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Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

timesofisrael.com

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Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#291
post #3

Man the moral degradation is off the charts. Prediction markets are easily the worst things to grace the internet by far and its not even close.

Prediction Markets is such an invented phrase.

Its a sports book.

A sports book of alternatives.

It's absolutely bonkers but hey, the grifters need a new costume, the crypto one is practically strings at this point

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#292

So Polymarket would settle the bet based on reporting from a single source? That seems to be very open to manipulation. In fact, for something as inconsequential as this, I'd just bet heavily myself if I were the reporter.

There exists a sensible way to handle this. It is to require at least three independent news outlet reports of an event (as defined in the bet).

A related issue is that war news is heavily censored in Israel; it's difficult for news outlets to report it.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#293
post #3

Man the moral degradation is off the charts. Prediction markets are easily the worst things to grace the internet by far and its not even close.

I think the idea behind a prediction market is pretty interesting, especially from an economics dataset point-of-view. And there's probably a lot of fun, harmless things to bet on. eg. "Will Conan lead an extravagent musical number at the Oscars?" But we're in an era of less and less responsible government oversight, so the whole thing naturally gets ruined if there's no guardrails to prevent peoeple without souls or…

It's a matter of market size and the inherent goal of the market; The factors are implicitly at odds.

A small market is not at all efficient - it's unlikely to incorporate available information to attain accuracy.

A large market invites manipulation of the event itself - it's auto-corrupting. If ball players make $1M/year and there are easy opportunities to throw a game and make $30M anonymously, then you can expect that the game you're seeing isn't legit.

Arguably (go watch the show 'Billions') this is a big part of how the stock market works as well - insider information is rampant and overwhelming in profitability, and if you believe POSIWID ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha... ) ... you're probably not doing a whole lot of trading as a personal investor based on publicly available information.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#294
post #56
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but how do you find the person making the threats? Polymarket accounts are more-or-less just a crypto address. Whatsapp accounts are somewhat easier to link to a real identity, but still not hard to at least obscure a bit. The arm of the law struggles to reach across borders, and on the internet, it's quite plausible all those involved are in different jurisdictions.

Polymarket's founder is Shayne Coplan, 27-year old "youngest self-made billionaire" (why do all billionaires seem devoid of ethics?) A sane system would just throw him in jail until his illegal betting market implements KYC.

KYC is nothing sane. in what world does anything give you or anyone else the right to decide to probe people up their rear end just because they want to do business? people like you are extremely dangerous.

loads of banks all over the world now demands to know what you plan to spend the money on just to withdraw a bit cash. Some will even deny you saying "well.. you shouldnt buy a new car anyway". all the KYC shit. how about just no?

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea behind a prediction market is pretty interesting, especially from an economics dataset point-of-view. And there's probably a lot of fun, harmless things to bet on. eg. "Will Conan lead an extravagent musical number at the Oscars?" But we're in an era of less and less responsible government oversight, so the whole thing naturally gets ruined if there's no guardrails to prevent peoeple without souls or…

Friend of a friend does announcing online. Like, you pay him a little ( So, he got a gig to announce the opening of loot boxes at some show. I think it was Fortnite loot boxes. I guess it gives you the total value of the loot box spree you opened. So, 2 people buy a bunch of loot boxes, then open them up, then whoever has the higher value wins and takes both of the people's total haul. Sounds like a strange thing to…

I don't see how this is more degenerate than betting on roulette at a casino. Prediction markets usually provide more efficient odds than casinos because the house profits from trading volume instead of from the spread, so it's essentially just a way to bet on a game of complete chance with a much better average-loss than you could get on games of pure chance in the past. If people want to bet on coinflips, it seems objectively better that they have access to a way to do that in a way where they only get fleeced for 1% of their bet rather than 5%+ of their bet.

For sporting events, for example, the alternative to prediction markets 5-10 years ago was to use a website where you bet against the house directly, and they'd usually take around a 15-20% spread, and they'd ban you and keep your account funds if they decided you're winning too much. Now you can bet on the same events on prediction market sites, with around a 1-5% spread, and the house doesn't care how much you win (so there's actually an argument that you're playing a game of skill, compared to the old format where you definitely weren't, since you'd be banned for being too skilled).

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prediction markets as a useful tool are predicated on insider information. The punters without edge are the bait incentivizing the insiders. And in the US prediction markets are regulated like commodities which have much more lax insider rules, because again, insider trading is the point.

This notion that price discovery is only possible with insider trading is demonstrably false yet somehow surprisingly pervasive.

In the same way that the crypto hucksters were desperate to invent legitimate reasons for NFTs to have trillion-dollar valuations, pathetic gamblers are desperate to invent legitimate reasons for there to exist some non-gambling cover for the existence of predictions markets.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#297
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polymarket's founder is Shayne Coplan, 27-year old "youngest self-made billionaire" (why do all billionaires seem devoid of ethics?) A sane system would just throw him in jail until his illegal betting market implements KYC.

Putting aside this is sort of a knee-jerk reaction, if this was actually implemented you’d just see the role of the CEO change to basically be a highly-paid fall-guy. People in those positions today would vacate them for quieter roles behind the scenes, and corporations would put greater effort forth to hide their decision making processes. I don’t think it would be a better system.

I’m fine running straight down the list of corporate officers and senior managers and jailing them too until the behavior stops.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#298
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yea just throw the CEO of microsoft in jail too because illegal transactions are set via Xbox live.

Betting markets are legally required to have KYC. If you or I operated a casino illegally we would ABSOLUTELY be thrown in jail. Do you seriously think fraudulent Xbox live transactions are on the same level of the heinous insider trading going on in betting markets? Or do you just think C-suite should be legally immune from accountability overall? Polymarket's decentralized and anonymous nature was an intentional ch…

How is the ceo responsible for operating under the current legal framework which allows his platform not to require KYC? Unless they are breaking the law, why should anyone arrest him?

It's the responsibility of the lawmakers to make them illegal or force them to do kyc.

If you fantasize about China or Russia way of doing things you should move there.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#299
post #3

Man the moral degradation is off the charts. Prediction markets are easily the worst things to grace the internet by far and its not even close.

Absolutely horrifying. Today they are bribing journalists to report on a bomb. Tomorrow they will be bribing armies to bomb. This needs to be banned.

Who needs a bribe when they can participate in the market directly?

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prediction markets also have very interesting ideas. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/10/pr...

Not really. 1. As pointed out in the comments, you can inflate your prediction success rate by predicting things that are 100% to happen. There are plenty of 99.9% bets on Polymarket with degens betting on some 0.01% lottery event trying to strike a jackpot against the odds, and those will inflate the perceived accuracy. 2. All you're really doing is paying insiders to leak information a few hours ahead of time. Inso…

1. That is not how prediction market calibration plots work! Calibration is measured across the range of markets with different forecasted odds.

https://calibration.city/introduction

https://manifold.markets/calibration

2. That is just obviously not all these markets are doing. They're aligning incentives and aggregating information in the same way other markets do.

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