Allegations of insider trading over prediction-market bets tied to Iran conflict
68 points
4 hours ago
| 6 comments
| morningstar.com
| HN
ardanur
54 minutes ago
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Polymarket is effectively an assassination auction list, you just need to find out which low likelihood resolutions can be swayed by someone's death. But you would need to have money to start which is something aspiring assassins aren't likely to have. And you would also need the skills to launder cryptocurrencies effectively.

This is also true with traditional stock markets, except that laundering real money is much harder to do alone. In the real world an assassin can't really involve more people as those people would realize they are loose ends since they have a get-out-of-jail card in turning on you.

The markets could get ahead of this by stipulating that a resolution via murder will always lead to resolution at prices at a time prior to the death. This would technically incentivize a potential assassin to commit a deniable murder, but if they succeed it won't be the market's [PR] problem.

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fourseventy
39 minutes ago
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prediction markets need to be illegal in the USA, its total insanity.
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mr_00ff00
7 minutes ago
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You could argue that certain prediction markets are better than the alternative. Maybe not for this, but take sports betting.

People taking sides against each other means the losers and winners are individuals.

Meanwhile sports betting is growing but the winners are “the house”, the companies.

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xboxnolifes
2 minutes ago
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The problem with prediction markets is not who wins, its the incentives that lead to who wins.
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muzani
2 hours ago
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So I guess the new war heuristic is pizza and polymarket.
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georgehotz
2 hours ago
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There's no such thing as "insider trading" on prediction markets. Are you telling me people with secret knowledge profited by making correct predictions? That's the whole point of prediction markets! Provide accurate information = get paid. It doesn't matter where the information came from, as long as it's correct.
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protocolture
1 hour ago
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If they provided the information, "Hey I am bob in the pentagon and we are doing war soon", it wouldnt be insider trading.

But all they are doing is updating a financial instrument that suggests an increased likelihood, and getting massive bank for not providing the information that would make everyone else bet the same way.

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gruez
24 minutes ago
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>But all they are doing is updating a financial instrument that suggests an increased likelihood, and getting massive bank for not providing the information that would make everyone else bet the same way.

That's the incorrect way of thinking about this, at least according to how US insider trading laws work. If a hedge fund has reason to believe oil prices will spike due to some secret info (eg. they paid some intern to camp out at US airbases and spot outgoing flights), and then they made massive bank on that trade, that's not insider trading. It's not a crime to hoard material nonpublic information and trade on it (ie. "updating a financial instrument ... and getting massive bank for not providing the information that would make everyone else bet the same way"). Now, if they paid off some guy inside the base, that might be breaking a bunch of laws around national security, but still not insider trading.

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HWR_14
1 hour ago
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Of course insider trading is a US federal crime in prediction marketplaces.
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olalonde
1 hour ago
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If you hold confidential information, using it to bet on prediction markets could arguably violate secrecy rules since the market effectively receives the information. If you are not bound by confidentiality, participating should be fine.

Note that this isn't about making the market "fair" for other participants but about ensuring confidential information remains confidential (especially relevant in the context of national defense).

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exogeny
11 minutes ago
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There’s two different things to argue here.

First, yes, you’re right.

Second, they raised a shit ton of money under the bull case of mass consumer adoption, which is going to be impossible if that said consumer feels it is rigged.

Let’s all be real here; for 95% of their use cases both now and in the future, they’re a sportsbook. Which is fine! But they’re not going to get to anywhere near returning a multiple on their manic valuation until they act like one. And the first thing to do is to stop with all of the pseudo-academic bullshit about what a prediction market is. And the second is for them to hire someone, anyone, who knows even the first thing about sports because everyone even tangentially connected to this market knows that before six months ago, Tarek and Shayne couldn’t differentiate between a football and a buttplug.

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camillomiller
1 hour ago
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Yeah well you outlined perfectly well why they should be banned from the known universe
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bdangubic
2 hours ago
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I bet I’ll punch you in a mouth and then I punch you in a mouth and collect a billion dollars
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georgehotz
2 hours ago
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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.
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creato
1 hour ago
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> other participants can alter the outcome and bet accordingly.

Do you think it is acceptable that someone may have altered their behavior due to the outcome of a bet on attacking Iran?

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metalcrow
1 hour ago
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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.
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QuadmasterXLII
1 hour ago
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If some addled gambling addict is dumb enough to take the bet, it’s their dollars and your mouth.
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bdangubic
1 hour ago
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exactly
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bdangubic
1 hour ago
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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).

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collingreen
1 hour ago
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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!)
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s1artibartfast
1 hour ago
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Yep. And it will have been predicted. What seems to be the problem?

Do you want to bet what I'll eat for dinner next?

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bdangubic
1 hour ago
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Idiots will always bet on rigged outcomes, the “prediction” markets are living proof of that
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camillomiller
1 hour ago
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Congrats! You provided correct information! That is apparently more valuable than anything according to a lot of deranged data nerds nowadays, so enacting violence to get to that outcome is perfectly fine! Good job!
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khazhoux
1 hour ago
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Why are people saying the attacks were a surprise? It was widely reported the day before that embassies were told to clear out “now!”
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rtkwe
1 hour ago
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The signs it was possibly soon were pretty strong it's the exact day that wasn't really known.
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khazhoux
39 minutes ago
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> US ambassador to Israel tells embassy staff if they want to leave they ‘should do so TODAY’

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/27/middleeast/us-embassy-israel-...

Friday ^^

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mr_00ff00
2 minutes ago
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Maybe slightly unrelated, Would this not heavily tip off Iran that an attack was coming?

Surely that’s easy for Iran to hear about.

It seems weird to know the attack was coming and yet their leader still gets killed.

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xfil
21 minutes ago
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I agree; exact day was predictable enough for people to place confident-enough bets on. Notices to evacuate non-essential personnel from US military bases, embassies, & consulates in the region also went out 1-2 days prior to Israel's strikes on Iran on June 13, 2025.

My social circle had largely expected that Iran was getting bombed on Saturday or Sunday once the evacuation notices went out Friday, and this intuition was merely from laymen who follow the news. I don't doubt that insider trading was involved as it's the norm with this Admin, but I also don't doubt that many savvy people could've legally placed successful bets.

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adampunk
23 minutes ago
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If it was so obvious, how come you didn’t make a half milion dollars?

More generally, if it was so obvious how come the odds were so long?

If it were so obvious that winning required no insider knowledge the odds should be better.

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instagib
3 hours ago
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“all fees would be refunded to users who participated in these markets, and that positions from before his death would be cashed out at the last-traded price.”
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mikercampbell
3 hours ago
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I know it’s cliche, but I hate this timeline.

For a good while there, the headlines went from “oniony” to “sim-city news headline flavor text” to “I can’t believe I share a finite existence with the people being discussed”

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kace91
38 minutes ago
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I’m seriously contemplating blocking the news completely. It’s not like me being informed has any influence anyway, now that belief can be manufactured to such an extent. Might as well lower my blood pressure.
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lotsofpulp
32 minutes ago
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Skip the technical blocking step and internalize the fact that it is pretty much all irrelevant to your (average person’s) day to day life. Ideally, then even knowing it won’t affect your blood pressure. And the fact is, do you even have reason to believe the claims are true?

I am commenting in this thread to pass time, but I assume there is a such a high chance the linked article is not true, or at least has a hidden agenda, such that it should be ignored or treated as entertainment. Could be product placement, could be completely manufactured rage-bait, who knows, and more importantly, I have no reason to care.

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mlinhares
2 hours ago
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Same. I also wonder why would anyone take the other side on stuff like this, this is clearly to incite insider traders, so either there's a lot of stupid people out there willing to part with their money or this is a very efficient money laundering scheme.

Or both.

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