[exogeny]

Insider trading is a feature, not a bug, say Shayne and Tarek, stupidly.

You can't have this amount of obvious manipulation and expect the average retail consumer to join. Same reason why there hasn't been mass consumer adoption of crypto. People just don't feel safe.

[ralph84]

Even without insider trading it's a negative-sum game. Every dollar won is a dollar lost, and the platform takes a cut. Like all negative-sum games you should only participate if it's purely for entertainment or you have a clearly definable edge over the other players. If you can't spot the sucker, you are the sucker.

[UncleMeat]

People like to gamble. I expect that the vast majority of interaction with these systems is seen by participants as gambling. "Who will win the presidential election" and "who will win the jets game" are similar kinds of questions. Both are negative sum.

And people do get upset and feel cheated when the bet isn't "fair." We just saw a big scandal where various athletes are changing their behavior in order to enable their buddies to win big in sports betting.

I really don't think that "well, we should just educate people about the fact that prediction markets are actually battlefields of insider information and their purpose is not to enable gambling on the future but instead to give society some model of future outcomes" is going to stick.

[sadeshmukh]

To be clear, Polymarket has no fees on markets, only 15-minute crypto markets. That's probably temporary, but makes it a zero sum game at present.

[bulbar]

There has been virtually no adoption at all regarding crypto, except for being a financial product and in that regard it has already been adopted by people.

The average consumer is easily manipulated so there's not really a contradiction.

[Aurornis]

> Same reason why there hasn't been mass consumer adoption of crypto. People just don't feel safe.

The volatility and wild swings are a feature, not a bug, to retail investors who like this stuff. Investing in crypto is mainstream now. It's been advertised on TV for years. Download Robinhood, put money in, and trade the swings.

It's popular to "trade" crypto. The retail investors aren't buying to use it. They're not even doing crypto things with it, they're just getting an entry in the database of their investment platform. Everyone knows it's heavily manipulated and gamed, but they want to come along for the ride and make some money with the manipulators.

Prediction markets are exciting to the same audience for the same reason: Maybe outlier things can happen and you'll guess correctly ahead of time. That's the draw.

[Bratmon]

If you think Polymarket wants retail customers to join, you're misunderstanding the point of Polymarket.

[tptacek]

Retail consumers shouldn't be joining.