That'd go a long way towards curbing the corruption of these things, while preserving (or even greatly enhancing) their "predictive power."
And the transparency must be real-time and MUST include the full dox on beneficial owner of the contract/bet, with steep jailtime for falsification/fronting, etc.. They can even say it is for tax purposes — they win that bet, they should pay income tax (and be able to deduct the costs of their losing bets against that specific income type).
I want to know if a bunch of senators or DOD personnel bet on event X, and I want journalists and OSINT watchers to know it in realtime. That gives everyone information while naturally eliminating most of the advantage of insider trading, since nearly everyone will pile into the same trade and the odds/payoff will come closer to the reality.
Knowing that high-level DOD official were betting on us invading Iran does us no good if the only reason we invaded Iran was so they could win their long-odds bet. Sure, we can try and shame them, but now they're rich and we're fighting another middle-east war.
There's no such position. You may be referring to the Secretary of Defense.
https://www.merkley.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/End-Predic...
Read the original papers on them.
http://li.mit.edu/Stuff/CNSE/Paper/Hanson90.pdf
It also creates weird incentives. If I want to pay a politician to do something, bribing them would generally be illegal. But what if I instead bet lots of money that they won't do it?
Another worrying issue with betting is just how prevalent the last election was in betting markets. In elections won by thousands or even just hundreds of votes, betting markets can skew results where betters vote for someone just purely for the bet and persuade, shill for the person they bet on.
I can imagine betters placing a bet on a candidate and then launching a defamation campaign against the other.
Damien (South Park) - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_(South_Park) :
> The majority of South Park's residents bet on Satan to win the match due to his enormous size and muscular physique, but Satan ultimately throws the fight and reveals he bet on Jesus, thus winning everybody's money.
How would that work with something like the WH Press Secretary who has refused to give back some $350K in campaign donations (though currently FEC can't prosecute any campaign finance violations because they don't have a quorum because Trump has not nominated and confirmed enough FEC commissioners.)
> As soon as he gets out, he's going to fight in my casinos
Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiate_... :
> State of New Jersey, represented by Governor [Chris Christie], sought to have the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) overturned to allow state-sponsored sports betting.
How does Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association affect or affirm states' rights on cannabis regulation and legalization?
Wasn't Christie against Medicalization and Legalization?
IMO it's less fun to see scared gamblers at sporting events.
A quote from the film "Two for the Money":
"See, most gamblers, when they go to gamble, they go to win. When we go to gamble, we go to lose."
On a personal note, I find these markets incredibly useful in day to day life. There's been a joke for a while that putting site:reddit.com in your google search is the only way to get (some) real information. It's becoming true that putting <search terms> AND (kalshi OR polymarket) is how to get accurate info.
You need a market that has enough people paying attention and doing the work, and you also need a market that has enough liquidity.
Source: I have a PhD in capital markets.
Prediction markets have also directly affected my travel planning, helping me avoid a country that wasn't at war at the time but had (in my judgement) a too-high risk of war.
You're completely right about thinly traded markets; those are way, way less accurate. But they also offer the greatest opportunity for someone to bet the other way, which has the effect of 'correcting' the market.
I don't believe a targeted ban on participating in prediction markets would do much to weed out corruption while "predictions" hide behind government officials pumping memecoins, buying stocks, using proxies, or simply sharing war plans over messaging apps. The floodgates are already open, prediction markets are just the most honest and obvious version of the corruption.
This approach to legislation is an interesting contrast to the CCP's supposed 2.3 million people prosecuted for corruption, if you believe Wikipedia [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-corruption_campaign_under...
> Prediction market trader 'Magamyman' made $553,000 on death of Iran's supreme leader
They’ve been betting for 2 years but only recently starting profiting a lot.
It will become common knowledge that these platforms are exploited by insiders so people "trust" apparent flagged insider bets, so people will try to piggyback insiders, then it will be revealed that a sophisticated party with infinitely deep pockets burns massive amounts of cash to manipulate odds and these piggybackers will be burned badly, so in the end classical gambling and sports betting will resume as preferred ways for gamblers to lose money because of their disgust with the manipulation.
Because of this, the prediction market will remain niche.
Both should face consequences but only one will.
War Prediction Markets Are a National-Security Threat https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/03/polymarket-in...
This is a good effort. So is the ban on stock trading. This administration is such that it is bringing corruption to the fore in a way not seen in generations. Things are always hard to pass at the start. Keep pushing and this administration will create a massive opportunity to swing the pendulum if we can (as hard as it is now) retain some optimism.
Thanks for pointing that out.
For the record, I meant the latter. Let the downvotes commence!
I'd be in favor of senators doing prediction markets, just limited to small dollar trades so they can get better at predicting.
How quickly we accept the death of even the ideal of rule of law in favor of embracing a return to an explicit rule by might, fuck-you-got-mine mentality.
> In 1909, well before the Securities Exchange Act was passed, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a corporate director who bought that company's stock when he knew the stock's price was about to increase committed fraud by buying but not disclosing his inside information.
Based on anti-fraud common law alone the court decided it was illegal for an insider to trade stocks with non-public information. An explicit law would be nice, but a reasonable interpretation of basic law would see most of our ruling class behind bars. This is only highly-contested and technical because we've let our standards slip so far.
Right, it becomes regular bribery with middleman and a funny hat.
"I didn't pay the judge to dismiss the case against me, I just hedged by betting I'd be convicted and he just happened to be betting I'd go free, and now my money is coincidentally in his pocket.
But for now, make sure you get in your bets er i mean predictions on this mega important market: "Elon Musk # tweets March 3 - March 10, 2026?"[1]
[1] https://polymarket.com/event/elon-musk-of-tweets-march-3-mar...
The public already does not believe this. Less than 25% approve of your work.
> This legislation strengthens the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s ability to go after bad actors
And this is designed to "increase trust?"