151–160 of 193 posts
An interesting article, however my question is technical. In the "The Mechanism of Extraction" section, how is that image made? It is nicely laid out, and has a nice "hand-drawn" feel. This is a good format for many technical drawings, but I have not found any tools that could create this.
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I have occasionally tried checking Polymarket and Kalshi to get an idea of the general political/cultural/technological consensus on various issues that are difficult to research otherwise, eg. "what are the chances that the Senate changes hands in the 2026 midterms?" People have thought about it enough to wager a million dollars and the consensus is at about 1/3. I have this abstract prediction market in my head, ea…
Polymarket is currently predicting a 3% chance of Christ returning by 2027 https://polymarket.com/event/will-jesus-christ-return-before...
The then credible sources did not believe Jesus was the Christ at the time of the first coming!
If there was a second coming what would money be worth?
What exactly are people betting in this thinking? Just betting on anything with long enough odds?
I mentioned this on a different post - the biggest problem with prediction markets is not the gambling or dumb people losing money. Its the fact that it gives very powerful people a vehicle to make lobsided bets on outcomes they control. A small example of this would be NFL / NBA Refs fixing playoff games with a bad call or two. This actually happened 20 years ago, an NBA ref went to prison over being bribed just $20…
IIRC the original prediction markets existed to try and get as close as possible to finding the true answer to open questions. Someone willing to bet a lot of money on an outcome (because they have an edge/are very sure of an outcome) is the point, they're putting their money where their mouth is...
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I've been telling people it only takes 2 or 3 people to throw a football game. The person who hires the ref(optional), the ref, and the person who places the bet. And I was told I was crazy. Hahahahahahahahahaha. Nope I was right.
Huh? It's pretty obvious that you can influence the outcome of a sports event, if you can influence the ref or if you can get a player on one side to pretend to be less competent than she normally is.
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First - I can not comprehend how you could possibly have a charitable interpretation on the war point and how it might have a net positive. I'm not trying to be condescending or anything, I would like to hear a single positive for being able to make BTC bets on killing people. Second - even if you are not one of the millions of Americans that give a shit about sports, there is still a massive fraud implications just…
If I live in a country that is under threat of being attacked by U.S. it is nice to have a website where I can look to get a reasonable probability that the attack happens
If the odds sit at 97% NO for weeks or months, then 3 hours before the invasion an insider makes their play, you would have to be constantly monitoring this market, interpret that spike correctly as an insider trade, and be able to, in that very short amount of time, take actions that change the outcome for you, personally.
Doesn't seem like much of an upside to me.
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It's a national security issue too. Somebody poor grunt who chose to earn a living by laboring (which has proven to be much less effective than being born with money) will be putting fuel in the bombers and thinking "I could just make an anonymous bet..." It's a national security issue. We saw this with the Venezuela attack. A flurry of trading and someone made $400,000 for placing a bet mere hours before the "surpri…
Wouldn't the counterargument to this be that if the poor grunt is willing to betray his country for money in the prediction market, he would also be willing to take money from enemy x to do the same thing? With the prediction market, there is a financial incentive for people on the opposite side of the bet being motivated to uncover the malfeasance.
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Huh? It's pretty obvious that you can influence the outcome of a sports event, if you can influence the ref or if you can get a player on one side to pretend to be less competent than she normally is.
10 years ago we'd be called conspiracy theorists.
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Well, insider trading should be legalised in general. It would be better for the general public. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Arguments_for_...
It would deter those who are not insiders from investing as returns would shift from them to insiders. As the biggest social benefit securities markets provide is to enable raising capital this is a huge drawback and makes things worse for the general public.
Retail investors should be index funds anyway.
Until fairly recently there was no 'insider trading' you could get in trouble for in commodities in the US. That hasn't stopped non-insiders from trading in commodities.
Also, even if insider trading is legal, that doesn't mean your company needs to allow it: you can still punish your own employees for it, and eg claw back bonuses and sue for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty.
The main thing the (American) laws against insider trading does what private contracts can't do is to make the golf buddy liable, too.
In any case, American insider trading regulation is already laxer than French insider trading law. And it doesn't look like French companies have an easier time raising capital.
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No worse than existing financial markets, and we already deal with those.
The big difference here is that if you buy short-dated out-of-the-money options and make it big, the SEC comes knocking on your door and reads your text messages to find out what you knew and when. It's both easy to track down stock traders due to KYC, and easy to prosecute due to laws. Polymarket and friends make it both much harder to find the trader, and also it's less clear if there's a legal theory that lets you…