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Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story
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Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story
#852Earlier quoted context omitted.
>That's fundamentally wrong If you have an argument, please share it. If you don't, please don't waste everyone's time.
if you can't tell the difference between a game of pure chance and predicting real world events then there is simply nothing to say
I can tell the difference (at least I think) but I have no idea what your point is.
Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story
#853Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story
#854For some reason this reminds me of the Byzantine Generals problem. The fact is that unless you were there we don't really know how accurate any of these statements are. The video evidence is fine but I can whip something up in veo3 in 2 minutes. So while it's not a timing issue exactly (the truth might come out eventually), like the og byzantine generals problem, it is one of incentives toward deception. The real goal here isn't the payout, it's visibility into an active war. Polymarket is gambling at it's core, but the information it surfaces is used as justification for massive financial (and military) deals. I suspect this is likely what is happening here. Whereas before you might report on something and perhaps that's it, because news is always unreliable, now you report on something that has a measurable effect on some deal pipeline. Good on you for reporting on this. Difficult problem to solve tbh.
Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story
#855Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was only a few years ago that sports betting was significantly more heavily regulated and limited, and stuff like Polymarket didn't exist (just non-monetary forecasting sites like Metaculus.) Even if there was more demand for "underground gambling" before these changes, the net negative to society was still significantly less.
There were other prediction markets like Intrade which was founded in 1999. I had coworkers who made a significant amount of money doing prediction market arbitrage for the 2012 election.
Intrade confuses me. It was illegal to use Intrade as a US citizen; in fact, some people I personally know who were into that scene had to maintain foreign bank accounts.
What has changed, exactly, to make Polymarket legal where Intrade was not?
Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story
#856[flagged]
Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story
#857Prediction markets need mandatory cooling-off periods for high-stakes events. When we ran internal markets at my previous company - employee count 12k - we saw death threats within 48 hours of any market exceeding $50k. The pattern was consistent: above that threshold, someone always had enough money at risk to abandon civil discourse. We capped individual positions at $5k and threats dropped to zero. Polymarket's an…
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Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story
#858nightmare fuel
Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story
#859That's the issue with allowing people to bet on public events.
It's odd that we allow this to happen.
Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story
#860It seems strange to me that a single source would be used to resolve a bet any way. You have all this crap to make a platform "decentralized" and then it all collapses down to: "bruh, it happened, I swear." It really makes me realize how often blockchain / decentralization / "cryptography" projects are nothing more than pseudo-technical theater. Peak hype-driven development.
That would require tons of infrastructure and investment on Polymarket's side (more expense) and also reduce the number of permitted wagers (less revenue). i.e, never gonna fucking happen, it's way easier and more lucrative to have a hands-off approach, and only intervene for the occasional high-profile misfire.