An account trading under the username “Magamyman” made more than $553,000 placing bets on the prediction market Polymarket that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would be out of power just before an Israeli strike killed him on Saturday.
…Under U.S. commodity trading laws, making trades based on death and war are illegal, since those kinds of bets create a financial reward for violence, human suffering and geopolitical instability.
The insiders make money because the “prediction market” odds don’t reflect reality.
Yeah, the market predicts jack shit nothing until the insider trader enter it and the “market signal” due to the insider traders happen just before the actual events being “predicted” happen, making them a useless prediction unless you’re algorithmically gambling on a related domain.
That’s incredibly shortsighted and just wrong.
Are you saying Vegas odds do jack shit in predicting sports outcomes?
Same exact thing. Just more naked to insider manupulation. Which is the point.
I still think you’re missing the point here.
Yes, insiders swoop in especially when the odds are not “reflecting reality”… because the profit motive is there. Which means that spikes in prediction markets are valuable information.
I’m not looking at it as a participant, I’m looking at it as a source of information. Crooked money, straight money, when there is money to made someone with information and money is going to take advantage, tipping us off.
It can be a degenerate cesspool of gambling and insider manipulation and also the bleeding edge of predictive technology… no reason it can’t be both.