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’Abhorrent’: the inside story of the Polymarket gamblers betting millions on war

72 points

by sandebert

1 hour ago

| past

| 3 comments

| theguardian.com

| HN

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Chrisszz

51 minutes ago

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This is becoming the kind of "VC platform for online war investments". You: 1. Plan 2. Bet 3. Invest money upfront 4. Execute 5. Redeem your profits

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azan_

31 minutes ago

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Could you explain what do you mean? What's the plan and execution here? Planning and executing invasion? If so, there are much better markets than polymarket for making such bets.

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PowerElectronix

47 minutes ago

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Now, can you find enough liquidity in the market to turn a profit? Can you find it before it becomes aparent something is off in the bet?

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Throaway199999

20 minutes ago

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honestly the profits aren't big enough when you can just go into business if you have that kind of influence

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srameshc

53 minutes ago

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> There is now more than $500,000 (£371,000) staked on whether Russia will capture Kostyantynivka this year .

Now everyone has a chance to profit from war ! Thank you Polymarket

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paulnpace

10 minutes ago

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War profiteering for the people!

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cyanydeez

1 hour ago

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'Capitalism': the inevitable reduction of all humanity to fungible currency

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gib444

9 minutes ago

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The price of everything and the value of nothing.

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airstrike

18 minutes ago

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Capitalism is just a projection of our natural competition for scarce resources onto an economic system.

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PowerElectronix

48 minutes ago

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Betting with one another predates any notion of capitalism, or economy.

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delichon

29 minutes ago

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I think they all coevolved. Some early human committed both a capitalist and an economic transaction by buying sheep and selling deer, and then bet on the next hunt.

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ModernMech

14 minutes ago

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True, but capitalism eventually makes gambling the whole economy.

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PowerElectronix

2 minutes ago

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I don't think it does. Capitalism only allows one to save one's fruit of their labor to use down the line. You exchange it for money, then use that money to buy other stuff.

People using it to gamble has more to do with gambling people than with capitalism people. You can have gambling in communism or socialism, only stakes there are limited because the fruit of the labor of people doesn't belong to them like in capitalism.

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kingleopold

37 minutes ago

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alternative is gulag(s) and literally famine(s)!

but hey keep understanding things wrong, surely it helps?

humanity advanced way more under capitalism than anything else in history. This does not mean capitalism is perfect, it's just fits to human greed and human behaviour more. Others systems are worse

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croes

25 minutes ago

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Capitalism neither prevents gulags nor famines.

And you can bet (pun intended) someone will create them on purpose if they can make profit from it

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forinti

15 minutes ago

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Doesn't the US already have an above average incarceration rate and private prisons? Maybe, just maybe, there's some relation?

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logicchains

22 minutes ago

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Please do share what capitalist country had a famine in the past century.

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ceejayoz

2 minutes ago

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Give it a bit!

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/26/g-s1-115240/iran-war-strait-h...

(I'm being snarky here, but COVID definitely exposed some supply chain vulnerabilities.)

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forinti

14 minutes ago

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Lots of African countries have market economies and also poverty and hunger.

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throwthrowuknow

4 minutes ago

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Poverty and hunger are not famine

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ModernMech

8 minutes ago

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

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iso1631

5 minutes ago

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Niger springs to mind, massively capitalist with a lot of oil and mining

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throwthrowuknow

13 minutes ago

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Except it does? Capitalist countries don’t seem to have any famines. You could argue that for profit prisons are similar to gulags in some ways but the important differences are so vast it’s hard to compare them honestly.

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ModernMech

3 minutes ago

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Capitalist countries don't have famines at home. That's different from "capitalism prevents famines". Capitalism is happy to cause hunger, inflict death, or imprison people if it's profitable for capitalists, that's baked into the structure of the structure of the system. There's no systemic feature of capitalism that says "make capital unless it violates natural and human rights".

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kodegod69

28 minutes ago

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Sure keep saying that to yourself. All of you sound so damn sure when speaking about socialism. Like the first nation to pierce the firmament of human fabric wasn't a socialist one. And that the union wasn't making great strides in technology.

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logicchains

19 minutes ago

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Such great strides in technology, their standard of living was so high that their president was literally shocked just by the abundance of food in a normal western grocery story.

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deadbabe

19 minutes ago

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Whether you like it or not, socialism is the key.