What would happen if some regular Joe, completely unrelated to any other user, watched for bets that could signal insider information and made significant profit themselves, too?
Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term
121–130 of 234 posts
Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
It barely makes sense, though? The idea is that it will surface insider information to the public. That happens only because the insider is financially incentivized to place a bet. But they will only bet if they can win money, and they can only win money if someone is taking the other side of their bet, which necessarily means someone without their insider information. In other words, prediction markets require sucke…
> Is this good? it is good if the losers are voluntarily participating. They are not coerced (stupidity is not coercion) into it, and therefore, it is reasonable that they expected to win the bet. The only problem i have with polymarket (and others like it) are that insiders can often remain anonymous. It should not, and if an insider earns, but their win requires they remain anonymous or face some social/reputationa…
> They are not coerced (stupidity is not coercion) into it
They are coerced in the same way as any other gambling: the false allure of easy money in a society built on financial struggle.
Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term
#123What would happen if some regular Joe, completely unrelated to any other user, watched for bets that could signal insider information and made significant profit themselves, too?
This is a trade that is already done by trading businesses. It doesn’t even need to be this explicit; you could for instance dispose one side of a trade to reduce exposure to insiders.
Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term
#124What would happen if some regular Joe, completely unrelated to any other user, watched for bets that could signal insider information and made significant profit themselves, too?
fair number of people do this, bunch of free tools to filter by this criteria (brand new account, more than $xx,xxx size), vulnerable to spoofing obviously
Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
The interesting part is that he got charged with insider trading. A few attorneys on bluesky have pointed out that this is a novel use of this law since previously the trading occurred on regulated markets (e.g. SEC or CFTC regulated markets like stock markets and commodities/futures exchanges).
These markets are regulated by the CFTC, currently, so what exactly is novel here?
Poly market is not a us exchange. Kalshi is.
Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term
#126Of 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.
Or figure out which bet is insider info and profit?
Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term
#127Earlier 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…
It barely makes sense, though? The idea is that it will surface insider information to the public. That happens only because the insider is financially incentivized to place a bet. But they will only bet if they can win money, and they can only win money if someone is taking the other side of their bet, which necessarily means someone without their insider information. In other words, prediction markets require sucke…
The other side could be someone with natural exposure to the question that wants to hedge, for example people traveling to/from the middle east were exposed to the Iran war question(s) and could get insurance against airspace closure through prediction markets.
This argument doesn't work for 90+% of the volume on PM/Kalshi but I think most of the questions there are just gambling.
Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term
#128[deleted]
Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term
#129And that lad is of course an information security engineer
Re: Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term
#130Like it’s nice to see someone get charged for using insider knowledge to win at prediction markets, but are we seriously just going to say this is the first big case and not any of the suspiciously accurate accounts created immediately before Iran War events?
I fucking hate this double standard hypocrisy. Leading by example means if your political or corporate leaders can game the system then so can you, I say.