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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

#421

Post by philwelch »

epolanski wrote: post #330
Hammershaft wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Prediction markets have value for people as a source of reliable information because they tend to be very accurate compared to any other human mechanism for creating forecasts. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/10/pr...

There is no evidence that people betting on whether Iran will strike Israel on March 15th has any benefit. Who would be the beneficiary of that? Are you gonna tell me residents in Tel Aviv will be able to hedge their chances of surviving tomorrow? Nor there's evidence that providing information about the fact that US will strike Venezuela does it either. What value any of that has? None, especially considering the pe…

> Are you gonna tell me residents in Tel Aviv will be able to hedge their chances of surviving tomorrow?

Yes, of course! If you had some advance warning your home town was likely to be struck with missiles soon, are you seriously saying you can't think of a single thing you could do to prepare? I would, at a minimum, make sure I was stocked up on first aid supplies, water, and food that I could eat without needing power or gas to cook it.

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

#422

Post by MattGaiser »

red_admiral wrote: post #388
fzil wrote: 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.

They've certainly turned out different than Scott Alexander predicted, once the markets were opened up to people who are not in the wider rationalist community. Not foreseeing the amount of sports betting that would take place, is kind of a failure of rationality in the first place, and I say this as someone who absolutely respects the community in general.

[dead]

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

#423

Post by Zigurd »

fwipsy wrote: post #367
Zigurd wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will no doubt find some rational sounding arguments in favor of prediction markets here. Lots of useless and harmful things are fascinating. The math behind cryptocurrency, and things like the difference between proof of work and proof of stake are fascinating. But that doesn't make cryptocurrencies good. The genetics of tulip bulbs must be fascinating too.

Prediction markets are a separate concept from cryptocurrency. You can run one on cash within the typical KYC regime. If the arguments in favor of prediction markets sound rational, maybe they are rational? I'd argue that prediction markets are more like stock markets. Very useful, but they also create opportunities for abuse which will need to be addressed. If they are eliminated later because the current administra…

Up to this point nobody has staked out a territory that exists between securities on the one hand, and wild anything goes betting markets on the other hand. Requiring the use of national currencies does nothing to prevent what are effectively tontines incentivizing murder, or other perverse outcomes.

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

#425

Post by fer »

loeg wrote: post #401
bagacrap wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically you can't bet on the demise of a person, at least in the US, as participants recently discovered when the previous supreme leader of Iran was killed and their "leadership change" bet did not pay out.

Kalshi doesn't pay out for demise of a person (though, arguably inconsistently[1]); Polymarket does (probably in violation of US regulation, but there are no rules anymore). [1]: For example, they did pay out on a bet over whether Jimmy Carter would attend Trump's 2025 inauguration; he didn't, at least in part because he was dead.

Polymarket doesn't operate in the US.

https://docs.polymarket.com/api-reference/geoblock

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

#426

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

laurentiurad wrote: post #298
xvector wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He is breaking the law, and was under DOJ investigation for it until he bribed the president's son to call them off.

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

#427

Post by skybrian »

xvector wrote: post #56
TheDong wrote: 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.

Yes, I think they should implement KYC pretty darn quick, and perhaps there’s more they can do. But he didn’t make the death threats.

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

#428

Post by gus_massa »

mr_00ff00 wrote: post #314
venusenvy47 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we want insiders to profit on a public decision like war? If some general has money on Iran's leader being taken out by March 1, he might not be acting in the best interest of the country. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwz8051y0lo

The idea is that prediction markets show the “odds” of an event occurring (that’s why it’s percentages after all). So if a war with Iran is going to happen, and so a general bets that it will, the odds will jump and go very high. Now at least theoretically, people in the Middle East can see the high odds, and travel elsewhere. After seeing how many people got trapped in the UAE, I might check these prediction markets…

It only work if you have a "good" passport and you can pack your income source and move it (i.e. easier for a web page designer than a goat farmer).

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

#429

Post by Zigurd »

MattGaiser wrote: post #422
red_admiral wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've certainly turned out different than Scott Alexander predicted, once the markets were opened up to people who are not in the wider rationalist community. Not foreseeing the amount of sports betting that would take place, is kind of a failure of rationality in the first place, and I say this as someone who absolutely respects the community in general.

[dead]

I would go with rationalism being a delusion of tech bros rather than blaming a failure of rationalism on those lumpen proles inventing silly sports propositions.
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