alt Hacker News> I do wonder if the problem with them is that it creates an incentive to share the truth, or for very smart people to predict it....
You missed the obvious one: it creates a path for people with insider knowledge to monetize it at the expense of employers, institutions, etc.
The guy using his access to classified information to make a few hundred thousand bucks in a day is not interested in "sharing the truth" for the benefit of society.
> monetize it at the expense of
Right, and I'd also like to preempt any apologetics trying to cloak it as socially-beneficial "information discovery."
Many of these betting/insider-trading scenarios are structured so that the information only becomes revealed at the same moment it becomes worthless. (In some cases, that's just a return to its default state.) Like the value of knowing the winning numbers from an expired lotto draw.