaaS is to align the incentives of
| the customers and the software company.
|
| Historically software companies made money on selling
| upgrades. This meant bug fixes were not a priority, and
| security fixes were something companies got shamed into
| doing.
|
| SaaS fixes that incentive problem. With reliable ongoing
| revenue a company can keep software patched and updated and
| doesn't have to cram a bunch of new shiny marketable features
| in just to make a huge sale every 3 or 4 years, while
| engineers try and add whatever bug fixes they can after the
| shiny new features have been polished off.
|
| It also means software companies don't have boom or bust
| cycles with hiring. Funding stays consistent, and so does
| staffing. It makes the financials much easier to manage.
| Companies used to hire a bunch of temp employees in the run
| up to a release.
|
| Ongoing release cycles also led to better software
| engineering practices. More automated tests, reproducible
| builds, better version control systems, and a lot more things
| that we take for granted now days.
|
| There are obvious downsides to SaaS as well, but the original
| idea was good.
| shigawire wrote:
| > almost everyone working on SaaS; not in all cases, but the
| absolute majority work on SaaS means creating artificial
| scarcity in order to extract value from people.
|
| Maybe this is just my lack of understanding in how most SaaS
| companies operate... But to me making software that people
| find valuable and charging them for that is not inherently
| immoral. Surely that is the majority of cases?
| Noaidi wrote:
| > Don't create artificial scarcity.
|
| Nah. You know what the answer is? Get to a mental and
| physical state where you need very little. Right now the only
| way to win is not to play.
| throwaway132448 wrote:
| This is pseudo-intellectual drivel. Creating value and then
| charging for it is not creating "artificial scarcity", any
| more than doing nothing is creating "artificial scarcity" by
| absence of value. There was no "infinite resource" that just
| happened to exist before the work was put in to create it.
| And creating value is - almost by definition - completely
| orthogonal to zero sum games.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Insider trading exists with stocks too. I mean, if there is a
| way for people to profit by bending the rules or information
| asymmetry, someone will find a way.
| CPLX wrote:
| This is the only reasonable point of view to take on the
| widespread and obviously unethical outbreak of gambling
| platforms. The fact that it's downboated and towards the bottom
| is just a reflection of how far the discourse has fallen.
|
| Granted, maybe I should be less surprised given the fact that
| this is all being posted on the promotional website of a
| technology-focused private equity fund, but it's disappointing
| nonetheless.
| arjie wrote:
| The biggest sums involved appear to be on the oil futures
| market. That market has existed for a long time (half a century
| to a century depending on the sophistication you measure). If
| this is is a novel occurrence it cannot be the platform that
| 'caused' it.
|
| I think it's just that we create useful tools: futures, the
| pre-emptive pardon, and so on. Then people figure out how to
| use those tools to enrich themselves in ways we did not
| anticipate. It's just a question of how we fix our machinery in
| this cat and mouse game or if it is fixable at all.
| cineticdaffodil wrote:
| Now of cocourse there are bots circling watching for insider
| trades. Which you can "milk" by pretending to insider trade and
| then hedging a bet against them. A whole eco system of scoundrels
| paulpauper wrote:
| and then spoofing. Creating fake trades to entice copycats.
| artificialprint wrote:
| You don't get it, you can make m o n e y with it, with which
| you can buy a yacht and an expensive car.
| ck2 wrote:
| What's the statute of limitations on such things?
|
| Because it won't be prosecuted by 2029 but could be afterwards
|
| Personally I think it's a bigger problem when the President sues
| his own government for billions and then orders them to pay it
| out
|
| Because -that- is not an official act. It could be prosecuted but
| no-one will touch it even after 2029
| cbg0 wrote:
| Unless somebody snitches there's no real way to prosecute
| insider trading. You can say you just felt like making a trade,
| or that you read one of Trump's posts the moment he put it up
| on Truth Social and you just happened to have the trade ready
| to go.
|
| Unless they're absolute morons, the people doing insider
| trading for large sums of money will have already built a
| strong alibi.
| oa335 wrote:
| > Unless they're absolute morons, the people doing insider
| trading for large sums of money will have already built a
| strong alibi.
|
| My theory is they are banking on preemptive presidential
| pardons in Dec 2028.
| Noaidi wrote:
| Trump already said he will do this.
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-plans-to-
| pardo...
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
| politic...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Keep in mind that preemptive pardons have not been upheld
| by the courts [1].
|
| [1] https://www.criminallawlibraryblog.com/preemptive-
| pardons-co...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| In some nations just gambling on a war that your soldiers
| have died in would ruin people's careers and possibly their
| lives permanently as they are shunned by society.
|
| In other nations you can illegally sell arms to Iran in order
| to illegally evade congress's attempts to stop you supplying
| money to terrorists, illegally shred evidence and lie to
| congress under oath about it all and get a job as a pundit on
| Fox News.
| paulpauper wrote:
| _you can say you just felt like making a trade, or that you
| read one of Trump 's posts the moment he put it up on Truth
| Social and you just happened to have the trade ready to go._
|
| An employee with access to Truth Social's backend can in
| theory do this by reading the tweets he's writing before he
| sends them.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I'm not convinced there won't be someone with a chip on their
| shoulder eager to snitch. Trump has been known to leave folks
| out to dry once they're used up (for example, Ruby Giuliani
| and Mike Lindell). Just today there's been discussion about
| how Kash Patel feels like he's on the chopping block:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47813001
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Unless somebody snitches there 's no real way to prosecute
| insider trading. You can say you just felt like making a
| trade_
|
| If you have perfect opsec, sure, you'll just waste a few
| years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in court. If you
| texted a friend, or told a friend who then texted a friend,
| or traded too soon to receiving privileged information,
| you're probably fucked.
|
| > _Unless they 're absolute morons_
|
| At least in securities, the dirty secret is most insider
| traders are in Congress and/or morons.
| SwellJoe wrote:
| Given Trump has promised blanket pardons for any illegality
| from his administration during his term, I think the question
| will be whether pardons for crimes not yet investigated/charged
| are covered by the pardon and whether anyone will pursue those
| investigations and convictions.
|
| Democrats have historically not really been willing to do
| anything if there's any plausible sounding reason for doing
| nothing, so I'm guessing they'll jump at the opportunity to
| wave away the insider trading stuff. Let bygones be bygones,
| you know, in the spirit of bipartisanship and comity. They
| slow-rolled prosecuting the crimes of the first Trump
| administration. So slow that he was re-elected before anything
| began to happen.
| cheschire wrote:
| Doesn't matter. They'll be pre-pardoned.
|
| https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/5829203-presidential...
| echelon wrote:
| What value do prediction markets give to anyone not in the
| insider trading class?
|
| I predict these will be banned when someone finally uses them as
| an "assassination market".
| dogtorwoof wrote:
| I would argue that the sole value of prediction markets is to
| make insider knowledge accessible to the general public,
| quicker than it normally would.
|
| That's why these platforms saying things like "we will roll out
| insider trading" is laughable.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| >I would argue that their sole value is to make insider
| knowledge accessible quicker to the general public.
|
| Is anyone using AI to track these audacious and large bets?
| Seems like you could actually do this to tell which ones are
| insider info and which are just stupid random bets?
| OutOfHere wrote:
| I would just count which side of the bet has more bets
| above the median bet size with a zero or near-zero bet
| history. Insiders are more likely to use throwaway accounts
| than are non-insiders. Spoofers may however deter such
| analysis. AI may not strictly be needed for analysis.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| I haven't actually used the platforms except looking at
| betting odds for elections. Do they give any tools for
| looking at past results and analyzing?
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Just because an insider bets on something does not in any way
| make the bet obvious to onlookers until the event is
| materialized for all to see. There is absolutely no surfacing
| of intelligence here because big bets are on both sides,
| winning and losing.
| dvt wrote:
| Afaik, Polymarket removes predictions that break CFTC's
| regulations (this includes assassinations, etc., at least in
| the US). They basically provide no value unless you're an
| insider, but they do tend to be leading indicators so it might
| inform some decisions (like: should you keep your money in
| oil?) that could be contingent on Polymarket predictions.
| SirMaster wrote:
| I thought the point of them is they are "truth machines" they
| give a financial incentive for the insider class to essentially
| share what they know.
|
| The benefit to those outside the insider class are that we now
| have a better idea of the potential outcome.
| dvt wrote:
| This is what their argument is, and personally I think it's a
| pretty good one. But the main issue is that retail is getting
| fleeced and lives are being destroyed by gambling, so non-
| professional investors should not be able to use it. Imo, the
| upside (some fisherman with insider knowledge betting on the
| Strait of Hormuz) doesn't outweight the downside (a large-
| scale societal gambling epidemic[1]).
|
| [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/inside-out-
| outside-i...
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| I think it's worth noting that my bank lets me ruin my own
| life too if I want with their own trading platform
| avaer wrote:
| What are they sharing that they know though? That someone's
| getting bombed in an hour? That the government is rampant
| with corruption?
|
| The first seems arguably treasonous. And the latter seems
| directly supported and funded by these "prediction
| markets".
|
| If the argument is that prediction markets are truth
| machines, their social function seems to be support crime
| on a massive scale and get away with it.
| bostik wrote:
| Well, that's the entire point.
|
| If we take a completely utilitarian and amoral viewpoint,
| the insiders are _selling_ their material, non-public
| information. The rest of the market participants are
| buying. From the latter 's utilitarian perspective the
| former are providing a valuable service and getting paid
| for it. I'm pretty sure there was a legal term for such
| sales activity...
|
| The only people playing fair are those who don't know how
| to cheat well enough.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Anyone can profit from an information asymmetry or mispriced
| markets--not just insiders with connections. If you are willing
| do do enough research you can in theory gain such an advantage.
| This is what some hedge funds do.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Government leaders and political policy advisors, intelligence
| agencies, hedge funds & quants, and large corporations doing
| crowdsourced forecasting for sure. That's probably why they
| haven't just been made illegal - the very policy makers are
| utilizing the data streams from this to predict the near-future
| to a decent degree. Companies like Cultivate Labs [1] go into
| the maths of it all but if you prefer videos Hypermind has some
| good ones [2] - anyone thinking this is just some degenerate
| gambler thing and criticizing them on those terms likely has no
| idea that people are doing pretty serious quantitative analysis
| on these things, to which use I will leave to your imagination
|
| [1] https://www.cultivatelabs.com/crowdsourced-forecasting-
| guide
|
| [2] https://www.hypermind.com/master-class
| beaviskhan wrote:
| You'd have to be spectacularly stupid to bet on these kinds of
| things without having insider knowledge, because you ought to
| know good and damn well by now that the people with insider
| knowledge are DEFINITELY betting on them.
| paulpauper wrote:
| couldn't you somehow in theory track the order book to if and
| when insiders are betting and then copy the trade?
| andrepd wrote:
| Not knowing who are the insiders and who is the dumb flow is
| like the fundamental problem of hft
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| How is there enough volume to cover the other side of the
| bet with these minutes-before trades?
| andrepd wrote:
| The oil market is, to put it mildly, fucking huge
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| For sure, the real trading markets are huge. I mean the
| betting platforms.
| huorricannes wrote:
| the betting markets offset positions with the real
| markets. it's all connected
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _betting markets offset positions with the real
| markets_
|
| Need a strong source for this. The size (and regulatory)
| disconnect between the two would seem to make making
| markets in both a bit silly.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Are you implying that there is arbitrage between the
| prediction market and the real market? Until now we were
| assuming that the prediction market is self-contained,
| with its other side staying within the confines of the
| prediction market.
| huorricannes wrote:
| the other side can and many times is an arbitrageour
| which has positions in both the prediction market and the
| real market
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _oil market is, to put it mildly, fucking huge_
|
| Sure. But these aren't trades in "the oil market."
| They're bets on Polymarket and a specific oil-futures
| exchange.
| iknowSFR wrote:
| You can trade on non-public information if you obtain that
| information unintentionally. Now you have to be able to
| prove it's unintentional if the question came up. A real
| experience example of this is if you work in an office
| building and your neighboring company, a public company, is
| being raided by the FBI. Can you use that information to
| take a position in the market? Yes, according to multiple
| attorneys we spoke with.
|
| I bring this up because we assume the trading is coming
| from insiders but I wonder if the parties behind this have
| baked in a layer similar to my story above.
|
| To close this back to your comment, and I don't have an
| answer here: is knowing who the insiders are and acting on
| that a crime? If you did know and didn't report them, are
| you breaking a law? Or worse, you reported it to the deaf
| ears of a regulator that are focused elsewhere or are under
| resourced to respond now?
| huorricannes wrote:
| intentionally/unintentionally is not relevant.
|
| it's legal to follow FBI cars and see who they raid so as
| to make trades. you could even have a hedge fund
| specialized on this. it's called alternative data
|
| you can even be a regular employer of a public company
| and trade based on information sent on internal emails.
|
| the only thing illegal is to be a designated insider -
| typically a restricted group of people with access to
| sensitive information
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you can even be a regular employer of a public company
| and trade based on information sent on internal emails_
|
| You _absolutely_ cannot.
| Supermancho wrote:
| "cannot" here meaning it's likely to be prosecuted, not
| that you _cannot_. You _absolutely_ can.
| anonymars wrote:
| This interpretation is incredibly unlikely. The first and
| third paragraphs discuss legality, but the middle one was
| merely talking about likelihood of prosecution?
|
| Even then it would be inaccurate: do you think the
| regulators are too stupid to put two and two together
| that you work for a company and got incredibly lucky with
| your trade?
|
| Some tips: https://ritholtz.com/2018/08/10-laws-of-
| insider-trading/
| cout wrote:
| In theory that is part of what was supposed to have been
| solved by CAT.
| phrygian wrote:
| What is CAT?
| paulpauper wrote:
| insiders would presumably be bigger trades that show high
| conviction about improbable events. An insider would wait
| until the last minute to take advantage of low prices of a
| market close to expiration.
| georgemcbay wrote:
| For prediction markets you can find out who the insiders are
| for different categories over time, see for example:
|
| https://x.com/peterjliu/status/2024901585806225723
|
| But there is still the problem of knowing which new trades
| the insiders made before the bet is settled (maybe solved by
| being an insider of the prediction market), and also since
| prediction markets need money on both sides (you are betting
| against other people, not the 'house') when the insiders make
| their buy they probably eat up most of or all of the action
| on the other side.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Even if you are not "betting" similar trades are happening in
| the stock market as well. Large movements in oil futures
| shortly before policy changes are announced.
| agumonkey wrote:
| considering the scale involved, and the OSINT trend, is it
| possible that people could monitor and correlate stuff like
| airplane, or us navy activity to deduce when to enter ?
| nathancahill wrote:
| I saw a tweet about a trader placing an oil bet when they saw
| two military aircraft turn around on their way to Iran, via
| transponder. I believe before the deal was announced.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| That also sounds easy enough to fake for some plausible
| deniability.
| huorricannes wrote:
| in fact US army publicly admitting running a
| disinformation campaign involving flying planes knowing
| they would be seen by osint in the previous Iran attack
| from last summer
| yellow_postit wrote:
| Just as parallel construction [1] is used by law
| enforcement to conceal methods and practices no reason to
| not expect the same for financial gain.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
| bluecalm wrote:
| Same goes for sport betting and yet here we are. People like to
| bet. They willingly bet on things they have guaranteed
| disadvantage on (casino games like roulette, slots etc.).
| People also drink pure poison (alcohol), smoke pure poison
| (cigarettes) and engage in brain dead activities like speeding
| and street racing.
|
| Gambling should be judged as any other vice - people get
| something out of it (rush, hope, whatever) not by rational
| money allocation standards.
| janalsncm wrote:
| This was my thought. If these markets continue allowing
| insiders, it'll drive all of the cash from regular people away.
| So there will be way less money for insiders to win even if
| they are allowed.
|
| So the perception of insiders is pretty bad for prediction
| markets as a business imo.
|
| The sooner they knock off the rhetoric about the "theory"
| behind prediction markets and start thinking about it like a
| business, the sooner they will take insiders seriously.
| sieste wrote:
| Maybe a superhuman AI? /s
| mrtksn wrote:
| I wonder if this means that in a true free market betting is
| actually impossible as extra-gaming structures like those
| spontaneously emerge.
|
| You need centralized regulation to make it work.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| The standard argument for prediction markets does not include
| any kind of fairness in gambling. Rather, the point is
| precisely to surface insider or otherwise well-founded
| knowledge of the real odds so they can be available to anyone
| who wishes to look at the price.
|
| (And I do not see how this first-order viewpoint is
| problematic, precisely. It's the second-order consequences of
| people making the currently-considered-unlikely decision in
| order to cash in on a bet that I have an issue with.)
| reactordev wrote:
| Prediction Markets require insider trading to function... how do
| people not know this? It's a setup from day one. If you have the
| knowledge, you're going to cash in, if you don't have the
| knowledge, you are throwing your money away.
| DANmode wrote:
| potentially, each time.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I've never seen an ad from either Kalshi or Polymarket that
| says "don't play if you aren't an insider."
| jjav wrote:
| The game only works if they also have a lot of people losing
| money.
| b0Ringmth wrote:
| Yeah just another Ponzi scheme; one sided extraction with a
| slight chance of payout that never comes
|
| Stephen Miller and Charlie Kirk were pretty clear their
| sides whole philosophy is take and never give back. They
| learned it was OK not from their parents but gen pop
| sitting on their hands.
|
| The entire economy is Las Vegas now; only the (white) house
| wins
| firebot wrote:
| Most gamblers prescribe to the cost sunk fallacy and keep 'one
| more time'ing it to bankruptcy.
|
| Math wins over your feels every time.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| If you follow your math, such gambling losers don't really
| have that much money to bet on an ongoing basis. The ones who
| support the losing side on prediction markets are the ones
| who usually do fine, but sometimes are taken by surprise.
| casey2 wrote:
| Statcon 101: Gambling addicts take loans to gamble, those
| loans are sold to your pension fund. Who is the loser?
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Problem gamblers routinely take out loans, mortgage major
| assets, max out credit cards, and steal from their
| employers to fund their habits.
| nojito wrote:
| >Prediction Markets require insider trading to function.
|
| And yet there are folks like me who have been on them for years
| before kalshi/polymarket making a very good side income from
| them without having insider knowledge.
| wslh wrote:
| I would be careful about attributing all of this to ordinary
| insider trading. Another plausible explanation is that some
| activity could come from state linked or intelligence adjacent
| actors, where the goal is not only profit but also testing or
| exploiting prediction markets as an auxiliary information
| channel.
| iambateman wrote:
| Occam would disagree.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| The most Occam-safe explanation is not insider trading but
| actually hard work in analytics to rapidly surface
| intelligence from X and other alternative data sources.
| huorricannes wrote:
| occam doesn't work in financial markets.
|
| because if it did you would print money by following occam.
| reenorap wrote:
| Without them talking about how much people LOST, this entire
| article is meaningless. With the advent of 0DTE options which
| dominate options trading, the fact that the notional number of
| people who made money makes sense because so many more people
| have lost money.
| watwut wrote:
| Of course they made money from other traders. But that is
| precisedly the issue with insider trading - you are taking
| money from more honest traders.
| jfrbfbreudh wrote:
| Yes, someone is on the other side of the losing trade, but how
| many people (not firms) do you know who write contracts for
| short term options?
|
| I personally don't know any, and I worked at one of the biggest
| HFT firms for a few years.
|
| The losing side(s) of these positions are heavily hedged, and
| are happily making money on volume and volatility. (And making
| record profits this year)
| outlore wrote:
| There's a recent Patrick Boyle video which puts it aptly:
| prediction markets are a wealth transfer from retail investors to
| trading algorithms and people with security clearances.
|
| Anyway, one thing I don't understand yet is how new markets are
| created. They aren't user generated, so how did an "Iran strike"
| market exist to begin with?
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > one thing I don't understand yet is how new markets are
| created. They aren't user generated, so how did an "Iran
| strike" market exist to begin with?
|
| Having the US presidents kids as multimillion dollar investors
| in the platforms and on the advisory board of one them would be
| a good place to look
| cwillu wrote:
| https://help.polymarket.com/en/articles/13364541-how-are-mar...
|
| Users absolutely can propose markets
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Traders place $760M bet on falling oil ahead of Hormuz
| announcement_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47812385
| yalogin wrote:
| It's all manipulation and everyone knows it but when the voices
| are coming from inside the house, who's going to investigate? If
| anything every tech company in the whole flow is going to support
| and add custom flows for them - "to get on their good side"
| Stevvo wrote:
| These articles always focus on "Yes" bets. An insider betting
| "No" might get by completely unnoticed.
| int32_64 wrote:
| It's deeply American how so many of these articles about Kalshi
| or Polymarket frame the issue as something that can be solved on
| the American end with the stroke of a pen, especially in a
| multipolar world where American sanctions increasingly fail.
|
| These markets are global with global demand and many of the
| insiders are on the receiving end of American foreign policy. If
| an Iranian with a starlink sees a b-2 spirit fly over their house
| that information will find its way to somebody who will profit
| from that knowledge, it's just part of the new information
| economy.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _especially in a multipolar world where American sanctions
| increasingly fail_
|
| You're claiming the U.S. government is impotent against holding
| Polymarket to account?
|
| > _These markets are global_
|
| The trades in question are bets on Polymarket and
| Intercontinental Exchange Brent oil futures. These are well
| within the remit of American law enforcement.
| Mtinie wrote:
| Why would the U.S. government want to sabotage prediction
| markets when the chief executive has a vested interest in
| keeping them legitimate?
| tezza wrote:
| Wait until they find out how many people place perfectly timed
| horse racing bets on the winning horse, JUST before the start of
| the race. 100% of them knew to back the winning horse
| hereme888 wrote:
| Good for those who made the money. I would have done so had I had
| such insider info, as long as it didn't compromise any operation.
| slg wrote:
| Say whatever you want about the merits of prediction markets. But
| I just don't see a way those benefits outweigh the societal
| dangers of these constant reminders that people in or close to
| power can freely profit from their positions in the ways the rest
| of the population can't. There's always talk about the dangers of
| disincentivizing job creators, but what happens when a society
| routinely disincentives job havers in this way? We're just
| getting a constant barrage of information telling us that if we
| show up to our job and simply work as we're expected that we're
| stooges who won't get ahead. You'll need to look for your own
| individual scheme, ethics be damned, if you just want to keep up
| with the rest of the population. That's not healthy on an
| individual level or cumulatively at a societal level.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I think the bigger risk is changing major decisions (like war)
| based on the profitability of bets. Forget about drone war
| doctrine, if you're an adversary just place absurdly large bets
| which incentivize the opposition to do what you want. (i.e. bet
| so you "lose" the bet when the enemy changes their posture to
| gain the profit).
|
| Politics is already full of these pay to play incentives but
| now anyone with enough cash can influence world events.
| H8crilA wrote:
| The oil trade structure actually does make sense, because this
| is how you buy oil, or really any commodity that takes so much
| space and weight. You order it ahead of time, then if you hold
| till the contract settles you are allowed to pick it up from
| the place and in the way designated in the contract
| specification. In fact you are obliged to pick it up, that's
| why prices can go negative in exceptional situations.
| Prediction markets are then just a clean cash-only derivative.
|
| Most of the other prediction markets seems rather stupid to me
| (they are completely detached from any real world activity),
| other than their prices being a fairly reliable source of
| information for bystanders.
| ckemere wrote:
| Why can't the markets just forbid transactions that happen within
| 48 hours of resolution?
| elAhmo wrote:
| It's not perfectly timed bets, it's called insider trading.
|
| Just one more thing this administration has brought into
| mainstream.
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