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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

#151

Post by freejazz »

WarmWash wrote: post #146
freejazz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 n…

It seems like it's a huge assumption on your part that the bets you are describing are in the "0.89" range and not something significantly higher, even disregarding what others pointed out about this having already provably occurred.

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

#152

Post by noIdeaTheSecond »

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]

[dead]

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

#153

Post by anthk »

CPLX wrote: post #44
philipallstar wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you are privately allowed to bet on whatever you like with another individual. That is indeed legally fine, though potentially distasteful. Polymarket is facilitating bets between people, not bets with the house. Gambling and insurance are both bets with the house.

What the hell are you talking about? You are absolutely not allowed to bet on whatever you'd like with another individual. Depending on what you're betting on (for example, the price of a stock or the throw of a card), it falls under varying different regimes. This is highly regulated and has been for most of the whole of human history. Yes, there are de minimis exceptions. Your office NCAA pool, for example, is ofte…

In Spain in elderly caring homes there was a tradition to bet on Bingo matches for simbolic prices (barely one or two euros, enough for a coffee and that's it). It was legalized on paper recently, but technically everyone turned a blind eye.

https://russpain.com/en/news-3/authorities-consider-legalizi...

>Rarely exceed 25 euros.

Maybe in Christmas, because the weekly play was just about low prizes.

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

#154

Post by ASalazarMX »

flexagoon wrote: post #127
seydor wrote: post #99

Earlier 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…

That's just gambling with frills.

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

#156

Post by solenoid0937 »

WarmWash wrote: post #146
freejazz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 n…

I don't think the markets are thin, there are some bets that have made people many millions.

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

#157

Post by satvikpendem »

Interesting comments here. I'd rather have prediction markets than casinos or sports betting services, because in the latter, you're playing again the house which can and will ban you for winning too much, while prediction markets are simply market makers taking a fee.

Prediction markets are also regulated by the CFTC as they're futures contracts technically.

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

#158

Post by solenoid0937 »

super256 wrote: post #90
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.

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...

KYC helps here. Crypto based gambling markets bypass this.

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

#159

Post by cucumber3732842 »

Fnoord wrote: post #92
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #51

[flagged]

You need a license to operate in Spain. The license is fairly available (EU regulations enforce this). So, Polymarket is able to obtain a license if they wish to operate in Spain, if they follow the fair rules to obtain a license. Don't want to obtain a license? Don't want to follow the rules in Spain? No problem, but no business in Spain. Websites blocking works like that, too. Which makes sense: local law > remote…

You can replace Spain in the article with any other jurisdiction and my comment would be unchanged.

This has nothing to do with US vs EU or any other trope you seek to my comment as being on a particular side of of a particular issue in order to get people of a certain bent to support whatever your side is (isn't team politics great).

Ask yourself this. If the license Spain is trying to enforce here had the exact same requirements but was granted by some 3rd party (industry consortium or whatever) and the government didn't care whether they held it would you still be acting like it's such a big deal for them to have it or not?

Does holding the license or not fundamentally change the nature of the business the license holder is in?

The government is essentially granting legitimacy to a bad thing here in exchange for some money being spent in the right directions and enough of it on "good things" that it's plausibly deniable.

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

#160

Post by [deleted] »

ifdefdebug wrote: post #140
throwawa1 wrote: post #31

When 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.

[deleted]
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