After bankruptcy, he was banned from sports betting sites. Then he found Kalshi

In no way is it better now that we have online gambling. The entire industry should be illegal and barred from participation in the traditional banking system.

US bankruptcy laws are not punitive enough. After bankruptcy, he should not have been allowed to gamble, anywhere. The US needs something like China's "high level consumption restriction", which can be imposed on people in financial trouble.[1] Companies, too, in which case it applies to executives as individuals.

Prohibited:

- Travel: No air travel; limited high-speed rail. Can still take the slow green trains, but only in the lower-class coaches.

- Lodging & leisure: No stays in star-rated hotels, nightclubs, golf courses, or other luxury venues. Yes, no golf. No gambling visits to Macau, either. Within China, gambling is already prohibited.

- Property & business: No purchase of real estate; no leasing high-end offices/hotels; no luxury vehicle purchases.

- Education & insurance: No enrollment of children in high-cost private schools.

China can make this work because everything runs on the official government ID card, and the database of who's on consumption restriction is tied to that.

[1] https://www.chinajusticeobserver.com/a/restriction-on-high-l...

Some people are comparing banning gambling to banning alcohol or tobacco.

Many of the ideas that later became the United States were discussed in a bar while drinking, the same cannot be said anywhere for solo gambling. Whether you like it or not, alcohol and tobacco are woven into the social order.

I misread the title and thought it said he /founded/ Kalshi, which would have been a hell of a story. The actual title says "discovered", but I guess that doesn't quite fit for HN.

Even if you set aside the addiction issues, these gambling companies are duplicitous. They sell the illusion you can make money participating, when actually you are going to lose money in all liklihood. The business model is basically to be as fraudulent as they can get away with. Kalshi has its own twist — more of a platform to connect fraudsters with marks — but it’s just a way to provide a step of indirection to make it possible to get away with it.

The elephant in the room that the article nor the comments address is the credit and debt culture in North America and lack of regulation around it.

Gambling is a bad addiction but the long term impact is much lower if you can't possibly spend more money in this addiction. How in hell can someone accumulate 75k$ of debt through credit cards and loans spent in gambling. No financial institution should be allowed to open a second credit card account or loan to someone who hasn't shown ability to timely reimburse its current debt.

Before legal online gambling there was illegal online poker.

How much did legalization contribute to making it mainstream-casual? What about the ads?

I think it's time for a modern Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act which banned cigarette commercials on TV and radio starting January 1, 1971.

It's my opinion that gambling be reserved for Atlantic City (or your town). But legality aside, we ought to at least stop advertising it.

Kalshi, Polymarket and sports betting are a scourge.

I hadn't heard this was a feature that you could self-exclude / ban yourself from the main apps. Interesting. I think the "he was banned" part is a bit misleading then.

The loopholes discussed in the article 100% should be closed, making it easier for problem gamblers that want out to get out, but there will always be the convenience factor that will cause at least some damage. Ease of access also means ease of misuse unfortunately.

> She went on: "If you ask our millions of traders, they would emphatically tell you that an exchange model is significantly healthier than a sportsbook model: our profits aren't tied to trader losses, so we don't have the same predatory incentives."

Really wish the author had pushed back more on this. They have different predatory incentives, benefitting from encouraging people to make a large number of slightly stupid bets rather than a smaller number of very stupid ones. I would love to hear Kalshi explain what non-predatory value the 15 minute crypto markets have.

He wasn’t banned he banned himself from two websites and then found a third what a non-story.