I don't understand, what's so fundamentally wrong with this form of insider trading? Is the accusation that it makes degenerate gambling unfair? Is it necessary for degenerate gambling to be fair? The gamblers don't seem to care.
sznio 33 minutes ago [-]
beyond the general idea that we shouldn't normalize gambling, betting on some real-life events is horrid. think about insider trading on a polymarket bet for someone's death.
CTDOCodebases 30 minutes ago [-]
Or even worse what happens when people start gambling that someone won’t die today? It opens the door to crowdsourced hits with plausible deniability.
jstanley 12 minutes ago [-]
You missed out the reason that it's horrid, which is that it is a plausibly-deniable way to crowdfund assassinations.
yen223 32 minutes ago [-]
Matt Levine pointed out in a past article that the real danger of insider trading are company insiders being incentivised to damage the company to make a quick buck.
Terr_ 27 minutes ago [-]
> insiders being incentivised to damage the company
I'd like to emphasize that this incentive doesn't have to be an accidental find by the insider either: The "market" can end up facilitating anonymous crowd-sourced bribery by enemies or competitors, who create the potential for profit knowing that eventually an insider will take the other end of the implied deal.
Every time I see someone dismissing these kinds of issues--especially someone whose salary depends on not-understanding it [0] --I imagine how their tune would change if the shoe was on the other foot. For example, if someone created a "prediction market" where people could anonymously bet on unusual deaths or serious injuries of... prediction-market executives.
Because there's pre-existing demand for lottery tickets that provides some plausible deniability for the money-laundering use case. If prediction markets were primarily used to buy insurance against hard-to-avoid expensive events, that's what money launderers would trade in too, in order to blend in.
Instead, most volume is in sports bets. People just like to gamble.
throwaway0665 1 hours ago [-]
These apps claim to let you turn your knowledge into money. What this means is the insiders get to cash out and the desperate suckers provide the liquidity. I'm amazed they've all gotten away with this for so long.
sixhobbits 2 hours ago [-]
I (my agents) have been playing with the kalshi and poly market APIsv and whatever your opinion on the markets themselves it does feel like there's a bunch of interesting things to do with such a firehose of realtime data.
I hope they stay as open and generous as they are now with programmatic access
topspin 42 minutes ago [-]
"I hope they stay as open and generous as they are now with programmatic access"
Make a prediction for it: When will Gamma/Data/CLOB require subscription: 2026, 2027, etc.
ares623 2 hours ago [-]
I dunno, I feel it's just democratizing insider trading. And as everyone knows, if it has "democratizing" in it, that means it's automatically good.
I'd like to emphasize that this incentive doesn't have to be an accidental find by the insider either: The "market" can end up facilitating anonymous crowd-sourced bribery by enemies or competitors, who create the potential for profit knowing that eventually an insider will take the other end of the implied deal.
Every time I see someone dismissing these kinds of issues--especially someone whose salary depends on not-understanding it [0] --I imagine how their tune would change if the shoe was on the other foot. For example, if someone created a "prediction market" where people could anonymously bet on unusual deaths or serious injuries of... prediction-market executives.
[0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TvWbOKJvZmk
Which makes me wonder if it is actually just money laundering.
Instead, most volume is in sports bets. People just like to gamble.
I hope they stay as open and generous as they are now with programmatic access
Make a prediction for it: When will Gamma/Data/CLOB require subscription: 2026, 2027, etc.
https://youtu.be/ZN4njIQcSR4?t=1815