Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you're doing extra-legal military operations in a country that isn't at war, what choice do you have? There are civilian aircraft up in the sky. Having a fighter jet run into one and kill a bunch of civilians is a bad PR situation.
When you're doing extra-legal military operations in a country that isn't at war, do you really care about PR?
The microstructure of wealth transfer in prediction markets
171–180 of 193 posts
Re: The microstructure of wealth transfer in prediction markets
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are not wrong, and I should clarify I also have a big problem with the current state of legal insider trading of elected officials, but this polymarket problem is much more extreme. You can get a guaranteed 100-1 payout by blowing up some random people on the other side of the planet. Way worse than making even 2-5x on a leveraged futures bet with insider info. In that example, the victim is usually just other ri…
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_...
Re: The microstructure of wealth transfer in prediction markets
#173I 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…
I think the war ones are the only real concern. In the context of legislating prediction markets or not, sports is not a concern at all. Whether it's a net positive or negative for important shit like war and corruption, we'll see, but if it helps in the important stuff, but damages sports, sorry bud.
You could probably hire a gunman for much less than $3bn. I don't know if the crypto markets are anonymous enough to get away with it though.
Re: The microstructure of wealth transfer in prediction markets
#174I don't follow this part, can somebody maybe explain? > Yet on Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated prediction market, traders have wagered vast sums on longshot contracts with historical returns as low as 43 cents on the dollar. On prediction markets traders can bet both sides. E.g. on Polymarket I can currently bet that Greenland will be acquired by USA before 2027 and get 4:1 odds: or I can bet that this doesn't happen, and g…
In fact traders have to be there for both sides. The article means approximately that on 1c bets on unlikely things the people betting 1c to get a dollar if it happens do worse than those betting 99c to make a dollar if it doesn't happen.
I'm not sure that means betting 99c to make a dollar is a great business though - your money is tied up, often the volume is low so if you can only bet say $99 to win $100 it may not be worth the hassle to make $1, and you are vulnerable to the bettors knowing something you don't - maybe the unlikely event isn't really that unlikely but you don't know.
Re: The microstructure of wealth transfer in prediction markets
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Re: The microstructure of wealth transfer in prediction markets
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but i did find that politics was actually one of the most efficient categories (only ~1% maker/taker gap) I confess I'm surprised by that result in particular. I realize your results are for Kalshi, but ISTR some reports from the presidential elections on Polymarket. But more generally: When you say there is "only a ~1% maker/taker gap", is that weighted by the size of the bets? or is it averaged over the number of…
If we weight by contracts purchased the gap is 1.02%, dollar weighted the gap is 1.00%. I'm glad you enjoyed the paper :)
I think an additional table/graph of how large-bet performance vs small-bet performance would be interesting in general, as well as broken out by market type.
It kinda answers of the question: Are large bets equal to smart money? or are they equal in "smartness" to small bets?
Re: The microstructure of wealth transfer in prediction markets
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disbelief and normalcy are a hell of a drug. Unless someone fully expects something terrible to happen and they are deliberately trying to find out when it'll happen, most people will happily ignore all of the signs until it's too late. Just look at the lead up to the Ukraine invasion, the US intelligence services were practically screaming from the rooftops that it was happening. Russians were obviously stacking up…
Well, one problem is that the US intelligence services might have a credibility problem with the general public.
Re: The microstructure of wealth transfer in prediction markets
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could see USAF and navy air power operating in venezuela on ads-b. I was shocked seeing F15s. You'd think there'd be no way the military would have ads-b activated while performing military operations.
When you're doing extra-legal military operations in a country that isn't at war, what choice do you have? There are civilian aircraft up in the sky. Having a fighter jet run into one and kill a bunch of civilians is a bad PR situation.
Re: The microstructure of wealth transfer in prediction markets
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd just like to make the distinction between: 1- Making a bet with privileged information. 2- Creating the event and making the bet. 2 would be a war crime, 1 would be a probabilistic leak. Trump claimed they didn't want to pass through congress because they leak, and there were no leaks about the event. But if any personnel made a polymarket bet, that would constitute a leak. It wasn't acted upon, but if personnel…
Of course the next step beyond that is "leaking" false information as a decoy by placing large bets on certain events. If that happens enough times it seems like it should wash away the value for agencies hoping to act on "privileged" information.
Re: The microstructure of wealth transfer in prediction markets
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the war ones are the only real concern. In the context of legislating prediction markets or not, sports is not a concern at all. Whether it's a net positive or negative for important shit like war and corruption, we'll see, but if it helps in the important stuff, but damages sports, sorry bud.
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…
On to the nuanced response:
>"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 would like to hear a single positive for being able to make BTC bets on killing people."
This has been marked by yourself as a single point, but there's two distinct asks here, which I believe you are conflating. The latter of which is easy to answer, the first one is clearly to be decided and no one knows at this time (and could go either way).
First you ask how it might be a "net positive", that is that its positives outweigh the negatives. Then you ask to hear a single positive. Forgive me for overspelling the obvious here if the contradiction is already clear, but I must dwell on this as it seems to be precisely what's causing you to "not comprehend".
It is trivial to show a single positive, it can be done so in two manners, first showing that a single positive is possible, and then a bit harder would be to argue that said positive is definitely a positive and not a negative, in isolation. On the first type, to merely show that an individual positive is possible, I could do so in three different manners, one which is on good faith and relevant to the actual events/discussion, e.g: "on assasination events, victims can get information on their safety and act accordingly.", the issue is that this might distract you into discussing the specifics of what I just said instead of following the greater argument. A second way would be to show an individual positive that is technically so, but obviously would not be used to argue anything else, which avoids the reader from being defensive, e.g: "It's fun for people to gamble". It's worth noting that this is a single positive in isolation. Thirdly, I can argue anything really, and it is at least a candidate, mere refutation the fact is irrelevant as we are for this point only considering that there could be positives: e.g: "It might solve AGI/string physics", even in the exercise of finding a silly positive effect, we nevertheless find that it's technically possible that prediction markets might fund scientific research.
On the second type, to show that such positive effect is actually positive, I don't think there's much grounds to deny here that there exist individual positive effects. So I won't try to waste much effort, here, I think a stronger argument would be to argue that the net effect is negative, which again is distinct from being able to point out a single positive.
Regarding the net effect of markets on war or assasination attempts, I do not hold an answer, do you? Do you know for a fact whether it's a net positive or a net negative? Somewhere in the US courts, legislation and lawyers there seems to be a different answer. The journalists and a large amount of readers seem to be of course against it, but they don't hold much more power or say in the matter than the bare minimum any citizen gets by democratic vote, and to that extent, the power they hold is just over the capability to affect legislation for companies that have a global audience, and are just headquartered in your country as a base of operations, and would immediately move to another jurisdiction, or give way to a competitor in another jurisdiction if the conditions were to turn too unfavourable.
Personally, I don't make bets on wars, or assasination attempts because of the possibility that they may cause negative effects, it is sufficient and I consider the burden of proof to be inverted, but by no means do I hold the belief that it is a net negative. And I still reserve the right morally and legally to participate in these markets if for some bad turn of luck I were to be caught in the middle of a war, in the same manner that I might reserve the right to own and bear arms.