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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

#581

Post by masklinn »

andai wrote: post #543
sam0x17 wrote: post #459

I really wonder whether privacy would actually be the answer here --- prediction markets as they are now where the odds are public really shouldn't be called prediction markets, they should be called "outcome-shaping markets" because largely that is what they do, they let people shape real-world outcomes with massive amounts of liquidity. If instead these were privacy protocols where you can see how much liquidity is…

>outcome shaping markets I heard something remarkable many years ago, that there are websites on the dark web where you can bet on which day someone is going to die. In other words you can pay to have them assassinated in a very indirect way. It's like kickstarter, for assassinations. When enough funds are raised, a willing volunteer simply places a bet on the day when they plan to carry out the deed. So they win the…

> Obviously this is a horrible use case, and I'm not sure if such websites actually exist or are just rumors.

polymarket has an @died tag, which I assume is for betting on people's deaths (I never used the site, and it's currently inaccessible) given apparently someone recently made half a mil betting on Khamenei's death, and a cool billion was traded on bets on the timing of the bombing of iran https://www.npr.org/2026/03/01/nx-s1-5731568/polymarket-trad...

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

#582

Post by RevEng »

banannaise wrote: post #338

I would expect a dramatic rise in things like this, because they can be (1) monetized, and (2) scaled. Polymarket and Kalshi allow you to monetize almost any outcome (as they themselves will tell you is the goal). Therefore, there is profit available if you can predict the outcome better than other people, or if you can influence the outcome. But I don't think people have really noticed that profit is also available…

The same thing already happens with the stock market.

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

#583

Post by tatersolid »

ipaddr wrote: post #89
Waterluvian wrote: post #43

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…

The insiders ruin a market like this. Unlike in sports/stocks there are no rules / punishment for insider trading.

> Unlike in sports/stocks there are no rules / punishment for insider trading.

Wouldn’t the good old-fashioned fraud laws present in basically every jurisdiction apply?

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

#584

Post by masklinn »

Daves wrote: post #574

A reminder that Donald Trump Jr is an advisor to both Kalshi and Polymarket (with his firm also investing in Polymarket). Gambling (yes, this is gambling yet not subject to its industry regulations) is a public health crisis and the US government is too corrupt and intentionally ossified to react.

> the US government is too corrupt and intentionally ossified to react

The trump administration is not too ossified to react, it's in full support of. It dropped two investigations into polymarket mid-2025, and polymarket is crypto-adjacent, a field which the trump family takes full advantage of.

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

#585

Post by senderista »

varjag wrote: post #134
defly wrote: post #21

FYI: In November, an ISW Analyst Manipulated the Situation in Myrnohrad to Rig Map Bets https://militarnyi.com/en/news/in-november-an-isw-analyst-ma...

(as reported by Quincy Institute, a thoroughly pro-Russian think tank)

ISW is a shill for neoconservatism (just look at their board!) and is funded by US defense contractors. They try to give the appearance of neutrality via technical jargon etc. but are anything but.

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

#586

Post by gcr »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #281
zbentley wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that claim was always ludicrous to me too. Wisdom-of-crowds isn’t an unbiased decision making strategy, it’s quite biased. Crowd-wisdom works best as a limiter on the bias of other decision making strategies—this is why democracies use representatives rather than direct votes for most decisions. And polymarket isn’t even the wisdom of crowds lol. At its greatest possible adoption it’s still the wisdom of intern…

If you believe Polymarket odds are wrong in a systematic way then you are free to make a lot of money out of it. Unlike the stock market, where "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent", any such irrationality will become irrelevant at settlement time.

The argument isn’t about whether prediction markets can stay well-calibrated.

The argument is that prediction markets incentivize insider trading and backroom power brokership. The “potential energy” behind surprise upsets is most profitably exploited when the outcome sharply differs from the public calibrated consensus, so these two incentives - calibration vs potential for exploitation - are in fundamental tension. I think this tension undermines the whole purpose of prediction markets IMO.

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

#587

Post by senderista »

DrProtic wrote: post #285
varjag wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(as reported by Quincy Institute, a thoroughly pro-Russian think tank)

And ISW is tied to Victoria Nuland.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, you're absolutely correct.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/russia-ukraine-war-isw/

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

#588

Post by waffletower »

scoofy wrote: post #575
waffletower wrote: post #552

[flagged]

Look, it's not the point your making, but Adam Smith was not a laissez-faire capitalist. If you want to do the "capitalism bad" thing, I would suggest learning a bit of history, or at least understand that the " laissez-faire " in laissez-faire capitalism is a political ideology, not an economic ideology. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/11/the-gu... More to your point... I don't think economic theo…

Pendantry -- unhelpful and qualitative particularly when we largely agree -- as you clearly reveal in your 2nd paragraph.

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

#589

Post by scoofy »

pindab0ter wrote: post #210

I think time and time again that incentives are most important in determining how a market and by extension a society behaves. These prediction markets incentivize the absolute worst in humanity. These markets allow you to bet on when the invasion of a foreign country or the demise of a person happens. There comes a point where one bets against someone to die and you will see themselves incentivized to make that happ…

>These prediction markets incentivize the absolute worst in humanity.

Just call it gambling. They aren't "prediction markets," they're just gambling. Gambling incentivizes the absolute worst in humanity.

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

#590

Post by jkaplowitz »

scoofy wrote: post #575
waffletower wrote: post #552

[flagged]

Look, it's not the point your making, but Adam Smith was not a laissez-faire capitalist. If you want to do the "capitalism bad" thing, I would suggest learning a bit of history, or at least understand that the " laissez-faire " in laissez-faire capitalism is a political ideology, not an economic ideology. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/11/the-gu... More to your point... I don't think economic theo…

> generally speaking, gambling more than a token sum (say, less than $100) should not be legal exactly because any benefits of gambling is far outweighed by the mountains of externalities it brings. Yes, this includes the obvious incentives to threaten random people. It's bad for society, so it should be effectively banned.

I agree with you in theory, but remember that people frequently do illegal things, just illegally. If we assume that people will in practice gamble whether or not it's legal, I'd rather the gambling not be run by organized crime free from the ability of everyone else to oversee and regulate. That would be the same thing which happened with alcohol during Prohibition and which happens now with the many illegal drugs fueling today's Mexican cartels and US gang networks.

> The only reason why it has suddenly become legal everywhere in the US is because many states have found themselves under mountains of deferred liabilities and are scrambling to raise revenues however they can without raising taxes.

And because of a SCOTUS ruling overturning a federal prohibition on states' ability to legalize sports betting, but otherwise yes.

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