As someone generally against gambling, I think there's a fair point to be made that Polymarket and similar sites are not fundamentally different from e.g. sports betting.
The issue of bribing/threatening a sports player to throw a game has existed for over a century. It's not a new problem. The only thing special about Polymarket is the expansion of surface area.
My preferred solution would be to just ban it all, or if you really want to allow sports betting only allow betting on the outcome of events happening in the venue one is physically in.
The existence of sports betting absolutely encourages people to throw matches and the existence of X betting absolutely encourages people to try to make X come about.
Strong regulation and legal consequences could potentially fix this. We don't see tons of people shorting a company and then bombing that company's HQ.
At least with sports betting it's limited in scope. Polymarket applies the same warping influence to the whole of politics and daily life. That's the biggest problem and difference to me, yes it sucks if teams are throwing or players are altering their play to make or break bets but ultimately the effect/danger of that incentive is limited. And with the more limited and well enumerated pool of potential insiders places like the league can pretty easily monitor for it while on Polymarket it's down to open source monitoring and a little blip on their TOS that's nearly impossible to enforce.
> Strong regulation and legal consequences could potentially fix this.
There are regulations. E.g., in the US, 17 CFR § 40.11 prohibits contracts on "terrorism, assassination, war, gaming, or an activity that is unlawful under any State or Federal law" [0]. The problem is that those responsible for enforcing those regulations are currently uninterested in doing so [1].
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/40.11
[1] https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9183-26
Yeah, regulations are only as strong as the consequences given those who break them.
If people can threaten journalists for money and get away with it, they will. If people who threaten journalists over money are sent to prison, then after a brief transition period it will mostly stop.
It's braindead easy to anonymously threaten people on the internet. It's getting easier to steal identities or create new ones out of whole cloth and cypto wallets means you can't functionally know where the money comes from. I'm not sure attempting to punish people you can't realistically identify can be considered an effective strategy.
Punishing a corporate entity however is much easier.
> there's a fair point to be made that Polymarket and similar sites are not fundamentally different from e.g. sports betting.
not fundamentally different as in "live or die" you mean? the whole point of sports is that you compete whilst appreciating each others' humanity.
I honestly don't know what your point is. The best I can come up with is:
"The whole point of sports (in my opinion) is X good thing therefore betting on sports is more acceptable"
Making bets on good things doesn't make the betting better. Just because Polymarket would allow you to bet money that the infant homicide rate goes down next year, doesn't mean it's a good thing to allow betting on.
> I think there's a fair point to be made that Polymarket and similar sites are not fundamentally different from e.g. sports betting.
> Strong regulation and legal consequences...
Functionally, you are correct.
But the crux of the issue is Polymarket and Kalshi (YC W19) have successfully argued that they are technically a platform that is democratizing "futures", and thus falls under the CFTC - not gambling.
Nothing will be done to change this. YCombinator (who owns HN) [0] and Sequoia have built a fairly well oiled lobbying muscle with the CFTC and with both the GOP and DNC to maintain this status quo.
It's the same reason both Ro Khanna and Ron DeSantis went to (metaphorically) kiss David Sack's ring back in 2023 at the same donor event XD.
[0] - https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/30/little-tech-startup...