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Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

timesofisrael.com

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Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#321

Post by crazygringo »

mpalmer wrote: post #10

I truly don't know how you wake up, read this story with your morning coffee, and go to work at a company like this.

What the heck does the company (Polymarket) have to do with any of this?

There's nothing wrong with a prediction market. There are a lot of reasons why they're helpful in judging the probability of future events more accurately than any single analyst, and are therefore a net benefit to society, no different from newspapers and stock markets.

These are just individuals making criminal threats. They're the bad guys here. They don't work for Polymarket or anything. Your comment is like saying you can't imagine how anyone could go to work at the Olympics after Nancy Kerrigan got struck by Tonya Harding's ex-husband. Something criminal happened, but the Olypmics are not the one responsible.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#322

Post by kibwen »

empath75 wrote: post #224
fzil wrote: post #3

Man the moral degradation is off the charts. Prediction markets are easily the worst things to grace the internet by far and its not even close.

So, a fun historical fact is that insurance markets started with people in coffee houses betting on whether or not ships would sink for fun. Eventually ship owners realized that if they bet on their own ship sinking, that it reduced the financial risk of travel, then betters realized that ship owners were doing that and decided to research before taking the other side of the bet, and so on until you end up with ship…

> insurance markets started with people in coffee houses

Regardless of whether or not that anecdote is true, insurance is one of the oldest human institutions. We have records of Hammurabi's code from ancient Babylon that pertain to insurance (including ship insurance).

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#323

Post by sc68cal »

cannonpr wrote: post #66
fzil wrote: post #3

Man the moral degradation is off the charts. Prediction markets are easily the worst things to grace the internet by far and its not even close.

It can look bad, but this is just an aspect of human behavior en masse that we don’t normally get to see. A long time ago there was an incident on a military base. A man had gotten up on a building to commit suicide, and while the officers tried to convince him not to jump, the drafted soldiers gathered underneath and started chanting “jump, jump” because of a rule that said witnessing the suicide of a fellow soldier…

So, because it's a human behavior, that means it's okay that there's a huge company out there amplifying that behavior and profiting off it?

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#325

Post by bagacrap »

postalrat wrote: post #199
markus_zhang wrote: post #16

The gambling market is really bringing out the worst of us.

Replace gamblers with futures market and I agree.

Commodities futures markets have an actual purpose, which is to make business inputs (or outputs) more predictable. Like if I know I need ten tons of corn next year, it's safer to buy futures now than to wait and see how the price of corn fluctuates over that time, potentially sabotaging my business operation. (Of making corn chips.)

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#326

Post by Retric »

chimeracoder wrote: post #226
Balgair wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friend of a friend does announcing online. Like, you pay him a little ( So, he got a gig to announce the opening of loot boxes at some show. I think it was Fortnite loot boxes. I guess it gives you the total value of the loot box spree you opened. So, 2 people buy a bunch of loot boxes, then open them up, then whoever has the higher value wins and takes both of the people's total haul. Sounds like a strange thing to…

> It is the most Degenerate form of gambling out there. There is no skill, no human factor, no nothing. Just pure random numbers. While I wouldn't use the word "degenerate", in terms of gambling, this isn't anywhere close to as bad as it gets. At least this form is (psuedo)random, and the odds are statistically fair and published (by law). Contrast to slot machines, which are not random, but are in fact preprogrammed…

Odds of winning are rather meaningless for negative sum games, you’re going to lose anyway. While I find most forms of gambling rather boring, if you like the experience it’s little different than spending 50$ at an arcade.

My game of choice is the big state lottery and it’s simply for the fun mental space of the possibility of winning, actually checking your ticket is kind of depressing because the odds are so low. But look at it as paying for the experience of the possibility of a jackpot and realize when you buy one ticket or multiple so just buy one and it becomes a cheap thrill.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#327

Post by jamilton »

kibwen wrote: post #306
tomtomtom777 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely horrifying. Today they are bribing journalists to report on a bomb. Tomorrow they will be bribing armies to bomb. This needs to be banned.

Make a bet for "$PUBLIC_FIGURE will be dead by $DATE" and see how quickly people realize that this is just a distributed assassination contract.

Technically any market that's about someone doing something by a certain time can be an assassination contract, if you think the market will it enforce it that way. Can't do it if they're dead.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#328

Post by btilly »

Waterluvian wrote: post #43
fzil wrote: post #3

Man the moral degradation is off the charts. Prediction markets are easily the worst things to grace the internet by far and its not even close.

I think the idea behind a prediction market is pretty interesting, especially from an economics dataset point-of-view. And there's probably a lot of fun, harmless things to bet on. eg. "Will Conan lead an extravagent musical number at the Oscars?" But we're in an era of less and less responsible government oversight, so the whole thing naturally gets ruined if there's no guardrails to prevent peoeple without souls or…

Indeed, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market for what an unregulated prediction market can do. Want someone dead? Create a market betting on when they die, and put a bunch of money in. Wait for someone to collect on the obvious profit opportunity for an assassination.

The more anonymous the winner is relative to the action taken, the more that bad behavior is incentivized. Back when this was dreamed up, the idea was crypto. But now we have prediction markets that encourage insiders to bet. And an administration that chooses to not prosecute corruption: https://www.wsgr.com/print/v2/content/49042620/Executive-Ord...

The result is a market that incentivizes manipulating wars for private gambling profit. With no need for anonymity, because the investigators have been fired. :-(

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#329

Post by ffsm8 »

cael450 wrote: post #182
markus_zhang wrote: post #16

The gambling market is really bringing out the worst of us.

I feel like America is re-learning why gambling was so widely outlawed. It just ruins everything it touches. At least casinos are mostly contained. I'm tired of seeing gambling ads on every sport and hearing the news talk about prediction markets. Not to mention, they all prey on people. When I was younger, I worked in a gas station, and people would come in regularly and drop everything they had on scratch-offs. And…

I feel like this is worse then gambling even, because it's not only luck. You can actually influence an outcome without cheating, hence credible deaths threats

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#330

Post by epolanski »

Hammershaft wrote: post #205
epolanski wrote: post #9

Prediction markets need to be banned globally ASAP, but it would've helped the article to bring proof of: - the emails - the whatsapp messages - the discord messages - the X messages Mind you, I'm not stating the journalist is lying or overblowing, in fact I suspect this is all more widespread than we think, but it's odd that the journalist puts emphasis on the sources of his information in the case of the missile, y…

I disagree. Prediction markets have value for people as a source of reliable information because they tend to be very accurate compared to any other human mechanism for creating forecasts. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/10/pr...

There is no evidence that people betting on whether Iran will strike Israel on March 15th has any benefit. Who would be the beneficiary of that?

Are you gonna tell me residents in Tel Aviv will be able to hedge their chances of surviving tomorrow?

Nor there's evidence that providing information about the fact that US will strike Venezuela does it either.

What value any of that has? None, especially considering the perverse incentives on the other side of acting on the outcome probability for financial gain which has already happened. US executive insiders have definitely bet on US attacking Venezuela on Polymarket.

You see this as "information discovery", I see it as the fact that I can lobby for dangerous events to happen just for financial gain.

Future markets have some value in some scenarios where you can hedge the outcome.

E.g. a farmer hedging crop prices can de risk his operations.

There is a hedging and the hedge works as insurance.

What's exactly the value of betting on elections or military strikes? What's being hedged?

How can you not see the financial incentives?

We have a long history of regulating both futures, derivatives and betting for very specific reasons.

But now we've relabeled it all as information gathering and price discovery.

How can you not see how the financial incentives here are speedrunning terrible events to happen?

I'm gonna rephrase it like that: would you like for a contract to exist on whether you'll be sent to hospital tomorrow in a crash accident?

Are you gonna tell me: "well, it's information discovery and it's valuable that I can wake up knowing the odds have increased!" while ignoring that there are now people out there financially motivated to make this happen?

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