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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

#271

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.

I don’t think they allow bets regarding if someone is going to die or not?

All of these "politican out" markets will resolve to true if the politician dies: https://polymarket.com/predictions/out.

The language is usually "This market will resolve to “Yes” if ceases to be ".

Or for another example: https://polymarket.com/event/will-neymar-play-in-the-2026-fi.... Will Neymar play in the world cup? Not if he's dead. Any kind of "will celebrity appear in X in the future" can be reduced to an assassination market.

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

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you compare prediction market implied odds to the actual odds that ended up they match very closely

what are these "actual odds" and if you have the time machine that lets you observe the necessary outcomes to calculate them, why are you bothering with making money on betting markets?

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

#273
post #224

I find it humorous that these are simultaneously attacked as being gambling and attacked because some people know more than others and are "betting" on a sure thing.

Not sure I get the joke. Should "we're crooked" be a defense against illegal gambling charges?

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

#274

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.

That "facilitating" argument didn't work out for Silk Road.

Because what the Silk Road did was illegal whether in person or not.

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

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you compare prediction market implied odds to the actual odds that ended up they match very closely

Do you have an example?

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

#276

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.

[flagged]

Which is more likely: CNN commits murder to increase viewership; or any one of billions of people commits murder to win a bet?

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

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

am i understanding correctly that Docker Hub is inaccessible in Spain during football matches? do sports get bandwidth priority?

Not bandwidth priority. It's just that our brilliant judges have let the football league implement IP blocks to combat piracy of football matches. These blocks affect CloudFlare IPs that host many websites and services unrelated to football, so we can't access them during matches via VPN. (And by the way, I'm not interested in football but people I know who are say that they still view pirate match broadcasts just fine).

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

#278
post #59

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.

They become hyperstition engines.

"hyperstition," TIL.

Thanks, stranger!

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CEO of Coinbase finished an earnings call by reading all the buzzwords you could bet on to be mention during the call. So a CEO can manipulate these things and who knows if it was just a marketing thing or if he shared his plans.

As long as he didn't place any bets, I think what he did is totally fine. If I find out my friends placed bets on whether I'll say X tomorrow, I'm not obligated to act as if I didn't know.

So is it also okay if his friends placed a bet and shared the profits with them?

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

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It depends on the market of course. In looking it up the only markets that have ever come even close to that sort of payout are things like presidential elections where the risks of insiderism or gaming are negligible, and there's extremely large public interest in it. Nobody's making millions betting on things like the weather.

>where the risks of insiderism or gaming are negligible, and there's extremely large public interest in it.

So what's the point of polymarket, then? If at best we get "negligible" "insiderism", how is it that we are supposed to be benefitting from this as a society the way OP and others insist that revealing insider preferences "would"

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