alt Hacker NewsAmerica Is Slow-Walking into a Polymarket Disaster
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> These markets are also manipulable. In 2012, one bettor on the now-defunct prediction market Intrade placed a series of huge wagers on Mitt Romney in the two weeks preceding the election, generating a betting line indicative of a tight race. The bettor did not seem motivated by financial gain, according to two researchers who examined the trades. “More plausibly, this trader could have been attempting to manipulate beliefs about the odds of victory in an attempt to boost fundraising, campaign morale, and turnout,” they wrote. The trader lost at least $4 million but might have shaped media attention of the race for less than the price of a prime-time ad, they concluded.
Reminiscent of PG's essay about the submarine[0]: it's another way of attaching credibility to a 'news' item you're pushing.
The gamblification of the country will go down as one of the darker chapters of USA.
I read the article but failed to grasp what exactly the disaster is that America would be walking into.
Is the reliability of Polymarket predictions overhyped? Sure. Is there manipulation of Polymarket odds by some people? Most likely there is. But to say that this is a disaster that America is walking into is nothing else but clickbait.
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Not just America, everything is. With stock market, at least we can somehow stop the bad actors, insider traders, corporate manipulation, pumps and dumps - with prediction markets, there is no way.
With prediction markets? Next to impossible. The markets being tied to crypto makes it even worse - things get harder to track, jurisdictions get blurry, proving becomes a ping pong between bureaucracy. And proving something becomes moreso a question of free will - if I decided to do X and then someone bets millon dollars on me doing X when odds are low, how do you prove I haven't decided to do X before? Will you prevent me from exercising my free will because of suspect insider trading? What if I am a president/senator?
Years ago, I was a kid who discovered online betting - often it was the only time I could place bets on MMA events, especially because it wasn't as popular as it is now. Even then, the gambling sites had "Other" options where you could bet on presidents, popes, landing on mars etc. The new markets aren't that much different, but are just using a nicer way to talk about it.
It isn't gambling, it's prediction.
You aren't a gambler, you're a "hyperinformed high iq individual predicting the geopolitical moves". Just like crypto gave people the identity crutch of a "tech investor", this gives them the identity crutch of a "geopolitical strategist".
But in the end, it is still just gambling - wrapped in a nice ego stroking suit, but gambling none the less.