alt Hacker NewsThese betting markets create a wild new perverse incentive to power. No need to get gifts from business interests. Just be in the room where it happens and extract piles of cash from betting markets.
These markets claimed to be useful tools for discovering truth. I'm not sure what being able to maybe predict a military strike a bit earlier provides to society, but I do know that creating a system for near-unlimited wealth extraction for those with power is a very bad thing.
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No one is forcing anyone to bet on prediction markets. People use polymarket fully aware of the near certainty of insider trading.
This is such a ridiculous cope that these betting platforms provide any other value than entertainment. But they must sell themselves somehow I guess.
They don’t allow unlimited “extraction” of wealth. It is inherently limited by the need for people to take the other side of a trade.
Importantly, people who either thought they had better information (and were sadly wrong) or people who were simply gambling. It’s not like prediction markets are taking money from orphanages.
On the other hand, these are markets, right? Your ability to make profit is limited by the available liquidity. I wonder, if enough people get burned by insider trading, will liquidity dry up? At the same time, I suppose you don’t need that much volume to make a decent amount of money. And these platforms keep growing…