Live data from Hacker News

Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term

cnbc.com

21–30 of 234 posts

Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term

#21
post #10

Anderson Cooper: But predictive markets do rely on someone having some inside information. Shayne Coplan: Uh-huh. Yeah. I think that people going and having an edge to the market is a good thing. Obviously, you need to curate them and you need to be really clear and stringent on where the line is drawn and, like, sort of ethics and we spend a lot of time on that. But it's sort of an inevitability that this will happe…

“and, like, sort of ethics”

they spent a lot of time on it!

Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term

#22
post #5

Of course he should be punished but the best lesson here is for bettors. Those who wager on "prediction markets": you are betting against people who have access to more information or can influence the outcome of the wager. Don't waste your money.

That's sort of the point of prediction markets: they surface insider information by allowing people to profit off of it. The benefit is to people watching the prices , who can then use that information to make better decisions ahead of the answer being revealed to the public. It's not necessarily to market participants, who need to be aware of who else is trading the market and have a credible reason to believe they…

Hmm, not following. The insider trade in this case was small enough to not change the lines meaningfully, no? D4vd's chances of being #1 went from 99% nearly overnight, was a huge upset.

Polymarket might be different, but conventional Vegas-style lines change with the amount of $$ bet, if the pool is $50M and an insider bets $10k on the long shot, the line isn't moving -- I don't see how insider information can be surfaced in this scenario except after the fact (and only maybe then).

In other words, if the line changes enough to signal insider info, it's not really insider info anymore.

Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term

#23
post #5

Of course he should be punished but the best lesson here is for bettors. Those who wager on "prediction markets": you are betting against people who have access to more information or can influence the outcome of the wager. Don't waste your money.

That's sort of the point of prediction markets: they surface insider information by allowing people to profit off of it. The benefit is to people watching the prices , who can then use that information to make better decisions ahead of the answer being revealed to the public. It's not necessarily to market participants, who need to be aware of who else is trading the market and have a credible reason to believe they…

[deleted]

Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term

#24
post #5

Of course he should be punished but the best lesson here is for bettors. Those who wager on "prediction markets": you are betting against people who have access to more information or can influence the outcome of the wager. Don't waste your money.

That's sort of the point of prediction markets: they surface insider information by allowing people to profit off of it. The benefit is to people watching the prices , who can then use that information to make better decisions ahead of the answer being revealed to the public. It's not necessarily to market participants, who need to be aware of who else is trading the market and have a credible reason to believe they…

What Polymarket says on the topic (https://integrity.polymarket.com/) is that they do not surface insider information and you mustn't trade if you have any.

Because the prediction market community is filled with liars and fraudsters, of course, it does seem to be common knowledge that this restriction isn't meant to be taken seriously, much like Polymarket's fake rule that Americans aren't allowed to use it.

But once you start from the premise that everything prediction markets say about their rules and practices is a lie, why should we believe they provide any genuine signal for anything?

Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sort of the point of prediction markets: they surface insider information by allowing people to profit off of it. The benefit is to people watching the prices , who can then use that information to make better decisions ahead of the answer being revealed to the public. It's not necessarily to market participants, who need to be aware of who else is trading the market and have a credible reason to believe they…

That’s the academic theory behind these markets, but there’s no actual value to knowing who the most searched celebrity will be or any of this other garbage. It’s just an unregulated casino with guesses about the popularity of Google searches instead of guessing black or red.

It’s not rare nowadays that speculation on some topic will include the Polymarket rates. Google searches: Maybe not. Maybe that’s just gambling for the fun of it.

Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sort of the point of prediction markets: they surface insider information by allowing people to profit off of it. The benefit is to people watching the prices , who can then use that information to make better decisions ahead of the answer being revealed to the public. It's not necessarily to market participants, who need to be aware of who else is trading the market and have a credible reason to believe they…

That’s the academic theory behind these markets, but there’s no actual value to knowing who the most searched celebrity will be or any of this other garbage. It’s just an unregulated casino with guesses about the popularity of Google searches instead of guessing black or red.

[deleted]

Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sort of the point of prediction markets: they surface insider information by allowing people to profit off of it. The benefit is to people watching the prices , who can then use that information to make better decisions ahead of the answer being revealed to the public. It's not necessarily to market participants, who need to be aware of who else is trading the market and have a credible reason to believe they…

You are correct, but you say this like the prediction markets are open about this fact. They aren't and if you ask them they will deny this.

I think they are open about it. John Oliver did a piece on it last month and I recall an interview where the founder of one of these prediction markets shared this as a beneficial effect of the product.
Post reply on HN