Well, that makes perfect sense. The whole world will eventually do the same. gambling with software is still gambling, just like accounting with software is still accounting.
You are stunningly more optimistic than I.
Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence
131–140 of 559 posts
Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
polymarket is selling bets, not predictions and other people are buying them. they are not being sold by people. It's like calling the casino a probability market.
I think the term "market" comes from the fact that it uses stock market–like pricing and allows you to sell your bets at any time. Ie. you buy "shares" of some outcome for 0.3$ if the probability is 30%, and then if the probability at any point goes to 50%, you can sell the "shares" for 0.5$ each. (Which of course doesn't make it any better or less of a casino, this is just to say that the word market didn't come fro…
sure, a bet market which is gambling, not a 'prediction market'. those are not predictions
Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems the blocks aren't in effect yet, I'm on Spanish ISP (Vodafone) here and can still access polymarket.com and kalshi.com. Traditionally, Spanish ISPs tend to do DNS blocks yeah, at least when it comes to long-lasting piracy and other "clearly illegal stuff" like Women's rights. It not until recently ISPs got asked to do blocks by IP, as Cloudflare wasn't responding to legal takedown requests, hence we currently s…
I'm on Movistar and can't access it without my trusty VPN that I have for football match times :)
Interesting, added my ISP to my previous comment (Vodafone). Do you have a lot of stuff you use daily that goes away during the games? Personally the only thing that seems to stop working is Docker Hub, everything else seems OK, trying to figure out if it's just my ISP that is lenient or what's going on...
Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> should be illegal globally Let's not pretend that Spain of all places is caring about horribly destructive psuedo-gambling. Banning "unregulated gambling" is just pressure to make sure that the Spanish gambling racket stays intact for the bookies already at the top.
> Let's not pretend that Spain of all places is caring about horribly destructive psuedo-gambling. Is this intended to imply that Spain has particularly high levels of sports betting, or issues with gambling? All the stats I can see suggest the opposite, and there's already plenty of tight restrictions on local gambling businesses (sports sponsorship ban, welcome bonus ban, almost no public advertising, etc). At a qu…
Ludopaths often try to put on the same level national lotteries with sports betting and other means of information based betting.
Not a fan of lottery myself, but at least it's just some random numbers drawn from a drum. There is hardly any dark pattern or illegal incentive there. It is just you against Thomas Bayes.
Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence
#135These - especially Polymarket - should be illegal globally, as they incentivize people with power to manipulate the real world in horribly destructive ways to win a bet. I would not be surprised if people are murdered at some point to reap the payout of some related bet.
The genie is out of the bottle. Crypto-only underground prediction markets will always exist. I think it is better to heavily regulate legal options instead of pushing them underground. That didnt work for drugs or prostitution, and it wont work for gambling.
Except, gambling isn't illegal here - in fact, it's very common. There are lots of casinos within a few mins walk in any city in Spain. All the prediction markets need to do is comply with existing laws.
Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence
#136Lol it could not possibly be the coincidence that there were bets on ex prime minister Zapatero going to jail before the 30th of June or other meme bets making the rounds in Spain in the last couple of days.
There are bets everyday, so no matter when the ban is announced, you can always attach a conspiracy to it.
Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence
#137These - especially Polymarket - should be illegal globally, as they incentivize people with power to manipulate the real world in horribly destructive ways to win a bet. I would not be surprised if people are murdered at some point to reap the payout of some related bet.
Maybe we should ban the stock market too. In 2017 someone tried to bomb the bus of the BVB soccer club, after he bought puts options on the BVB stock. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borussia_Dortmund_team_bus_bom...
At least the stock market is supposed to have a purpose besides gambling, to raise investment for companies. (Whether it's actually successful at that is a separate matter.) And anyways, your scenario would probably be considered insider trading, and that's already banned.
Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
The genie is out of the bottle. Crypto-only underground prediction markets will always exist. I think it is better to heavily regulate legal options instead of pushing them underground. That didnt work for drugs or prostitution, and it wont work for gambling.
Except, gambling isn't illegal here - in fact, it's very common. There are lots of casinos within a few mins walk in any city in Spain. All the prediction markets need to do is comply with existing laws.
For some reason, American companies have a really hard time following existing laws and regulations here. AirBnb and Uber both had the same approach of basically saying "Oops we didn't know" until the law (and others) cracked down on them, I'm sure someone could find older examples too, and surely tons of examples outside of Spain too.
Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence
#139These - especially Polymarket - should be illegal globally, as they incentivize people with power to manipulate the real world in horribly destructive ways to win a bet. I would not be surprised if people are murdered at some point to reap the payout of some related bet.
Maybe we should ban the stock market too. In 2017 someone tried to bomb the bus of the BVB soccer club, after he bought puts options on the BVB stock. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borussia_Dortmund_team_bus_bom...
You raise a good point: There's nothing intrinsically good about betting and trading venues, and the sane default option might well be to prohibit it. We allow stock and bond trading as it fulfils important functions [1].
What you describe (profiting from creating havoc by some "short" bet) is indeed problematic and is regulated.
This is also one more reason why trading should not be unconditionally anonymous. Another reason: proper trading venues have rules against "squeezing", namely that no entity may hold more than some threshold ratio of the open interest. That's obviously impossible to enforce with anonymous markets.
[1] Tradings allows individuals to time-shift consumption, it funds productive enterprises, it incentivises convergence of market price with fundamental value, which in turn is what enables efficient investment allocation, and it allows the emergence of an economy-wide equilibrium of savings and investments. Note though that all of these functions might well be fulfilled by having, say, one minute of trading a day.
Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence
#140When I see people making money on Iran attacks, and murder of heads of state - it shows clearly something is deeply wrong with Polymarket. Its a level worse than Vegas or Indian casinos. A literal ticket to hell. I'm all for banning these evil sites.
well I see more problematic the people actually doing the Iran attacks and murder of heads of state. Betting on those is distasteful, but doing those things is where the damage lies.