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Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets

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Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets

#91

For the record, Minnesota currently has a complete ban on sports betting. We've seen a couple other states that allow sports betting go after prediction markets. Personally, I feel that any state that allows sports betting is going to struggle to argue a case to ban prediction markets because you're essentially arguing over implementation details. Even arguments that certain prediction markets are ripe for insider tr…

I think sports betting is a lot less harmful than prediction markets. With sports betting if someone throws a game to get a pay day, for instance, the only real consequence is on the reputation of the sport. In prediction markets, people can do all sorts of awful things to make money as insiders..

Yeah, prediction markets are like if you could bet on arbitrary decisions a coach or manager might make. Like starting lineup or different trades of players between teams or the size of a players contract in dollars, rather than events that happen during gameplay. There are people who know the facts already but the public does not.

Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets

#92

They're not going to get rid of them, they're just going to drive them underground, which will make them impossible to regulate, which will make using them less safe. I don't participate in prediction markets, but I would bet everything I own on this outcome.

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Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets

#93
post #86
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also place their own bets within their own market. They don't just make money on trading fees.

Kalshi does not trade against its users.

That's their PR department talking.

https://straighttothepoint.substack.com/p/you-cant-have-it-b...

https://www.sportico.com/business/sports-betting/2025/kalshi...

Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets

#94

For the record, Minnesota currently has a complete ban on sports betting. We've seen a couple other states that allow sports betting go after prediction markets. Personally, I feel that any state that allows sports betting is going to struggle to argue a case to ban prediction markets because you're essentially arguing over implementation details. Even arguments that certain prediction markets are ripe for insider tr…

Arguing over implementation details is a pretty common thing for laws to do. Maybe it would weaken the logical consistency of their laws, but that's not really a thing that matters.

Why do states allow hunting some animals and not others? Why do states distinguish between different forms of income to tax? It's all implementation details.

Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets

#95
post #62

I could imagine cases where prediction markets could offer some actual insight, but in practice they seem few and far between. Most markets I've seen devolve into one or more of: betting on unimportant events (e.g. sports games), insider trading, or poorly written ambiguous resolution criteria. It's just hard for me to imagine that, on net, these markets will offer more societal good than the harm we've seen from spo…

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Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets

#96
post #50
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like other exchanges. They charge trading fees.

They also place their own bets within their own market. They don't just make money on trading fees.

A different entity provides liquidity.

There’s no house like in sportsbooks.

Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets

#97
post #44

For the record, Minnesota currently has a complete ban on sports betting. We've seen a couple other states that allow sports betting go after prediction markets. Personally, I feel that any state that allows sports betting is going to struggle to argue a case to ban prediction markets because you're essentially arguing over implementation details. Even arguments that certain prediction markets are ripe for insider tr…

I think you could make a case in separating the two, of course opening further discussion, but because sports betting takes place in a comparatively very controlled environment I think the risk profile is pretty different versus, idk, betting that the temperate will be at or above a certain point and then someone sticks a hair dryer on the thermostat[1]. Cheating can happen in sports of course, but the risk profile a…

The environments of various bets have varying degrees of "control" from insider trading. I wouldn't say that sports is more controlled than most other environments. Point shaving scandals are certainly as old as college sports.

The real question is what the purpose of prediction markets are. For sports, there isn't really much of a purpose to the markets except entertainment for the bettors, and harvesting cash for the bookies. There are also various advantage bettors (who may be involved in corruption or not), who attempt to harvest cash from some combination of the bookies and the bettors. Generally IMO these are bad due to simple human frailty though. We figured out a long time ago that for the most part, making gambling available to the general public was a net negative to society, because it mostly transfers money from addicts to big corporations, destroying lives.

For major world events, one purpose of prediction markets is just to generate a price. It's potentially useful for people to know that, in an adversarial market, what the aggregate probability of an event is. It can also be useful theoretically to hedge risks. Whether it's practical to do that depends on the depth of the market though, and with the current markets, it's not. Even more traditional "prediction" markets like commodity futures aren't deep enough to usefully hedge most risks. For example, you might think that major oil companies might hedge future pricing risks, e.g. they want to drill an oil field with a high production cost, but they're worried that the price might go down before they finish production on the wells. Generally though, the markets aren't deep enough for them to be able to do this, so they just won't drill fields that have a production cost more than roughly the lowest price in the past 20-30 years, depending on the age of the executives in charge of the decision.

There's this other purpose of prediction markets though, which is money/information laundering. People may have secret information where their employer has a strong interest in it remaining private, however the person with the information isn't that well compensated, so they monetize the information on prediction markets. On the darker side, you can have wildly illegal markets like "assassination futures" where people bet on when someone will die, and you can bet on a particular outcome, and then make it come true. There are lots of markets somewhere in the middle where someone can take an action in the context of them being a trusted agent of an organization, but instead of following their duty as an agent, they do what is profitable based on their bets in the prediction market.

Overall, IMO there are some good uses for prediction markets that allow people to hedge risk on both sides and enable useful economic activity, but most of the uses I've seen in practice are a net negative.

Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, a stock is a share of ownership in a company. Now yes, people bet on the derivative value of those ownership shares... but that also happens to basically every asset. If a stock is a prediction market, then so is corn, and gold, and your home.

Yes, they are. Accurate prediction is rewarded in every market, for every asset or asset class. There are adjacent order benefits (I live in my home, I eat corn, I have a say in how a company is run) but these are never divorced from the impact of prediction and prediction in aggregate is just a crowdsourced leading indicator of value; oil spikes the moment a missile hits Iran not because the 2 are explicitly linked,…

Yes, but all of these things have underlying assets that are not themselves predictions. You can buy and sell corn commodities, but at the end of the contract, actual corn is delivered. Predictions markets are different in that they betting on the prediction itself and have no associated asset.

Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets

#99
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you could make a case in separating the two, of course opening further discussion, but because sports betting takes place in a comparatively very controlled environment I think the risk profile is pretty different versus, idk, betting that the temperate will be at or above a certain point and then someone sticks a hair dryer on the thermostat[1]. Cheating can happen in sports of course, but the risk profile a…

The environments of various bets have varying degrees of "control" from insider trading. I wouldn't say that sports is more controlled than most other environments. Point shaving scandals are certainly as old as college sports. The real question is what the purpose of prediction markets are. For sports, there isn't really much of a purpose to the markets except entertainment for the bettors, and harvesting cash for t…

Why must things have a purpose? If something has a purpose, can it be an objective purpose?

Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets

#100

For the record, Minnesota currently has a complete ban on sports betting. We've seen a couple other states that allow sports betting go after prediction markets. Personally, I feel that any state that allows sports betting is going to struggle to argue a case to ban prediction markets because you're essentially arguing over implementation details. Even arguments that certain prediction markets are ripe for insider tr…

They already made the argument themselves: they’re skirting current laws by calling them financial derivatives.
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