Polymarket gamblers betting millions on war

(theguardian.com)

87 points | by sandebert 2 hours ago

7 comments

  • nunez 1 minute ago
    Not a new phenomenon! It happened during the War on Iraq. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/02/weekinreview/you-can-bet-...

    People will bet on absolutely anything; gambling is as old as time itself.

  • Chrisszz 1 hour ago
    This is becoming the kind of "VC platform for online war investments". You: 1. Plan 2. Bet 3. Invest money upfront 4. Execute 5. Redeem your profits
    • azan_ 1 hour ago
      Could you explain what do you mean? What's the plan and execution here? Planning and executing invasion? If so, there are much better markets than polymarket for making such bets.
    • PowerElectronix 1 hour ago
      Now, can you find enough liquidity in the market to turn a profit? Can you find it before it becomes aparent something is off in the bet?
    • Throaway199999 52 minutes ago
      honestly the profits aren't big enough when you can just go into business if you have that kind of influence
      • bendtb 0 minutes ago
        I would also argue that for a bet on war involving the United States, Middle East, Russia or China oil products are a better bet - and it is the world's second most liquid market after forex markets.
  • BobbyTables2 26 minutes ago
    Reminds me of the part in National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation when Clark Griswold goes to the 3rd rate casino and starts betting on weird things.
  • arter45 17 minutes ago
    So...

    >“It used to be the news channels were the callers,” said Kane. “They used to be the final say in big events. Like this officially happened because CNN and Fox News said so. But thanks to Polymarket, there’s a new signal.”

    This is interesting because of this:

    >At the moment, when there is a dispute, markets on Polymarket are settled by an anonymous group of people who hold a crypto token called UMA.

    [...]

    >It isn’t known who the largest UMA holders are, or what might affect how they vote. It is entirely possible that the people who finally settle a bet on UMA have large amounts of money staked on it.

    So basically instead of trusting CNN and Fox News you trust an anonymous group of people who may or may not profit themselves from their own decisions. I can't see how this is any better.

    • zarzavat 5 minutes ago
      No. These resolvers only deal with rules disputes, i.e. disputes over the fine print. This is only applicable if you are gambling on polymarket. The probabilities while the market is open are set by market forces.

      Of course you have to read the fine print very carefully to understand what a particular market is about.

      The more deceptive thing is the potential disparity between the title and the rules. Most market participants read the rules closely (although some do not), and so the title + headline probabilities may be not as they seem.

  • srameshc 1 hour ago
    > There is now more than $500,000 (£371,000) staked on whether Russia will capture Kostyantynivka this year .

    Now everyone has a chance to profit from war ! Thank you Polymarket

    • falcor84 20 minutes ago
      You make it sound bad, but I personally am very much in favor of regular people having access to the same bad things that the people in charge have.
    • hoppyhoppy2 22 minutes ago
      Are users able to bet specifically on whether prisoners of war in Kostyantynivka will be killed? Or whether women and children will be raped? That kind of fine-grained war market could be groundbreaking
    • paulnpace 42 minutes ago
      War profiteering for the people!
  • cyanydeez 1 hour ago
    'Capitalism': the inevitable reduction of all humanity to fungible currency
    • jancsika 7 minutes ago
      Is that necessarily true?

      E.g., suppose I'm grocery shopping online and get put in behavioral histogram bin #1. You're in bin #2 because of stuff like impulsive browsing habits and low battery. Your bin's price for chips is consequently x% more expensive than mine.

      Now, suppose both of us get separate uber rides from the same location. Similar data bins end up with your low battery generating y% higher price for your Uber.

      Seems to me enough consolidation and behavioral data-based pricing practically impedes the fungibility of currency. Because while you and I can still borrow and pay back the currency directly to each other with impunity, the literal price of goods and services we can buy with that currency will be different. I.e., if you buy me a sandwich on Monday and I pay you back with a sandwich on Tuesday, you're losing money.

      Edit: for the steel man of what I'm saying, imagine most grocery and convenience stores have shifted away from static pricing to something like qr codes.

    • gib444 41 minutes ago
      The price of everything and the value of nothing.
    • airstrike 50 minutes ago
      Capitalism is just a projection of our natural competition for scarce resources onto an economic system.
      • testing22321 7 minutes ago
        Resources would not be scarce if some people were not hoarding.
    • PowerElectronix 1 hour ago
      Betting with one another predates any notion of capitalism, or economy.
      • ModernMech 46 minutes ago
        True, but capitalism eventually makes gambling the whole economy.
        • PowerElectronix 34 minutes ago
          I don't think it does. Capitalism only allows one to save one's fruit of their labor to use down the line. You exchange it for money, then use that money to buy other stuff.

          People using it to gamble has more to do with gambling people than with capitalism people. You can have gambling in communism or socialism, only stakes there are limited because the fruit of the labor of people doesn't belong to them like in capitalism.

          • ModernMech 1 minute ago
            Look around you, the economy is aligning itself entirely around gambling. From bitcoin to nfts to the stock market to AI to art to dating apps to social media feeds to video games to venture capital to literal gambling apps infesting our phones ads sports. And finally we have actual members of the government gambling on policy.

            The capitalism you grew up with is dead, the arguments for and against it are old and stale. It's devolved into something else entirely as the middle class is evaporating, the lower class is continually squeezed, people are lighting warehouses on fire citing low wages as the proximal cause, and the President is ordering automatic SS registration as he threatens total civilization destruction. This shit is not working and it's only going to get worse.

        • azan_ 29 minutes ago
          How?
    • kingleopold 1 hour ago
      alternative is gulag(s) and literally famine(s)!

      but hey keep understanding things wrong, surely it helps?

      humanity advanced way more under capitalism than anything else in history. This does not mean capitalism is perfect, it's just fits to human greed and human behaviour more. Others systems are worse

      • croes 57 minutes ago
        Capitalism neither prevents gulags nor famines.

        And you can bet (pun intended) someone will create them on purpose if they can make profit from it

        • forinti 47 minutes ago
          Doesn't the US already have an above average incarceration rate and private prisons? Maybe, just maybe, there's some relation?
        • azan_ 29 minutes ago
          It actually did prevent lots of famines.
        • logicchains 54 minutes ago
          Please do share what capitalist country had a famine in the past century.
        • throwthrowuknow 45 minutes ago
          Except it does? Capitalist countries don’t seem to have any famines. You could argue that for profit prisons are similar to gulags in some ways but the important differences are so vast it’s hard to compare them honestly.
          • ModernMech 35 minutes ago
            Capitalist countries don't have famines at home. That's different from "capitalism prevents famines". Capitalism is happy to cause hunger, inflict death, or imprison people if it's profitable for capitalists, that's baked into the structure of the structure of the system. There's no systemic feature of capitalism that directs capital generating activity unless it violates natural and human rights.
      • kodegod69 1 hour ago
        Sure keep saying that to yourself. All of you sound so damn sure when speaking about socialism. Like the first nation to pierce the firmament of human fabric wasn't a socialist one. And that the union wasn't making great strides in technology.
        • 948382828528 28 minutes ago
          Agree, comrade. 140 million dead are a small price to pay for our socialist utopia.

          We just need one more chance.

        • logicchains 51 minutes ago
          Such great strides in technology, their standard of living was so high that their president was literally shocked just by the abundance of food in a normal western grocery story.
        • deadbabe 50 minutes ago
          Whether you like it or not, socialism is the key.
  • Jerrrrrrrry 1 hour ago
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