White House staff told not to place bets on prediction markets (opens in new tab)

Reminds me of our President (SA) asking his colleagues to sign a pledge not to do corruption; when there's already a swearing in that does the same thing.

For those who live in the red-pilled real world, just don't trade on something where controlling insiders (also with a potential conflict-of-interest) can beat you at the game. This is different from bets with non-controlling insiders with no conflict-of-interest.

You missed the fine print at the bottom: "lolz".

I did a bit for fun and felt there were areas where I did do well. However, the problems with these markets is the contracts are often such where you can win or lose on obscure technicalities. I bet on 5 things, and 4 were resolved in ways I felt were non obvious.

For example, will the Ayatollah be out by April. Lost because death apparently did not count. Bet Anthropic would advertise at the superbowl. Lost because while they did so they advertised Claude not for the company.

Once it became clear that it was an exercise in legalese, I was done.

I remember reading something awhile ago in regards to why people were investing in NFTs when it seemed so clear they were a scam. The gist of it was that it's easy to get into cryptocurrency, but it's hard to get out. KYC, taxes, age requirements, currency fees, etc are enough of a barrier that many people would rather just keep those assets in virtual space. Polymarket is the answer to the question "Well what else am I gonna do with this crypto I own"

There's no shortage of people willing to make extremely poor financial decisions on games of chance, it's why gambling was heavily regulated. Visit a casino and witness addiction in-person, it's a sad sight.

It is either not being offered in depth by anyone market-maker (part of the answer given the relatively small revenue opportunity) or it is being offered by people who aren't sophisticated enough.

Bookmakers offer markets on events where someone can know the outcome. The difference is that they have tools to prevent adverse selection.

Prediction markets offer none of those protections so the market structure is going to end up being very different (which is already happening, revenue opportunity from politics isn't huge). There are other examples of this around latency arb, market is going to be very different.

Also, I will point out that most insiders are probably going to be losing money too. All that you ever read is the final outcome, you don't read the stuff that happens before. Politics is, generally, not a good market because the actual event is driven by decisions made by people. Election markets are fine but political event markets are not good, even if you have inside information.

> So who are the suckers who are losing all this money?

Random people who saw an ad or their favorite influencer shilling it.

Like when my neighbors started asking me about NFTs.

The ads for prediction markets on TikTok are aggressive - like (paraphrasing) "this is your new source of passive income and you'd be crazy to miss it" aggressive.

I guess I'm one of those suckers, except that so far I've made a 3x return on the small sum I bet, I would say it's a hedge. I’ve been betting on the Iran war since mid February, the reasoning was that if the conflict happened, my payout would offset some of the jump in my cost of living. I could have used traditional financial instruments to buy options or oil futures or gold, but there's more friction there and I already had some crypto.

Kind of what I was thinking. If it is essentially InsidrBetz.com why bet at all? This is the kind of thing that could (should, anyway) kill the industry.

Arrogance / hubris. Some people even if they know it's rigged will believe they know which side the insiders are on

You believe you are betting on the side of the insiders.

Everyone knows the Casino has the edge, but people still play heavily anyway.

People go to casinos despite knowing the house has the edge in games. Gambling is addictive.

> So who are the suckers who are losing all this money?

Gambling is just a tax on the stupid. Is it surprising it's rampant in certain institutions?

Prediction markets are ridiculously diverse so it’s quite a stretch to say that imo.

My personal conspiracy theory is that in some cases, the "loser" is in on the graft to. It's a way to launder bribes.

Hedging is one rational reason.

The same goes for stock market too.

"But we have laws criminalizing insider trading..." the only proper response to this is: hahahaha.

These companies were blatant about operating illegally in the US. I remember being shocked to see the live billboard polymarket ads in Philadelphia on the eve of the election. I guess there are too many scandals these days for this to stand out.

There is currently a bill proposed to do that (for stocks, not prediction market betting, but eh it's a start): https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/hr5106

It currently has 99 Democratic sponsors and 31 Republican sponsors (note: there are more Republicans than Democrats in the House). It will probably not make it out of committee. 2 of the 4 Democrats on the committee have sponsored it; 0 of the 8 Republicans have.

You need to apply it to staff as well and also the judicial branch and all of their staff. Then to all of their family as well.

The way I understand insider trading is usually prosecuted is you find out who made the bet & then you have to track down their communications to see if they got tipped off.

Reasons to treat these situations differently:

1. The executive is doing very obvious insider trading, you can point at exact trades and bets that are clearly being made based on inside info. That's very different than the statistical arguments made about congressional portfolios.

2. Congress isn't privy to the same kind of inside info. Congress will know about changes in government spending with a few weeks to a month or so of lead time. The executive insiders were timing trades down, literally, to the minutes before the start of military action.

Basically that's a terrible whataboutist game you're playing.

I'm sure every POTUS has at one point thought it would be great if they could dictate what congress does

It is easier for the SEC to investigate futures, stocks & options. Some of the prediction/gambling markets use crypto and do not participate in "Know Your Customer" regulations.

You’d think so, but these types of people are afraid of stocks or options and find prediction websites easier to use.

Honestly not that big a difference here. Both can be loosely interpreted as gambling, especially with the same rough upsides (money without production or consumption!) downsides (addiction, critical existence failure of all your savings) and the corruption and perverse incentives they invite.

Like the stock market?

It is in SEC regulated markets like NYSE and NASDAQ. But prediction markets are grifty garbage. Insider trading laws only apply to regulated markets.

Just about anything to do with crypto is sketchy. I don't know why anyone still messes with it. Maybe they just like propping up Iran's oil tolls, ransomware perps, and shovelling money to Dumpty and his merry band of grifters?

If it were in the law, which part of the justice system do you think would be:

1. Capable

2. Desirous of

3. Competently followed

"Oh behave! Hehehehehe" https://youtu.be/u2vAFhXDFHk

If there's one positive that can be made of this admin, it's the realization that all the things that we thought went without saying ("don't profit from the office", "don't insider trade", "don't casually leak confidential information to our enemies") need much stronger enforcement mechanisms.

Consider the kind of people who would staff this white house.

One of the weaknesses is incentivizing people to do horrible things, if that makes their bet a wining one.

It also incentivize people to follow the events and remember stuff so that they are better equipped to make predictions.

I think it incentivize people to use their head and may be even select better leaders.