Who took the other side of that bet? I sure didn't. Participants in a market should be well aware that other participants can alter the outcome and bet accordingly.
What you're describing is know as an "assassination market". To my knowledge it's considered mostly a non-issue (It's talked about in good detail here https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-market-faq?open=...), because you could do a lot of the same stuff with the normal stock market. If you have advance knowledge that Iran is gonna be attacked, it's just as easy to trade on that info there via oil or similar, with the added downside that now no one else gains extra info about if Iran will be attacked or not, and anything more hyper-specific would just be illegal to bet on for normal law reasons.
The person that wants them to be punched in the face takes the bet, of course!
This was the primary use case for polymarkets before they were banned, and the reason they were banned.
(Well, secondary use case, and secondary reason for the ban. The first was stealing retail investors' retirement funds, and a series of financial panics that led to the Great Depression and creation of the SEC.)
For example, In my comment replace “I” with “Trump” and replace punch with “started another war”
We can go on and on (I can give you 7 million other examples too, this is easy one), the entire prediction market is meant for idiots to give their money to non-idiots that are rigging the whole thing (without any regulation).
That's roughly correct though? Like the alleged point is exactly that - provide an incentive to establish true information earlier than otherwise. If you view prediction markets like that it's only weird to see people taking the other side with no information (I was going to say "like bar bets" but that's the same kind of thing! Don't bet on things you know nothing about if you hate losing money!)
creato|1 day ago
Do you think it is acceptable that someone may have altered their behavior due to the outcome of a bet on attacking Iran?
metalcrow|1 day ago
hedora|1 day ago
This was the primary use case for polymarkets before they were banned, and the reason they were banned.
(Well, secondary use case, and secondary reason for the ban. The first was stealing retail investors' retirement funds, and a series of financial panics that led to the Great Depression and creation of the SEC.)
NoOn3|18 hours ago
QuadmasterXLII|1 day ago
bdangubic|1 day ago
bdangubic|1 day ago
We can go on and on (I can give you 7 million other examples too, this is easy one), the entire prediction market is meant for idiots to give their money to non-idiots that are rigging the whole thing (without any regulation).
collingreen|1 day ago