31–40 of 157 posts
77 suspicious positions across 60 wallets, 13 brand-new accounts appearing 40 hours before the browser launch. First confirmed case of a major tech company firing over prediction market trades. I wrote about why prediction markets have a structural insider trading problem that nobody's solved yet: https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-absolute-insider-mess-of...
77 suspicious positions across 60 wallets, 13 brand-new accounts appearing 40 hours before the browser launch. First confirmed case of a major tech company firing over prediction market trades. I wrote about why prediction markets have a structural insider trading problem that nobody's solved yet: https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-absolute-insider-mess-of...
Prediction markets exist to bypass gambling restrictions and monetize insider trading. It isn't a problem, it is their raison d'etre.
Betting and insider gambling wouldn’t work if people were educated and just didn’t gamble and so never used these platforms in the first place.
It’s an old question of whether government is responsible to protect people from themselves or should we give everyone freedom to go bankrupt in this specific way if they so desire.
I don’t know if there is a healthy way to gamble really. With drugs and substances at least there is some continuous spectrum but you either gamble your money or not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right but if you have the forethought to go buy such a wallet, you could just make one yourself in advance and create a transaction history. Although I would argue that even this doesn't have much value. It's not a big problem that people know "there exists an insider at OpenAI". There are plenty of employees there that shield you from being discovered. In fact it would be so difficult to find this person among them,…
You are giving a lot of credit to this criminal. I really doubt they thought about this long in advance of the crime. Are you suggesting they got hired at openai so they could make calculated wagers at Kalshi? This was more likely a crime made impulsively.
Nonetheless, you can just be a pre-existing OpenAI employee. As long as you take basic precautions, they (as in, OpenAI), are not going to be able to find out it was you.
A fun aside: this person obviously created a bunch of new Bitcoin accounts to hide their activity. It makes you think that if you were able to surreptitiously add malicious side channel software into a popular npm package that you wouldn't just need to hunt for crypto wallets with balances. You could also probably find a market for crypto wallets with small balances or zero balances. The history and date of creation…
I don't really understand. You can create wallets at will. What would be the value of one that someone else happened to create?
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I don't really understand. You can create wallets at will. What would be the value of one that someone else happened to create?
Aged accounts, shell companies, it's a market
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Insider trading is the raison d'etre of these products.
Yeah, Polymarket is explicitly advertising this. > Research shows prediction markets are often more accurate than experts, polls, and pundits. Traders aggregate news, polls, and expert opinions, making informed trades. Their economic incentives ensure market prices adjust to reflect true odds as more knowledgeable participants join. > If you’re an expert on a certain topic, Polymarket is your opportunity to profit fr…
Airbnb for unlicensed hotels. Uber for unlicensed taxis. Amazon for whitewashing fraudulent products. Bitcoin for unlicensed securities and laundering money.
The pattern is upsetting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, Polymarket is explicitly advertising this. > Research shows prediction markets are often more accurate than experts, polls, and pundits. Traders aggregate news, polls, and expert opinions, making informed trades. Their economic incentives ensure market prices adjust to reflect true odds as more knowledgeable participants join. > If you’re an expert on a certain topic, Polymarket is your opportunity to profit fr…
I have come to the opinion that every successful tech company is basically just an arbitrage scheme to avoid regulations and extract value based on that advantage. Airbnb for unlicensed hotels. Uber for unlicensed taxis. Amazon for whitewashing fraudulent products. Bitcoin for unlicensed securities and laundering money. The pattern is upsetting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prediction markets exist to bypass gambling restrictions and monetize insider trading. It isn't a problem, it is their raison d'etre.
Yeah but someone has to give the money to the insider traders. Betting and insider gambling wouldn’t work if people were educated and just didn’t gamble and so never used these platforms in the first place. It’s an old question of whether government is responsible to protect people from themselves or should we give everyone freedom to go bankrupt in this specific way if they so desire. I don’t know if there is a heal…
The majority of gamblers keep it within limits, only a small minority lack that control and inevitably end up impoverishing themselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have come to the opinion that every successful tech company is basically just an arbitrage scheme to avoid regulations and extract value based on that advantage. Airbnb for unlicensed hotels. Uber for unlicensed taxis. Amazon for whitewashing fraudulent products. Bitcoin for unlicensed securities and laundering money. The pattern is upsetting.
From an economic perspective the majority of those regulations destroy economic value and those companies are unlocking value by finding clever ways around them.
Insider trading is so trivial on the prediction markets. I'd guess that it's actually the "feature" that results in the outcomes being so accurate.
Yup. There are good reasons why it's a problem in financial markets but NOT usually a problem in prediction markets: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/02/18/why-insider-tra... > In prediction markets, informed trading is not a crime or an injustice—it is a valuable service. A big exception, however, is using prediction markets to make predictions on events regarding publicly traded companies.