There are two types of Polymarket users:
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those who think it’s about predicting things
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those who know it’s about taking money from the first group
If you’re betting there but don’t have a way to influence the results you’re just gullible.
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People should bet “when is the next Luigi event where the Pedophile / billionaire died or killed”.
It’s seeming like it’s gone from “WeRe PrEdIcTiNg ThE fUtUrE” to fucking with everyone else’s lives by tampering or doing stupid shit that makes everyone else have a worse day.
This is where those predictions markets get actually dangerous, not just in terms of financial stuff, but incentivising the committing of crimes in order to win bets. How long will it be before someone commits a violent crime in order to win their polymarket wager?
Or start a war…
There was already a journalist who received death threats, because of their reporting on the war. Someone had made bets on the missiles being fired in Israel, and the journalist reported on it. They were threatened and told to change their story, because a lot of people stood to lose a lot of money on a bet if the report was accurate.
Naturally, the journalist reported on it instead of changing the story.
The TL;DR is that the reporter noted that a missile had struck an open field in Israel. It was a relatively straightforward report, because nobody had been injured and no infrastructure had been damaged. But then the reporter started getting threats. They were trying to get him to change his report, to say that missile fragments had struck the field instead. They had bet that Israel wouldn’t be struck by a missile within a certain timeframe. And if the missile was intercepted, (meaning fragments had struck the field) then the bet wouldn’t count it as a successful strike. So by reporting that a missile had struck that field, the reporter was going to make them lose their bet.
Honestly, that’s awesome and should be the norm. If these fucking assholes are going to let people bet on random shit, they deserve to have random shit bite them in the ass. If they are letting people bet on EASILY gamed events, then they need to expect things to be gamed.
I get where you’re coming from, but the only ones that lose here are the suckers that think this is a fair game.
Predictionmarkets don’t work like a casino or sports betting. It’s more like a broker selling you futures on commodities. They don’t get a cut from people losing bets, they get their money via transaction fees. So they win, no matter if the wager is rigged or not. This means that they probably don’t really care about it, or any other rigged bets at all. I would guess they might even like it, because every time there is a big article about some rigged bet like this, they get free press exposure.
Hmfh, I’d put it down to some sort of money laundering scheme or political handout to supporters type thing, because there’s no way the house is winning when you can’t make reliable odds (short of a couple of insurance companies worth of actuaries) but now it makes a bit of sense, thanks.
Of course it’s probably both of those things, and I’m wondering where they get all the people betting against Trump stupidity, but the business plan is now understandable.
Yeah, but official public records are important too, they shouldn’t be littered with vandalism, just because these guys have no notion of permanent reality.
I say that gaming this system justifies inconsequential alternation of public records. Being prudish about doing anything slightly controversial while the other side blatantly ignores all laws and laughs in our faces is why they are winning.
Your comment made me actually read the story instead of just the headline.
If it was just a thermometer in someone’s back yard, then I’d agree with @dogslayeggs. You’re right, though: it’s not okay to mess with official public records. It may be funny, and a good way to make a few bucks (or euros, or francs, or whatever), but it’s not okay.
How does calling the bets on those platforms actually work? Is it employees that need to decide which outcome happened? And can anyone make a bet? If so, how do they keep up with all the bets and even just knowing that a bet is ready to be called?
[edit]
ok, i decided to research this myself (so much for the wisdom of crowds).some platforms have an admin pick what option was the outcome.
And some have a board of traders that vote on what the outcome was(maybe with votes weighted by how many shares of some token they own…)
so yeah, some admin on the platform or a few users are the ultimate arbitrer of truth, which sounds stupid to me. Especially since any ambiguity of the wording of the bet is up to them to figure out.
this page had nice examples of kalshi and polymarket resolution ‘failing’. Was also not surprised that polymarket uses crypto for resolution, of course there’s crypto involved in this somehow… it really fits the online gambling theme
When you start, there are no shares to buy or sell. For a dollar, the market will sell you a “yes” and a “no” share. When the bet matures, one of those shares will be worth a dollar, and the other will be worth nothing. If you keep both shares, you’ll get your dollar back, nothing more, nothing less.
You think the bet will resolve to “yes”, so you want to sell off your “no” shares. You try to sell them at $0.50, nobody buys. You lower your price to $0.30, and they sell. Now you have $0.30 and a “yes” share that might be worth a dollar in the future.
You see someone is offering to buy “yes” shares for $0.80. If you sell your “yes” share, you’ll end up with $1.10 total.
Suppose after a trading back and forth all day, you find yourself with a “yes” share that you’ve paid $0.40 for. You have a “no” share that you’ve paid $0.30 for. At any time, you can join those two shares together and sell them back to the market for $1.
But why would anyone buy shares after an event resolved? You’d expect liquidity to dry up at that point. So i can’t imagine that this is how it’s ultimately resolved and you get paid out.
Where did I say anyone was buying up shares after the event resolved?
When the event resolves, the platform pays out $1 for each share on the winning side. Shares on the losing side are worthless.
If you have a “yes” and a “no” share, you can join them together and sell them to the platform for $1, before the event resolves. You don’t have to wait for the event; you can sell them back at any time.
Yes but my whole question was about how a bet resolves, who decides it is resolved and who decides what the true outcome was. So i assumed your answer was to that question, which it didn’t seem to answer.
See the edit in my original post.
Ah. I think I misunderstood your question.
Usually the outcome is determined by a consensus of reliable news reporting. In this case, it seems like they were using a local weather station.
But the news papers don’t go and klick a button in e.g. kalshi. Someone/something has to collect the news sources and change the state of the bet to ‘resolved’. Either a human arbitrator, or some consensus vote by users or something like that? And that would already be very problematic, like what’s to stop the arbitrator from deciding in their friends favor?
Humans on their staff. Hopefully, and not AI. And hopefully they have multiple people involved in resolving a bet to avoid that situation (but even if it happened, the people with money on it would absolutely riot, because they are watching almost all of them).
I have no idea. The whole idea seems so open to manipulation/corruption that I’m shocked that the businesses are working as well as they are.
I’ve seen use of wikipedia page update as official bet trigger…the destructive potential is huge, they infect what matters with their gambling eg investment banking infecting commercial banking.
It’s not against the rules, lfg
Polymarket is one of the most Black Mirror stuff I’ve seen til now.
Yeah, it’s horrifying and deeply sad to marry gambling (which already creates a fair amount of misery for some) and real-world events that cause human misery. Fuck poly market. It should be regulated out of existence
The comments on that article make me worry
The amount mentioning Steptoe, really shows the average age of readers
The part I don’t understand is how there are enough people betting on the temperature being normal on one specific day at CDG, that you can make that much money betting on it being hot.
Polymarket clains there is no house, but they still act as “betting against” on some outlandish bets.
