Is it polymarket presenting this ability to detect insiders? Or is someone trying to sell the service of detecting insiders to those wanting to know if bets are on equal footing? (or wanting to follow insiders? or wanting to hide your identity by making multiple accounts? Are there per-account fees, when polymarket might encourage people to make multiple accounts?)
Regardless, polymarket seems to be on balance corrupting, by monetizing and normalizing use of inside information, which violates agency principles. It's not clear that it really offers hedging or predictive benefits.
When trading firms do better (after data discovery and analysis), there's some evidence they're better than other firms, and you can trust them with some money. But when there's a public prediction market, the only benefit is to the insiders.
This is talking about using Compound AI (product I'm working on) to query Polymarket data, including finding insiders, just as a fun example analysis you could do.
Often you need a well-calibrated probability of a future event to feed into some other analysis, and Polymarket is pretty great for that. An example is how much insurance (hedge) to buy for some disastrous event.
That sounds like "insider trading" machines, or "scam" machines, rather than truth machines.
like if 50 ppl vote A, 45 people vote B and 1 person who actually knows their shit votes B?
How do you find it? By amount?
This is the theoretical underpinning of prediction markets.
Some have better models that predict with higher accuracy, given the same data.
To the extent that the value of prediction markets is in their power to predict, insider trading is kosher. Wholesome even.
In the stock market, Matt Levine likes to say that insider training is about theft, not fairness. You can be prosecuted for merely sharing info with a friend on a golf course who then proceeds to trade. Your crime is not trading (you didn't even trade), but misappropriating information you were entrusted with and not authorized to sell.
The worlds most influential people demonstrate that only power matters; that the world order we built last century through unimaginable suffering and violence matters less than securing their own personal gain; that law, morals, and order were just dreams of the weak
Obvious example: Polymarket now has 69(!) markets involving Iran: https://polymarket.com/predictions/iran
Consider the timing of those markets wrt 2026 national elections in US, Israel, also Sweden, legislative elections in France, Germany (as canaries for their next general elections) plus a possible change in UK PM, plus any possible Ukraine or Venezuela outcomes. And of course events in the stock market or energy markets make certain outcomes more/less likely.
Also, on Polymarket traders often buy and sell before a market resolves, to exploit patterns in other traders.
And consider what happens at major media e.g. CNN now they've partnered with Kalshi, wrt whether the broadcasting certain predictions/viewpoints/interviewees get boosted/suppressed.
Yes, and surely you see that the inability to distinguish between true signal and deliberate countersignal until after the bet has resolved is an indictment of the very model of predictions markets. Like a qubit, you must collapse the waveform to extract the information.
I agree it's not perfect, but I think you're underplaying a lot of the value.
if prediction market contracts really are regulated as commodities, then presumably a lot of insider trading must be legal, although there must be limits of one kind or another and probably if you do something really egregious you might be prosecuted under some legal theory.
Ah yes the famous credit card data and Walmart parking lots example that hedge funds were giving a few years ago in every interview and news article. Safe to assume that specifically these data sets are not what you should look at to make money.
Or is the info only available later?
I'm guessing that bots predicting insiders and copying positions is already a thing.
Orders aren't public though. Only the actual trades. This is important because by the time the trade is known by others very often the edge is gone. Especially if you have other people watching the same trader and they all try to copy the trade at the same time.
Even if there wasn't any kind of insider betting going on, it just seems so disgusting to turn literally everything into a casino.
There's a bet going on right now about Jesus coming back before 2027 [1], and a part of me wants to do it because I'm pretty confident Jesus isn't coming back by the end of the year (or any year), but it seems kind of wrong to try and extract money out of people who are gambling away their money.
[1] https://polymarket.com/event/will-jesus-christ-return-before...
Also, I'd advise against betting on the Jesus market. You can't actually read the price as a probability here due to time value of money, opportunity cost, etc. So you'd lose money (or at best, gain nothing) by betting against it. It's priced correctly.
Yeah, and assuming Jesus doesn't come back that's only about a 3.6% return rate, which is what Treasury Bills are getting right now [1]. At that point I might as well do that and avoid paying state tax on my interest.
[1] https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/...
Still, I just find the idea of turning everything in politics into a casino kind of gross. Taken to the extreme it can get pretty disgusting.
Like, imagine that there were a Polymarket of "Will COVID deaths break 1 million?" or "Will <Insert Serial Killer> Take His Fifth Victim?".
These are hyperbolic examples and I'm not saying that anything on Polymarket is that bad, but even the stuff that's currently on there right now like "Khamenei out as Supreme Leader of Iran by March 31?" [1] or "Israel strikes Iran by February 28, 2026?" [2] seems kind of crass. These are real issues that have real consequences that affect many real humans (who are no less valuable than me) and people are treating this shit like a fucking game.
I'm not accusing you of that, to be clear, it's just why I find Polymarket to be gross and I'm not sure it should be legal.
[1] https://polymarket.com/event/khamenei-out-as-supreme-leader-...
[2] https://polymarket.com/event/israel-strikes-iran-by-february...