Polymarket's founder is Shayne Coplan, 27-year old "youngest self-made billionaire" (why do all billionaires seem devoid of ethics?)
A sane system would just throw him in jail until his illegal betting market implements KYC.
Polymarket's founder is Shayne Coplan, 27-year old "youngest self-made billionaire" (why do all billionaires seem devoid of ethics?)
A sane system would just throw him in jail until his illegal betting market implements KYC.
Polymarket is banned in most first world countries (including the US). It's not particularly tough to get around with a VPN, but they do enough that they have plausible deniability. I'm sure if the US wanted to they could go after them and prove that they're still letting US customer sign up, but it's not the open and shut case you're making it out to be.
Polymarket US is starting to roll out in the US and other countries where Polymarket cannot operate, but that's a separate company and they do abide by KYC laws similar to Kalshi.
When power is concentrated to the government, the corruption is concentrated with it. Incarceration and the end of privacy don't restore the victims. A consumer protection bureau could bring a civil suit against Polymarket to pay the journalist.
> When power is concentrated to the government, the corruption is concentrated with it.
This is a hackneyed neoliberal fundamentalist myth.
If power is concentrated anywhere, it should only ever be in government - where it's answerable to the public electorally.
Governments become corrupt when they are weak, and turn to serving private interests rather than the public they represent.
Corruption in general is far more prolific and fruitful where government is weak (the neoliberal ideal) - which is one of the reasons corrupt private actors look to weaken government - for instance by undermining public trust in it or lobbying for its parasitization by private entities. Or by stuffing their acolytes minds with foolish neoliberal fundamentalist myths.
> If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the lower class.
A lawsuit would just be the "cost of doing business" for Polymarket. Until there is no skin in the game, there will be no change or accountability.
If CISOs can be held criminally liable for data breaches, the rest of C-suite can be held criminally liable for their own decisions as well.
In this case, the guy knowingly operates a betting market that illegally does not require KYC.
On the other hand, what often happens with high level corruption cases in my country is that people go to jail for a few years, but none or next to none of the money is ever recovered. So quite a few crooked politicians and business man just accept prison as nothing more than an unpleasant bump on the way to getting extremely rich, and roll with it. So you actually need a combination of both money and personal fault for really fixing some of this.
>In this case, the guy knowingly operates a betting market that illegally does not require KYC.
It's not illegal where he is. You can't go around arresting people in other countries just because they don't follow your country's law.
Yes, I think they should implement KYC pretty darn quick, and perhaps there’s more they can do. But he didn’t make the death threats.
And what do you think KYC would help with? The threats were made on WhatsApp, not Polymarket.
It would make more sense to campaign for better background checks on WhatsApp. A case can be made that a chat system with discoverable identities should have better safeguards. If the incentive to make a threat is financial gain rather than a pure desire to kill, restricting the means in which a threat can even be made (or identifying the participants) would help silence the noise and give actionable insights to law enforcment.
I’m generally opposed to KYC and similar measures, but if a platform is already collecting massive amounts of user data, it should at least use that data to help protect the people who become vulnerable because of it.
Polymarket is a set of blockchain smart contracts. It's banned in most countries but you can still use it by interacting with the blockchain directly.
WhatsApp would be more direct, but if they're uncooperative then knowing who is betting might provide some clues.
That might help in some cases, but even if there are 10,000 people with bets of >$X on an outcome, that won't be much help determining which one is making anonymous death threats.
There is a fundamental architectural problem here with no easy band-aid fix, and the companies involved are desperate to deny it because their founders have personal fortunes riding on it.
Same with Kalshi's founders. As if becoming rich, off gambling and speculation, is supposed to inspire some kind of admiration.
The lunacy of the mysticism of money.
> why do all billionaires seem devoid of ethics?
why do all NBA players seem so tall?
A sane system doesn't "throw" human beings in jail for flippant and arbitrary reasons. Sociopaths exploit this, to be sure.
The reasons are neither flippant or arbitrary.
What is the law being broken?
"Lack of regulation clarity on your part does not constitute a crime on mine". Why is that not a valid defence?
> What is the law being broken?
“In most jurisdictions, death threats are a serious type of criminal offence” [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_threat#Legality
KYC is nothing sane. in what world does anything give you or anyone else the right to decide to probe people up their rear end just because they want to do business? people like you are extremely dangerous.
loads of banks all over the world now demands to know what you plan to spend the money on just to withdraw a bit cash. Some will even deny you saying "well.. you shouldnt buy a new car anyway". all the KYC shit. how about just no?
> in what world does anything give you or anyone else the right to decide to probe people up their rear end
A world in which these people bet on heinous things while insider trading/influencing those very things.
Privacy in gambling or insider trading is not a constitutional right.
Insider trading itself is only a crime when someone's betraying their fiduciary juty to an organisation, e.g. their employeer. There's nothing morally or legally wrong with using one's private information to make informed bets on other things, and economically speaking it produces better market prices/predictions because they reflect more information.
>A sane system would just throw him in jail.
<facepalm>
A capricious system that interprets based on whim, politics and influence is a large part of how we got here.
People like this and their less than moral path in which they further their endeavors succeed specifically because of this environment.
Polymarket is basically a platform to monetize petty stuff while also being able to monetize bad stuff. There is soooo much pressure to monetize bad stuff that once you poke a hole it's an uncontrolled leak. Polymarket recognized this, used it to scale, and then wisely used that money to get the legitimization and buy in that they needed to make the system (capriciously) say "this is fine for now you can keep going".
They basically pulled a "actually Mr. Banker, I owe you so much money that it's your problem" but for insider information. The other metaphor you could use if people with a steady supply of prescription opioids don't turn to street drugs.
There's probably a useful middle ground between tossing people in jail and rewarding with great wealth, power, and influence those people whose main drive appears to be accumulation of said things without regard for their fellow citizens.
It is not capricious to hold C-suite legally accountable for their choices. Lots of corporate scandals would simply not have happened if decisionmakers had skin in the game.
If CISOs can have personal liability for data breaches, CEOs can have personal liability for intentionally creating an illegal platform.
Instead we reward these people with billions for degrading the fabric of society.
> If CISOs can have personal liability for data breaches
Where’s this, now?
In the US it’s a legal battle currently being fought. CISOs have been charged by the SEC and other agencies, with varied success. Some cases have been deemed over-reach, some have not. And other were a case of a CISO doing ostensibly illegal things in their capacity (in some cases paying ransom demands have been interpreted as such, especially when disguised as other things).
We need either a “corporate death penalty” of sorts, more personal liability for c-suite execs, or some combo of the two. Too many people fail upwards to trust the system to sort out the “bad ones.”
>A sane system would just throw him in jail until his illegal betting market implements KYC.
There's nothing sane about KYC, it's a fundamental assault on the right to financial privacy. And the people with power can always bypass it; only the little people suffer.
I think it's important to look at the context of the discussion around this comment. Someone has received credible death threats - clearly the current situation is one where the little people are already suffering.
> Someone has received credible death threats
2 points - 1) “credible” is carrying a lot of water in that statement, and 2) your implication is that any activity which could eventually or conceivably involve a lunatic making a death threat is not compatible with any level of privacy.
The second is incredibly disturbing - people have made death threats over E2E encrypted chat channels, therefore we must remove any privacy built in to such a model?
I'll just dodge 1 for the moment since we're discussing an article about those threats. For the second point - I'm not saying that death threats should invalidate privacy concerns I just wanted to stress that the little people are already seeing quite a few downsides so it's important to view this issue with more nuance than a Facebook-like scenario when the privacy only comes at the cost of ad-revenue.
yea just throw the CEO of microsoft in jail too because illegal transactions are set via Xbox live.
unironically yes, I think with the huge payday they get for being responsible for Microsoft they should also carry an equivalent responsibility when they cause social harms. Billionaires have gotten way too comfortable.
I hate them too, but arresting them for something that they simply cannot prevent due to technical limitations, since they cannot scan in realtime all the conversations happening on their platform, is Russian-style government action, not rule of law.
Before they built the platform this danger did not exist. There is no law of nature that says massive social media platforms that are too large to moderate effectively need to exist.
If they have built a thing they can't maintain that isn't bully for them and we should feel sorry that their best efforts aren't working well enough - it's proof that that thing (or at least the way they built that thing) isn't feasible.
If you can't do a thing safely and without harm, perhaps you should not be doing the thing? It blows my mind the number of tech people who just say "it's too hard to do it safely and without harm so we'll just do it anyway and externalize the damage to other people." Lazy, greedy, amoral douche bags.
Cars? Airplanes? Motorcycles? Child birth? Life itself? Nothing could be done 100% safely and 100% without harm. Obsession with safety is what helps governments become totalitarian even in traditionally-democratic countries. Obsession with safety is the reason terrorists win.
Edit: Personally I think betting on war is immoral and should be condemned by all sane people, but saying that everything needs 100% safety and 100% no harm is very naive.
The items you've listed are all quite safe and palatable in their harm when contrasted with the benefits they bring. I'm not seeing the same picture when looking at polymarket - I don't see the great gain we're accomplishing as a society in exchange for an addicting platform that breeds organized crime. Some inventions are just plain dangerous and a bad idea.
Betting markets are legally required to have KYC. If you or I operated a casino illegally we would ABSOLUTELY be thrown in jail.
Do you seriously think fraudulent Xbox live transactions are on the same level of the heinous insider trading going on in betting markets?
Or do you just think C-suite should be legally immune from accountability overall?
Polymarket's decentralized and anonymous nature was an intentional choice by its creator precisely because it enables illegal, anonymous transactions.
How is the ceo responsible for operating under the current legal framework which allows his platform not to require KYC? Unless they are breaking the law, why should anyone arrest him?
It's the responsibility of the lawmakers to make them illegal or force them to do kyc.
If you fantasize about China or Russia way of doing things you should move there.
He is breaking the law, and was under DOJ investigation for it until he bribed the president's son to call them off.
If he's breaking the law and there is proof to that, then he will and should be arrested.
From where has it entered your mind that they don't do KYC?
Anybody can send anonymous threats, that has nothing to do with any betting company, unless they are sent through that platform.
Trivial to make a polymarket account without KYC
And what is the relevance to the death threats mentioned in the article?
>(why do all billionaires seem devoid of ethics?)
The type of person at the top of a hierarchical system is always a direct reflection of its play rules. In late-stage internet capitalism you win by being the most unhinged and un-emphatic. Today's young adults grew up on twitter, 4chan, video game gambling and with influencers telling them that the only thing that matters is material wealth and status. This culture has moved more and more into the mainstream in the last decade.
> late-stage internet capitalism
This isn't a thing.
Capitalism is just capitalism.
Pretty sure every single economist would disagree with you
Happen to have any links?
Please dont sealion. You can start simple and work from there to make your case. It's not compelling to declare facts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
I’m not sure what that wiki article has to do with a criticism of the oblique “late stage” capitalism term. Particularly when the only reference is a link to the relevant late stage capitalism article which mentions the term isn’t all that clear cut or even used with any degree of consistency, which is why I’m asking for proof that “every single” economist agrees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism
You said
> Capitalism is just capitalism.
If you want to just debate the validity of the specific term “late stage capitalism” then sure go ahead, but that’s not all you did in your prior comment. Capitalism comes in many forms and variations.
That being said, late stage capitalism is such a common term now that to say “it isn’t a thing“ feels more like something you feel should be the case than anything else. The fact that everyone in this conversation is able to understand the phrase without anyone needing to explain it is pretty indicative of that.
I don't know. Certainly the underlying mechanisms of capitalism remain the same, but it does not hurt to clarify the context that it exists within. The world is very different today, than say the 1960's, but the "rules" were the same. Capitalism has been accelerated a lot by the rise of information technology, specifically the internet, and today it is a whole different beast with unique "opportunities" and consequences.
I think the differentiating feature is that capitalism used to be tethered to producing things that were useful. The current model of wealth acquisition, so called "late-stage" seems to have shifted more towards rent seeking and extraction.
The only things that's true now is that there's more laxity around consolidation of power in big business. The core tenets of capitalism haven't changed in thousands of years.
Capitalism only exists for like 500 years. In some places of the world it did not fully develop until the 20th century. It is very young.
Are you confusing capitalism with class society in general? Yes, class society exists since the neolithic revolution. Those economic systems had barely anything in common with capitalism though. Even medieval feudalism is very different.
And yes, late stage capitalism is a term. It was coined by Lenin in his book about Imperialism. You might not agree with the term but that doesn't mean it is not real.
I think it is very obvious that 20th and 21st century monopoly capitalism is qualitatively different to 18th and 19th century free market capitalism.
The current financial system, which is integral to the current form of capitalism, only existed since 2008.
I would be reluctant to say that capitalism, as we have had after the industrial revolution, has existed in the same form for thousands of years. That just seems silly.
What seems silly about it? Labour is certainly more efficient but the principles and the outcomes remain largely the same.
I think you are right in that the primary mechanisms remain the same, or at least similar, but that was not my point anyways. The surrounding adjectives describe more the context of which capitalism exists within.
The effects and consequences of capitalism under feudalism or the age of slavery is, for example, fundamentally different from capitalism under a freer modern democracy. A slave or serf did not have the opportunities of capitalism, which changes how the system behaves and its effects.
The term "capitalism" becomes kind of meaningless, because it just describes a broad set of mechanisms. In the case of the question in this thread it is much more descriptive to include the context of which it exists within.
> (why do all billionaires seem devoid of ethics?)
Because no ethical person would accumulate a billion dollars. An ethical person would share the wealth they're creating with those around them instead of hording that wealth.
What can you do with 100 million that you couldn't do with 10?
Just as a note - I feel like there's a lack of understanding of how difficult it is to get a billion dollars. It isn't something you can just trip into and I think the concentration of that much wealth really goes against something in most people's approach to the world where generosity increases as you gain more wealth. To capture that much wealth as a business owner you have to be extremely stingy with compensation to those who accompanied you along that path which is not how most people tend to operate - more often people share that wealth and make sure those around them also benefit from the work even if the structure of corporations may technically entitle the owner to 100% of the upside.
Putting aside this is sort of a knee-jerk reaction, if this was actually implemented you’d just see the role of the CEO change to basically be a highly-paid fall-guy. People in those positions today would vacate them for quieter roles behind the scenes, and corporations would put greater effort forth to hide their decision making processes. I don’t think it would be a better system.
>you’d just see the role of the CEO change to basically be a highly-paid fall-guy.
That seems to be assuming a world where CEOs actually face meaningful consequences and that feels like a good start.
"Meaningful consequences" in this case means "throwing a CEO in jail until they de-anonymize their platform," which sounds ripe for abuse to me.
In this specific case, perhaps. In most it means "throwing a CEO in prison or fining them extensively for crimes they have committed".
In what instance is a CEO not liable for their own crimes? At least in the US, they are still criminally liable for anything they do. If anything is at issue here, I think it's whether it can be proven a crime was committed and who can be proven guilty of it. I think often civil penalties end up being the answer because they're just easier to make stick (AIUI the burden of proof is lower in those cases).
Sure, and we can deal with that problem when it comes to it. For now, there are people at these companies that are clearly responsible and can be held accountable.