Please don't do insider trading. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Reminds me of our President (SA) asking his colleagues to sign a pledge not to do corruption; when there's already a swearing in that does the same thing.
White House staff told not to place bets on prediction markets
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Re: White House staff told not to place bets on prediction markets
#42Investor highlights for each platform: Kalshi: Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Y Combinator, Charles Schwab, Henry Kravis (KKR), and CapitalG (Alphabet). Polymarket: Intercontinental Exchange (ICE - parent of the NYSE), Founders Fund (Peter Thiel), Vitalik Buterin, and 1789 Capital (Donald Trump Jr.). PredictIt: Primarily supported by Aristotle International (a political tech firm) and historic…
These companies were blatant about operating illegally in the US. I remember being shocked to see the live billboard polymarket ads in Philadelphia on the eve of the election. I guess there are too many scandals these days for this to stand out.
Re: White House staff told not to place bets on prediction markets
#43Aside from the current horrible admnistracion. If I understand correctly, One of the strengths of prediction markets is to try to get the insiders to come in and provide insider information thus improving the total info available.
One of the weaknesses is incentivizing people to do horrible things, if that makes their bet a wining one.
Re: White House staff told not to place bets on prediction markets
#44It’s laughable that it’s even necessary to tell them. Hey don’t abuse privileged workplace information for personal gain isn’t exactly a fresh notion. Imagine if professionals like lawyers and accountants operated like that.
Consider the kind of people who would staff this white house.
Re: White House staff told not to place bets on prediction markets
#45I don't understand why anybody without access to serious inside information is currently betting on prediction markets. It's clear that insiders are absolutely going to eat your lunch. So who are the suckers who are losing all this money? I guess this isn't true for all things you might bet on, but it seems to be true for a lot of them.
The ads for prediction markets on TikTok are aggressive - like (paraphrasing) "this is your new source of passive income and you'd be crazy to miss it" aggressive.
Re: White House staff told not to place bets on prediction markets
#46While we’re at it, how about all Congress?
There is currently a bill proposed to do that (for stocks, not prediction market betting, but eh it's a start): https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/hr5106
It currently has 99 Democratic sponsors and 31 Republican sponsors (note: there are more Republicans than Democrats in the House). It will probably not make it out of committee. 2 of the 4 Democrats on the committee have sponsored it; 0 of the 8 Republicans have.
Re: White House staff told not to place bets on prediction markets
#47I don't understand why anybody without access to serious inside information is currently betting on prediction markets. It's clear that insiders are absolutely going to eat your lunch. So who are the suckers who are losing all this money? I guess this isn't true for all things you might bet on, but it seems to be true for a lot of them.
The ads for prediction markets on TikTok are aggressive - like (paraphrasing) "this is your new source of passive income and you'd be crazy to miss it" aggressive.
So basically the standard online scam script for 20+ years but in a TikTok. I remember seeing AdWords text ads in the 2000s for "make $$$ working from home".
Re: White House staff told not to place bets on prediction markets
#48I think the proper thing to do would be to forbid these markets to make bets on stuff that can be won by using only insider information.
Re: White House staff told not to place bets on prediction markets
#49Aside from the current horrible admnistracion. If I understand correctly, One of the strengths of prediction markets is to try to get the insiders to come in and provide insider information thus improving the total info available.
It also incentivize people to follow the events and remember stuff so that they are better equipped to make predictions.
I think it incentivize people to use their head and may be even select better leaders.
Re: White House staff told not to place bets on prediction markets
#50I don't understand why anybody without access to serious inside information is currently betting on prediction markets. It's clear that insiders are absolutely going to eat your lunch. So who are the suckers who are losing all this money? I guess this isn't true for all things you might bet on, but it seems to be true for a lot of them.
It is either not being offered in depth by anyone market-maker (part of the answer given the relatively small revenue opportunity) or it is being offered by people who aren't sophisticated enough.
Bookmakers offer markets on events where someone can know the outcome. The difference is that they have tools to prevent adverse selection.
Prediction markets offer none of those protections so the market structure is going to end up being very different (which is already happening, revenue opportunity from politics isn't huge). There are other examples of this around latency arb, market is going to be very different.
Also, I will point out that most insiders are probably going to be losing money too. All that you ever read is the final outcome, you don't read the stuff that happens before. Politics is, generally, not a good market because the actual event is driven by decisions made by people. Election markets are fine but political event markets are not good, even if you have inside information.