We’ve detected that JavaScript is disabled in this browser. Please enable JavaScript or switch to a supported browser to continue using x.com. You can see a list of supported browsers in our Help…
We’ve detected that JavaScript is disabled in this browser. Please enable JavaScript or switch to a supported browser to continue using x.com. You can see a list of supported browsers in our Help Center.
Read the original article
Comments
"That “brand new account” was created in October 2024 and has 88 predictions based upon your own evidence.”
By signorovitch 2026-03-0120:061 reply That same account[0] has also already lost at least 100k betting on similar middle eastern conflict markets. Not at all ruling out insider information, certainly looks suspicious, but it’s easy just to find one big win or winner.
By rustyhancock 2026-03-0121:131 reply Yes this is just survivorship bias.
Polymarket is huge some people are bound to have impressive runs.
This person hand multiple stacked bets for this outcome by varying dates.
By godelski 2026-03-0122:10
If you're looking for insiders it's generally helpful to start with the "survivors". Not because insiders can't lose but because winning insiders are those effectively exploiting their unfair knowledge. You need filters, so concentrate on the worst offenders first.> Yes this is just survivorship bias.Of course, not all winners are insiders. You still need to filter more, but it's definitely the first filter. Big winners are the second, for the same reason: scale of exploitation.
By TiredOfLife 2026-03-025:102 reply Her response is amazing. I am paraphrasing. "I lied who cares"
By signorovitch 2026-03-0212:56 FTR, her actual response was
“Already addressed this, wasn't on purpose and everything else still stands.”By streetfighter64 2026-03-0210:38 Your "paraphrasing" is as much of a lie as her original post was.
By dymk 2026-03-0119:54 [flagged]
We thought betting markets would bring out our best predictions. Instead they’re exposing our inherent corruption.
Who thought this? Be careful with your wild use of we here. I'm not part of your we. Opening betting markets has only one ultimate ending where everything is done for the betting.
By datsci_est_2015 2026-03-0214:54 Love this, thanks for providing a succinct sentiment that matches my feelings on the subject:
> one ultimate ending where everything is done for the betting
It really does seem that gambling has this sinister power to cannibalize whatever is being gambled upon, twisting it and transforming it into whatever maximizes the ability for market-makers to generate profit, sharps to extract alpha, and addicts to get their hit of dopamine.
Prediction was certainly the pitch. I don't know how many people genuinely believed it, beyond the level required to extract a profit.
It's hard to measure what anyone actually believes in the current social landscape, where nobody tells the truth. Maybe that's the real purpose of prediction markets.
By godelski 2026-03-0122:18 I remember people claiming that it would capture the wisdom of the crowds[0]. Seemed silly as wisdom of the crowds depends on independent decisions. As soon as you reveal other people's guesses you bias the results.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd
Edit:
Actually, turns out "people claiming" includes Polymarket lol
What a load of BS. "Research shows"? Bull!# What is Polymarket ... Our markets reflect accurate, unbiased, and real-time probabilities for the events that matter most to you. Markets seek truth. # How accurate are Polymarket odds? Research shows prediction markets are often more accurate than experts, polls, and pundits. .... Their economic incentives ensure market prices adjust to reflect true odds as more knowledgeable participants join. This makes prediction markets the best source of real-time event probabilities. People use Polymarket for the most accurate odds, gaining the ability to make informed decisions about the future.https://help.polymarket.com/en/articles/13364060-what-is-pol...
By sigwinch 2026-03-024:12 Donald Jr, on the Polymarket board, might have tried that.
By butterbomb 2026-03-0119:48 [dead]
This is exactly what I wanted prediction markets for
Looks like “we” need to update our relationships with markets
Price discovery is a visualization of the collective conscious, and the evolution of markets gets closer and closer to direct exposure to an event. Share and derisk a transaction, cleanly, quickly
Reduce all frictions towards doing so
Frictions include finding the person making the transaction, negotiating with them, trusting them to perform, disputing resolution, insurance. These hamper anything from occurring, or occurring quickly, and the pricing is too variable. Prediction markets are an example of all of those frictions being reduced to almost non-existent. And dispute resolution will improve further and attract more liquidity.
By streetfighter64 2026-03-0121:001 reply They certainly could reduce friction in bribery, just make a public bet like "The court will decide in favor of XYZ Evil Corp v. United States", then buy "No" shares for a million dollars, and hope the judge in the case picks up a bunch of "Yes" shares. Quick, simple, effective bribery via cryptocurrencies.
they could, slightly suboptimal way of doing it but its there
crypto anarchist papers described prediction markets to be used for something like this in the 90s, but there are several levels of infrastructure that didn't exist then
if you are predicting such things are occurring then you could also buy the no shares, making it the most egalitarian social mobility opportunity out there. I think the focus on bribery and corruption is distracting because people are imagining exclusion, but its the opposite at this point.
Imagine when the soviet union fell and only people that built relationships got dibs on all the assets and revenue streams to become "the oligarchs" almost overnight, but instead of only them, everyone paying attention could take part in it. That's what is happening now and the markets will continue existing autonomously
By streetfighter64 2026-03-0210:05 I'm not putting my money in these markets for many reasons, ethical objections being one of them. Why'd I buy specifically "No" shares though? From my non-insider POV it's just a bet on the honesty of the judge, mixed with the actual facts of the case.
What's the incentive of betting if you're not an insider? You're better off putting you money on a fair coin toss, instead of hoping you'll somehow beat an openly rigged market.
How much have you yourself made in these sorts of markets?
By markus_zhang 2026-03-0119:351 reply Insider gambling has been common since the invention of gambling I think.
Most gambling "games" are quite a lot harder to acquire and use insider knowledge on though.
People don't play in corrupt markets for very long.
The movie _Casino_ highlights how insider information was and is used to improve the house odds [0].
Information about a players wellbeing and their life goes a long way. Example, they would pay paper boys to talk to coaches to find out non public information. Such as if a player of the team is going through relationship problems.
By estearum 2026-03-0120:04 All of which is significantly harder than putting up a gigantic billboard that says "Have insider knowledge on an important event? Place a bet here using crypto!"
Every important event in the world has dozens if not hundreds of people "in the know" before it happens. Not everyone has paper boys, chatty coaches, or the time/energy required to connect all those dots.
The entire flow insider information is reversed from "go out and look for it" to "invite it in anonymously"
Was the ", again" left off, or is this going to be the first time you've seen the movie when you do watch it? I know new people are born every day, but Casino is one of those movies that I'd have expected any one old enough to be reading this board to have seen already. This is no judgment on anyone for not seeing it. Just a comment on my skewed view of the world I guess
By queenkjuul 2026-03-022:54 I didn't see it for the first time until like 2020. Nobody in my family was in to mobster movies and my friends in my 20s never brought it up to watch with me
It's a classic though for sure
By Barbing 2026-03-028:27 Well I just saw Goodfellas the other day... :D yeah this one I missed, lucky 10k!
By mountainriver 2026-03-0119:481 reply Sports betting has been around forever, and it has been gamed forever. Gambling is often an addiction and some cheating doesn’t stop people from doing it
To corrupt a Polymarket bet, there needs to be only one person with inside knowledge of a planned event's timing, outcome, duration, etc in order to destroy the other side. The vast majority of Polymarket-bettable events have at least a few dozen if not hundreds or thousands of people with prior knowledge. Polymarket is now a known market where they can (conveniently through crypto) participate. It is basically a billboard saying "do you have interesting inside knowledge? Come here and make some money!"
To corrupt a sport bet, there needs to be an actual manipulation of events perpetrated by a very small, very closely watched and analyzed group of people (athletes or officials).
In my view, it seems immediately obvious that as prediction markets become even more mainstream (and so the billboard effect gets stronger), Polymarket bets will have a significantly higher rate of corruption than sports bets.
By mountainriver 2026-03-0320:47 We'll see if people stop using it
"People don't play in corrupt markets for very long." ... ahhh, it's not a bug with Polymarket - it's a feature.
Someone has to take the other side of the bet. As these stories become more common and well-known, it'll degrade the market
All I've ever seen is it encouraging people and not discouraging them. The thrill of the easy money, right?
Forget it jake, it's Polymarket.
By estearum 2026-03-0120:06 This stuff is turning me off of prediction markets and I'm actually a huge fan of them conceptually (and have bet on them myself for quite a while).
As the billboard glow inviting insiders to trade gets brighter, the markets get less useful, less fun, less interesting, and obviously less rewarding.
By cortesoft 2026-03-0120:30 The traditional espoused financial market purpose of these prediction markets is based on the premise that actors on it will have inside information.
The point is for business with vested interests (and therefore often inside information) to use these markets to hedge for things that will materially affect their profitability.
For example, in this case, suppose you ran a company that was shipping goods through the Middle East, and a war would disrupt your business. You would then place bets on there being a war, so that if it does happen you will recover some of your losses. You might know inside information because your work in the region, but that is expected.
Did anyone really think that? The corruption is inherently far, far easier than accurate predictions.
Yeah, trying to beat the market on actually predicting will get you pretty lame returns. Probably do better in non zero sum games like the stock market. At least there you get the benefit of the market always going up eventually.
No, the best way to win on Polymarket is purely by insider trading. Which is why it's a useful thing to watch. Insider news..
That said, the definition of 'insider trading' is always tricky. At what point does it become insider? Some things people call insider others just call clever detective work.
By streetfighter64 2026-03-0120:55 It's not useful to watch, almost by definition. If you're an insider obviously you want to sit on the information as long as possible and make a big bet just before it will be revealed. For example: the account in TFA whose bet was 71 minutes before the first news article about the attacks.
So how useful is it really to see a big bet and know that probably the thing in question will happen in the next hour?
The only kind of use case I can see for these markets is what another commenter mentioned, as a kind of strange insurance by betting against what you hope will happen. But even then, the finicky rules and untrustworthiness of the Polymarket admins make them much less reliable than a traditional insurance policy...
By dylan604 2026-03-0122:22 > Yeah, trying to beat the market on actually predicting will get you pretty lame returns
That maybe true in a normal world, but we left normalcy in this world a couple of administrations ago. I absolutely would not put it past a member of this admin to be keeping an eye on things like this to suggest it would be better to start the attack on specific day just to pad the coffers. Any other admin, and I'd say that would be an insane line of thought, but it is this admin.
I definitely never thought so. It seemed primary as an unregulated casino to me - which usually implies criminality and frauds.
I dont think I was special or unusual.
By dylan604 2026-03-0122:24 People have been saying the same about crypto in general, yet, here we are. Another level of the scam built on top of a scam.
By hn_throwaway_99 2026-03-0119:40 Only for very narrow definitions of "we".
I think it's pretty obvious when betting on events that are inherently just decisions by one or a few people (e.g. when will Trump launch an attack on Iran, when will a company launch a new product, will some company acquire another one, etc.) that they will attract insider trading and corruption by their very nature - all that's necessary is to have information about the decision maker. This is fundamentally different than events that are subject to forces that no single individual controls - e.g. who will win an election, where will a crypto price be in a year, movie box office results, etc.
I think betting on "single decision maker" events is just a "sucker is born every minute"-type bet.
Anyone who's followed the news since the 2000s would have realized a strike on Iran would have happened around now.
Notice how the bettor hedged and bet on multiple days and hedged each of their bets with a "by" clause. This is a bog standard hedging strategy that anyone who's been to a racetrack would know.
On a separate note, gamified prediction markets should not exist - they create perverse incentives and are basically a gamification of futures contracts (which requires a degree of risk management and hedging experience the median individual simply lacks), but this specific example doesn't seem like insider trading, just a seasoned gambler who knows basic hedging strategy.
No they were not hedging they were seeking liquidity because they couldnt get a total fill and ROI in the lowest probability market
What I mean is they placed multiples bets saying "US strikes Iran by $DATE" and set a window of various dates with each overlapping over the other in order to help hedge against earlier bets failing.
Betting a strike would be on Friday also tracks - anyone who's been outside the West knows they have Friday/Saturday off in Muslim and Jewish countries. It's the same way we in the West tend to conduct strikes on Saturday.
Edit: Ah I get what you are saying now.
By yieldcrv 2026-03-0120:32 I responded to exactly what you mean. The lowest probability date was the Friday because Friday was almost over, it had the highest ROI. It didn't have liquidity for their full amount capital without adversely altering their potential ROI. They searched for liquidity in other markets that would resolve "yes" to the same event. It wasn't a hedge, it wasn't uncertainty, it was liquidity seeking.
> this specific example doesn't seem like insider trading, just a seasoned gambler who knows basic hedging strategy.
why can't it be both? you think degenerate gamblers have never had a government job?
By alephnerd 2026-03-0120:06 There are other much more lucrative, obfuscated, and legally defensible methods someone with insider information could take to monetize on insider information.
Using a public betting platform with KYC vetting is not that.
> prediction markets should not exist
If you don't like prediction markets, you don't have to use them.
Why do you think other people shouldn't be allowed to use prediction markets if they want to?
By alephnerd 2026-03-0119:48 To quote golden age Simpsons - "Gambling is the finest thing a person can do IF he's good at it" [0].
In aggregate, most participants lack the background and experience needed to hedge against risk and bet intelligently.
Gamifying a financial instrument (futures) that is supposed to be used as an risk management device and advertising it to the lowest common denominator without providing the right checks and balances will leave a large portion of bettors worse off.
Heck, I'm decently good at blackjack, poker, and backgammon because it's fun to apply probability theory principles, but I would never dare put my personal money on such an investment when I would do significantly better in aggregate with other more diversified personal investments.
By gmd63 2026-03-0119:57 Because we don't want people whose profession is maximally exploiting perverse incentive structures to flourish. A society that grants outsized rewards to bad faith citizens is bad for everyone. The more influence those cheaters have over the economy the worse off we all are.
You should not be able to get rich to the tune of a 600% daily return just because you're insider trading. That doesn't incentivize sharing your information with the market. On the contrary that incentivizes delaying communicating your secret information until the last second to maximize the return on your unexpected information.
By collinmcnulty 2026-03-0119:51 1. It gives people a reason to influence events toward outcomes that they can make money on rather than the best outcome. The geopolitical equivalent of going down in the fourth on purpose.
2. It encourages the leaking of classified information.
By softwaredoug 2026-03-0120:08 They actually encourage insider trading as to influence the prediction and make it more accurate.
Some insider selling changes the prediction downwards
The WANT the information
By bawolff 2026-03-0120:30 Those aren't mutually exclusive. The best predictions are going to be those based on non public information.
By ekjhgkejhgk 2026-03-0119:571 reply The best predictions are made when you already know the answer.
By livestories 2026-03-0120:09 And even better when others wrongfully think they know a better answer...
By deadbabe 2026-03-0119:43 Isn't exposing corruption a good thing? If betting markets are giving the masses access to knowledge about events that would normally be restricted from them, what is wrong with that? Information wants to be free. You can make use of metrics from betting markets without actively participating in them.
By seydor 2026-03-0119:48 We knew that already from every betting market in the history of betting markets
By bdangubic 2026-03-0120:32 if it is not regulated, you can always safely assume that it is a scam / corruption :) almost universally applicable
By bawolff 2026-03-0120:26 Maybe, but also the strike was super telegraphed. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that when USA pulls its embassy staff from israel, britian pulls its embassy staff from iran and USA creates the biggest build up of military hardware in the region in 20 years, that shit is about to go down.
Especially when everyone notices the polymarket bets that win big but nobody notices the ones that fall on their face. There is huge survivorship bias in these sorts of analyses
