Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling

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> The irony of prediction markets is that they are supposed to be a more trustworthy way of gleaning the future than internet clickbait and half-baked punditry, but they risk shredding whatever shared trust we still have left. The suspiciously well-timed bets that one Polymarket user placed right before the capture of Nicolás Maduro may have been just a stroke of phenomenal luck that netted a roughly $400,000 payout. Or maybe someone with inside information was looking for easy money.

I'm trying to understand what the criticism is here, because the example seems to support the point that these are meant to be a way of learning the future, not oppose it. I thought the whole point was that yes, people with inside knowledge will bet large sums of money on things they expect to happen, and that's what makes the prediction useful. The market is meant to incentivize people who know things to act on them in a way that makes them known.

If I knew someone wanted me dead, of course I would want a prediction market on it, and if the odds suddenly shifted dramatically in favor of my death, I would use that as a trigger for whatever defense strategies I had in place. Someone has really good reason to bet a lot of money on the prospect that I'm about to die. It's probably someone who knows of an active plot in motion to try to kill me! The sooner I can find out about that, the better. I would much rather give them an incentive to make that known somewhat earlier than wait.

I feel like there must be some big piece of this puzzle that I'm missing that makes it so these cannot operate the way I imagine them, but I haven't heard anyone explaining what it is. Someone fill me in on what I'm missing here?

This is a problem, a net negative and a sign of a weakening society.

But, one silver lining, maybe, is gamblers are a little less likely to fall for fake news. Maybe?

It seems hard to be a climate change denier when you're about to gamble on it.

Or maybe people will find a way to gamble while still living in completely different reality bubbles. Probably.

If you thought your neighbor was politically extreme last election, just wait until next election when he also has $100,000 on the line...

In theory I like the idea of prediction markets but how they are done right now makes a bunch of markets too insecure to put much stock into or informationally unvaluable to inform other decisions

There is little incentive for someone with significant information, reason, or intuition to reveal it early leaving the market dumb for most of its existence or also open for someone influencing the outcome late.

They also aren't currently that reliable for gauging the wisdom of the crowds for situations where trust in the market effects its outcome. It's easy due to the scale of them for someone to just burn money to skew the perception of it for rhetorical and influential benefits.

I feel like there is no getting off this train though because news media companies are still desperate for revenue. Gambling around news will either increase advertising revenue for them, or if they do real information uncovering journalism, drive subscriptions because there's now incentive for getting news early on more than just financial news.

I don’t really understand the argument for prediction markets if you don’t have inside information. The reason they beat other forms of news is because insiders are incentivised to bet, that makes some sense. But surely an investor without insider knowledge will always make less money on a market where they’re trading against insiders than one where they’re not.

Part of me wishes there were prediction markets for flight delays. The ETAs are wildly inaccurate, like last time the counter staff suggested I not reschedule cause our plane was arriving in 15min, when I could see on a slightly hard to find site that the plane was still grounded 500mi away.

Part of me is careful what I wish for, starting with passengers bothering staff even more.

What is the legality for US residents?

Right now Polymarket is subject to a federal agreement that they don't let US people participate. Apparently this is just a checkbox for the user to attest to. They don't even do IP geolocation, never mind payment checks.

So it's currently illegal for them to run this in the US. But is it illegal for users to participate?

Polymarked has a 3% chance of Jesus returning _this year_ : https://polymarket.com/event/will-jesus-christ-return-before...

Good example to show when people tout how great these are at predicting.

Prediction markets are not considered gambling for the same reason that stock markets aren't. There's no fixed odds or random chance. A skilled analyst can make consistent returns.

Unlike stock markets, prediction markets also provide valuable data on important world events, such as elections. It's wisdom of the crowd with financial incentive.

"Why prediction markets aren't popular" [0] gives some compelling arguments (to me) about why prediction markets haven't caught on and probably never will.

As I understand it, the main argument is that for prediction markets that aim to incentivize the thing they're predicting, better to invest in the thing directly. Otherwise, "prediction markets" are successful precisely when they can't influence the outcome, like sports betting.

I remember finding the election betting interesting last presidential election, but I also remember that it was spiked when Musk invested to change the odds.

[0] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-prediction-markets-aren...

Why is polymarket any more or less dangerous than NFTs or naked option trading?

Fool and his money are quickly separated…

The only material objection mentioned in the article is that prediction markets are easy to manipulate.

Well, only if they are thinly traded. If they get mentioned a lot more on CNN and CNBC, that is likely to change.

I’m increasingly convinced that the single most important concept to understand in the 21st century is Chesterton’s Fence:

"Chesterton's fence" is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...

Gambling isn’t a new problem, but apparently we thought it would turn out differently this time, for some vague unclear reason.

I think the simplified version of that reason is: no one really believes in anything anymore, except in the value that acquiring money by any means necessary is a good thing.

The whole nation is eaten up by gambling and other vices at this time. It's not the first time such a thing has happened in a nation's history. Generally it occurs just after widespread monetary debasement and just before major, world shaking disasters. (You Are Here.)

Reference: Andrew Dickson White (first president of Cornell) "Fiat Money Inflation In France", published 1896:

"The government now began, and continued by spasms to grind out still more paper; commerce was at first stimulated by the difference in exchange; but this cause soon ceased to operate, and commerce, having been stimulated unhealthfully, wasted away.

Manufactures at first received a great impulse; but, ere long, this overproduction and overstimulus proved as fatal to them as to commerce. From time to time there was a revival of hope caused by an apparent revival of business; but this revival of business was at last seen to be caused more and more by the desire of far-seeing and cunning men of affairs to exchange paper money for objects of permanent value. As to the people at large, the classes living on fixed incomes and small salaries felt the pressure first, as soon as the purchasing power of their fixed incomes was reduced. Soon the great class living on wages felt it even more sadly.

Prices of the necessities of life increased: merchants were obliged to increase them, not only to cover depreciation of their merchandise, but also to cover their risk of loss from fluctuation; and, while the prices of products thus rose, wages, which had at first gone up under the general stimulus, lagged behind. Under the universal doubt and discouragement, commerce and manufactures were checked or destroyed. As a consequence the demand for labor was diminished; laboring men were thrown out of employment, and, under the operation of the simplest law of supply and demand, the price of labor--the daily wages of the laboring class--went down until, at a time when prices of food, clothing and various articles of consumption were enormous, wages were nearly as low as at the time preceding the first issue of irredeemable currency."

> A billionaire congressional candidate can’t just send a check to Quinnipiac University and suddenly find himself as the polling front-runner, but he can place enormous Polymarket bets on himself that move the odds in his favor.

Maybe not with a specific pollster depending on their scruples, but you can definitely pay to be part of the poll. And that’s the first step to getting any stats whatsoever.

"Accounts payable: 11111. In 1 hour. John Wick. Excommunicado."

The essence of prediction markets.

Stop calling them "prediction markets" and start calling them what they really are: corporatized bookies.

Doesn’t seem like slow-walking so much as a mad-rush. I saw a Kalshi ad on tv last night.

Prediction markets have an alluring quality that they become a pulse-check on what humanity believes is going to happen, putting your money where your mouth is, and when they work like this they work pretty well and are an interesting instrument. Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, has even gone so far as to say that Insider Trading is a necessary source of data for prediction markets, if the goal of prediction markets is to be an accurate prediction of the future [1]. However, it seems increasingly clear that even this function of prediction markets doesn't behave how the silicon valley elite seem to think it does. In multiple markets throughout 2025, we saw insiders "snipe" correct predictions at the last minute, while odds were still against the correct outcome, moments before some finalizing event or news became public.

In theory, insiders give correct signal. But in practice, their volume is often too low to meaningfully move the market in the correct direction, and the timing of their order flow can be too late for that signal to actually be useful as a tool for predicting the future.

Its also critical to note that insider trading laws don't just exist to protect investors. They exist to protect the organizations the insiders belong to. The order flow on both prediction markets and the stock market is public information. Its one thing to short the company you work at because you know they're going to announce bad earnings. Its another thing entirely to take out a million-dollar position on "US Strikes Venezuela before Jan 3: Yes" on January 2nd. Sophisticated geopolitical opponents are monitoring these order flow feeds, and it begins to become a genuine matter of national security.

Overall, I am fine with prediction markets. I think they're an improvement over sports betting in the sense that they better-align incentives between the participants and the market-maker. In typical sports betting, the casinos running them set the odds, and participants take out positions against the casino; which means the casinos are incentivized against allowing anyone to actually make money on their platforms. This has surfaced many times in "professional sports betters" getting blacklisted. In comparison, PMs are a contract between participants, and the market-maker only takes a fee on each transaction (Robinhood's is 2.5%; quite high), which means the market-maker is only incentivized to increase PM order book volume and provide interesting markets. There's more opportunity for actual skill and dedication to shine through.

But, KYC is critical.

[1] https://x.com/itslirrato/status/2008184149450891724

since financial speculation exists, the news has been about gambling.

Regular people just didn’t know it cause the ticket to entry was to expensive.

chaos-for-profit incentive is what terrifies me

Isn't Polymarket very low stakes? For example "Will Trump acquire Greenland before 2027" market (the main one for this issue) has only 14m USD volume. This is like 2 orders of magnitude less money than is bet on El Classico 2 times a year.

There are risks connected when prediction markets run wild but Polymarket ain't it. There is also utility. It has high predictive value (it beats polls for elections from a little sample I've looked at) and allows you to make better decisions.

If insiders trade, the market becomes more accurate, which is good for society. Like WikiLeaks. Thus the MSN panic, the legacy establishment wants Polymarket to follow Assange's path.

The internet is too connected and communication too instantaneous for Polymarket to be anything but a system to be gamed by those with money and influence.

Bet appears on Polymarket? You have the ability to direct people and resources to enact the under? Congrats you're rich!

Why is polymarket worse than cell phone games? At least polymarket essentially self identifies as gambling and isn't specifically marketed to children.

The writer obviously hasn’t done any deep study of prediction markets and why they often provide greater insight than other polling techniques. Are they perfect? No. They predicted Hillary would win in 2016.