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Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

theguardian.com

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Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#11

Post by operatingthetan »

dogtorwoof wrote: post #10
echelon wrote: post #7

What value do prediction markets give to anyone not in the insider trading class? I predict these will be banned when someone finally uses them as an "assassination market".

I would argue that the sole value of prediction markets is to make insider knowledge accessible to the general public, quicker than it normally would. That’s why these platforms saying things like “we will roll out insider trading” is laughable.

>I would argue that their sole value is to make insider knowledge accessible quicker to the general public.

Is anyone using AI to track these audacious and large bets? Seems like you could actually do this to tell which ones are insider info and which are just stupid random bets?

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#12

Post by dvt »

echelon wrote: post #7

What value do prediction markets give to anyone not in the insider trading class? I predict these will be banned when someone finally uses them as an "assassination market".

Afaik, Polymarket removes predictions that break CFTC's regulations (this includes assassinations, etc., at least in the US). They basically provide no value unless you're an insider, but they do tend to be leading indicators so it might inform some decisions (like: should you keep your money in oil?) that could be contingent on Polymarket predictions.

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#13

Post by oa335 »

cbg0 wrote: post #8
ck2 wrote: post #5

What's the statute of limitations on such things? Because it won't be prosecuted by 2029 but could be afterwards Personally I think it's a bigger problem when the President sues his own government for billions and then orders them to pay it out Because -that- is not an official act. It could be prosecuted but no-one will touch it even after 2029

Unless somebody snitches there's no real way to prosecute insider trading. You can say you just felt like making a trade, or that you read one of Trump's posts the moment he put it up on Truth Social and you just happened to have the trade ready to go. Unless they're absolute morons, the people doing insider trading for large sums of money will have already built a strong alibi.

> Unless they're absolute morons, the people doing insider trading for large sums of money will have already built a strong alibi.

My theory is they are banking on preemptive presidential pardons in Dec 2028.

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#14

Post by paulpauper »

beaviskhan wrote: post #9

You'd have to be spectacularly stupid to bet on these kinds of things without having insider knowledge, because you ought to know good and damn well by now that the people with insider knowledge are DEFINITELY betting on them.

couldn't you somehow in theory track the order book to if and when insiders are betting and then copy the trade?

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#15

Post by paulpauper »

cineticdaffodil wrote: post #3

Now of cocourse there are bots circling watching for insider trades. Which you can "milk" by pretending to insider trade and then hedging a bet against them. A whole eco system of scoundrels

and then spoofing. Creating fake trades to entice copycats.

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#16

Post by cmwelsh »

thot_experiment wrote: post #6
hdhdhsjsbdh wrote: post #2

Yet more evidence of the rapid disassembly of the social contract and our collective ethics, aided of course by unregulated tech. If you work for – or are involved in the funding of – these unregulated gambling and insider trading platforms, you should be ashamed of yourself. Your greed and lack of concern for the health of the human world you live in is sickening. You can get bag after bag but it will never fill the…

This applies to almost everyone working on SaaS; not in all cases, but the absolute majority work on SaaS means creating artificial scarcity in order to extract value from people. It is a fundamentally evil, antisocial, anti human thing to do. If you believe that is okay to restrict access to infinite resources to preserve the status quo you deserve the same place in hell as the people pushing gambling. Don't create…

I’ve never heard “intellectual property” phrased as “artificial scarcity” and it isn’t exactly wrong…

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#17

Post by ZeroGravitas »

cbg0 wrote: post #8
ck2 wrote: post #5

What's the statute of limitations on such things? Because it won't be prosecuted by 2029 but could be afterwards Personally I think it's a bigger problem when the President sues his own government for billions and then orders them to pay it out Because -that- is not an official act. It could be prosecuted but no-one will touch it even after 2029

Unless somebody snitches there's no real way to prosecute insider trading. You can say you just felt like making a trade, or that you read one of Trump's posts the moment he put it up on Truth Social and you just happened to have the trade ready to go. Unless they're absolute morons, the people doing insider trading for large sums of money will have already built a strong alibi.

In some nations just gambling on a war that your soldiers have died in would ruin people's careers and possibly their lives permanently as they are shunned by society.

In other nations you can illegally sell arms to Iran in order to illegally evade congress's attempts to stop you supplying money to terrorists, illegally shred evidence and lie to congress under oath about it all and get a job as a pundit on Fox News.

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#18

Post by SirMaster »

echelon wrote: post #7

What value do prediction markets give to anyone not in the insider trading class? I predict these will be banned when someone finally uses them as an "assassination market".

I thought the point of them is they are “truth machines” they give a financial incentive for the insider class to essentially share what they know.

The benefit to those outside the insider class are that we now have a better idea of the potential outcome.

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#19

Post by paulpauper »

hdhdhsjsbdh wrote: post #2

Yet more evidence of the rapid disassembly of the social contract and our collective ethics, aided of course by unregulated tech. If you work for – or are involved in the funding of – these unregulated gambling and insider trading platforms, you should be ashamed of yourself. Your greed and lack of concern for the health of the human world you live in is sickening. You can get bag after bag but it will never fill the…

Insider trading exists with stocks too. I mean, if there is a way for people to profit by bending the rules or information asymmetry, someone will find a way.
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