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Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence

reuters.com

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Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence

#141

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

embedding-shape wrote: post #133
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It changes depending on the day. But yes, some days it's really a lot (affecting forums, news sites, etc.). I think Movistar applies stronger blocks than most for some reason, in fact I've been seriously consider changing ISP for that reason but I'm too lazy (plus in 12 years with them I think I've had a single outage which was solved in an hour or two, so even if I oppose them morally, it's convenient to stay...)

Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence

#142

Post by [deleted] »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #83
throwawa1 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its just a dark mirror episode. I can't imagine waking up and thinking "boy I'll really make some money if we kill Ayatollah Khomeini today"

The other side of that argument could be something like: "Dude, Khomeini better not be killed, it'd suck for me, an average iranian dude. I'd probably bet he dies so I can hedge my personal financial wellbeing for that case"

[deleted]

Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence

#143

Post by criddell »

hmry wrote: post #11
solenoid0937 wrote: post #7

These - 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.

Yeah. You aren't allowed to set up a life insurance policy on someone else's life, or a fire insurance policy on someone else's home. For obvious reasons. But buying an event contract that pays if someone dies or someone's house burns down is fine?

> But buying an event contract that pays if someone dies or someone's house burns down is fine?

You can sell your life insurance policy to somebody else. It's a way of getting money to sick people to use while thy are still alive.

Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence

#144

Post by FabHK »

nekzn wrote: post #121
allthetime wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I take it you have a problem with laws against murder, fraud, theft, etc. Aside from the government, who is it that you prefer to do judgment and enforcement?

[flagged]

> to ban something we must be able to construct an argument that does not hinge on morality. For example, theft is bad because it deprives you of your possessions. No need to invoke morality.

Ok, I'll bite. Why is it bad to deprive you of your possessions?

And given that the house always wins, is it not depriving the gamblers of their possessions?

Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence

#145

Post by InsideOutSanta »

theragra wrote: post #118
throwawaypath wrote: post #76

Polymarket is a casino. A roulette wheel is not a "market". You can't beat the house.

There is no house? Betting is against other players

The service is the house, and they take fees on bets, so they are the only ones guaranteed to win.

Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence

#146

Post by WarmWash »

freejazz wrote: post #67
WarmWash wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as they incentivize people with power to manipulate the real world I would argue that the ratio between "power" and "money to be won" is too big (at least right now) for this to materially matter. No fortune 500 CEO is going to postpone a product launch so they can win $5,000 on polymarket. But some random guy will get his hair dryer to win a socially meaningless weather bet. It's not discussed often, but the liqui…

> No fortune 500 CEO is going to postpone a product launch so they can win $5,000 on polymarket They would win a lot more than a trivial amount by taking adverse positions, no? Seems like you're making up your own hypothetical

They can take any position they want and do whatever they want, the point is that these oddball markets are very thin so there just isn't much money there to harvest. You can only bet $50M at your chosen risk if you can find enough people to take the other side, and these markets simply don't have many participants betting much money.

Think of it like kids betting pennies what subject the teacher will open with the next day. The teacher doesn't care about winning $0.89, but the kids do.

Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence

#147

Post by christkv »

Unai wrote: post #136
christkv wrote: post #102

Lol 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.

Most of Spain did not even know polymarket existed until a couple of days ago.

Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence

#148

Post by anthk »

pimterry wrote: post #115
petcat wrote: post #13

Earlier 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…

>Is this intended to imply that Spain has particularly high levels of sports betting

La Quiniela, a lottery based on soccer matches' results. Every middle aged man filled some weekly forms (win for locals/draw/win for foreigners) as if it was a religion. If you matched 14 from 15 results (much better with 15), you could get a big prize. Also, Jai Alai matches on the North of Spain had huge bets on results too.

Younger millenials and Gen-Zers will just play on RETA which is kinda the same as La Quiniela but online.

Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence

#149

Post by ambicapter »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #80
ambicapter wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not discussed often, but the liquidity of these markets is often awful, and you can only win as much as people are willing to take the other side. Which is harder when people know it's easy for insiders (or the outcome decider themselves) to play the other side. You're basically arguing that there aren't enough fools to go around, when we're talking about gambling enterprises.

Not fools, these bets are usually very close to a fair market price. But people are not willing to wager millions of dollars on the temperature registered in a certain place at a certain time. Or on if hezbollah missiles impact Israel land or whatever.

What fair market price are you talking about? The price decided by the prediction market?

Re: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence

#150

Post by WinstonSmith84 »

emsign wrote: post #123
sandworm101 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you short the property. Essentially, sell it now on the bet that it will drop in value later. Then it burns down and you repurchase the vacant lot and return the property to the original owner. Evil, but most everything in real estate is evil.

And that's exactly the problem with Polymarket and such, it gives an incentive to be destructive because that's easy. Entropy is easy. With an insurance this trick won't work, because the insurance company will notice what you are doing. Polymarket doesn't care.

> With an insurance this trick won't work, because the insurance company will notice what you are doing

This has worked well millions of times (and occasionally failed too with people ending in prison or with huge fines). Where I can agree however is that Polymarket makes that much easier.

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