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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

#231

Post by somenameforme »

jubilanti wrote: post #72
philipallstar wrote: post #35

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.

Nope. "We're just an intermediary between people" is a 100+ year old yarn that casinos and bookies have been trying to spin. If you're presenting a point of entry to a betting line and taking a cut, congrats, you're the house. Doesn't matter if you adjust the betting line manually based on intuition or algorithmically based on betting volume. Sometimes it doesn't get enforced because of corruption, but if this was th…

Polymarket doesn't take a cut. Their profit comes in transaction fees.

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

#232

Post by mr_00ff00 »

anthk wrote: post #148
pimterry wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's not pretend that Spain of all places is caring about horribly destructive psuedo-gambling. Is this intended to imply that Spain has particularly high levels of sports betting, or issues with gambling? All the stats I can see suggest the opposite, and there's already plenty of tight restrictions on local gambling businesses (sports sponsorship ban, welcome bonus ban, almost no public advertising, etc). At a qu…

>Is this intended to imply that Spain has particularly high levels of sports betting La Quiniela, a lottery based on soccer matches' results. Every middle aged man filled some weekly forms (win for locals/draw/win for foreigners) as if it was a religion. If you matched 14 from 15 results (much better with 15), you could get a big prize. Also, Jai Alai matches on the North of Spain had huge bets on results too. Younge…

Maybe a bit out of scope for this article, but seems like in every country “Younger millenials and Gen-Zers” are turning to gambling online while traditional gambling (like Vegas) dies.

I feel like this might be a net negative from the pure speed and access in which you can lose money online vs real life, but idk.

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

#233

Post by polycancel »

philipallstar wrote: post #38
wsatb wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you defend these slimey companies? They’re actively running a mob casino and you still have people acting like government is the bad guys here. That doesn’t mean there can’t be better regulation of other markets, but comparing prediction markets to stock markets is a huge stretch.

It's not a casino. You aren't betting against the house with polymarket, unlike with gambling sites. You're betting against other players.

[dead]

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

#234

Post by FireBeyond »

somenameforme wrote: post #231
jubilanti wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. "We're just an intermediary between people" is a 100+ year old yarn that casinos and bookies have been trying to spin. If you're presenting a point of entry to a betting line and taking a cut, congrats, you're the house. Doesn't matter if you adjust the betting line manually based on intuition or algorithmically based on betting volume. Sometimes it doesn't get enforced because of corruption, but if this was th…

Polymarket doesn't take a cut. Their profit comes in transaction fees.

"We don't take a cut of your bet, we just charge you a transaction fee on your bet" is reaching a bit.

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

#236

Post by saltyoldman »

solenoid0937 wrote: post #7

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.

Can someone give a more concrete example around all this?

How do I cause someone to die using Kalshi or Polymarket, specifically, also without being caught? Didn't they catch someone that had pre-knowledge of the Venezuela campaign?

(I'm not asking because I want to do this, I'm asking because it's not clear to me how this is realistically possible.) Also, given that you can't just create a market on either platform, it's not like I can just say "XXX has 3 months to live".

If a criminal wants to make money on crime, they have better ways to do it than put 10k of their own money to make 50k by killing someone.

I just don't get this whole argument. If you're a contract killer, why put yourself and the contractee up in the feds sights?

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

#237

Post by nivertech »

compiler-guy wrote: post #57
chollida1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

being pedantic here but > You aren't allowed to set up a life insurance policy on someone else's life, or a fire insurance policy on someone else's home This isn't really true. Lots of people take out life insurance on others as a hedge for many reasons, small business partner is one. Same fire insurance, we had a case where someone pledged a building as collateral and we took out separate fire insurance on the build…

The technical term is that you must have an “insurable interest” in what you insure. Both of your examples are people protecting their insurable interest. Ownership is the most common insurable interest, but there are many other ways to have one. This is done because the insurance company wants you to prefer that the covered event doesn’t happen, which avoids some conflicts of interest. These prediction market events…

Even if you have an insurable interest, moral hazard may arise - acting recklessly or other abuse, while knowing you are insured/covered. Somewhat similar to friendly fraud in retail/ecommerce.

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

#238

Post by loeg »

hmry wrote: post #11
solenoid0937 wrote: post #7

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.

Yeah. You aren't allowed to set up a life insurance policy on someone else's life, or a fire insurance policy on someone else's home. For obvious reasons. But buying an event contract that pays if someone dies or someone's house burns down is fine?

Some of the prediction markets explicitly forbid payouts based on death. E.g., Kalshi refused to pay out "leaves office" when Khamenei was killed.

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

#239

Post by woodrowbarlow »

embedding-shape wrote: post #133
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on Movistar and can't access it without my trusty VPN that I have for football match times :)

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?

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

#240

Post by somenameforme »

solenoid0937 wrote: post #156
WarmWash wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can take any position they want and do whatever they want, the point is that these oddball markets are very thin so there just isn't much money there to harvest. You can only bet $50M at your chosen risk if you can find enough people to take the other side, and these markets simply don't have many participants betting much money. Think of it like kids betting pennies what subject the teacher will open with the n…

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.

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