I was blown away how easy it was. I placed a bet with real money within 5 minutes of downloading the app.
They allow instant deposits with credit card, and ID verification was real time.
I can’t imagine that the extreme accessibility and the typical dark patterns deployed by every popular app won’t eventually end badly.
(I was also shocked that when looking at my credit card bill online, next to the Kalshi deposit line item it showed a promo “would you like to split this payment over 12 month?” and seemingly was only available for that one transaction. So I could have deposited $1000 via CC into Kalshi and paid it back $83/mo over 12 months.)
This industry is wild.
This is my biggest takeaway, and I really wonder what payment processor(s) they're using, because the chargeback and fraud rate in filling 'real money' into an online gambling account using visa or mastercard must be through the roof.
Exactly same reason why porn sites use their own specialist payment processors (alluded to in popular fiction in Industry season 4 recently, for instance).
The back end of how they're able to get money "instantly" into peoples accounts must be fascinating, in a how the sausages are made kind of way.
https://www.gamblinginsider.com/news/114277/massachusetts-ig...
https://sportsbettingalliance.org/take-action/ohio_igaming/
https://sportsbettingalliance.org/take-action/texas/
https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Legislation/Details/h...
https://gosunward.org/articles/cash-advance-on-a-credit-card...
Gambling is always classed as a cash advance. The gift cards trick has been tapped and closed, the credit companies figured it out decades ago.
So, not all that different, but marginally less exploitative. I've never looked at Polymarket but Kalshi and PredictIt slid steadily from things of at least plausible real economic value (a market where it was conceivable [if unlikely] someone would be hedging their insurance contract or something) into total nonsense with no non-gambling function like whether someone would tweet a certain word.
I think prediction markets could serve a similar to a futures markets and have a functional purpose in the economy. It could be useful to generate real time estimates of the probability of some events that no one can control and have real economic consequences, like a hurricane. But evidently that's not where the money is.
Even though nobody can control them, some people can predict them better than others. (Meteorologists with good models and supercomputers, etc.) In general it's impossible to prevent the appearance of insider trading in prediction markets, and it's also impossible -- unless you massively restrict what people can bet on -- to prevent people from doing things for bets to resolve in their favor, which turns those "markets" into "bounties." (The same guys who theorized prediction markets were the ones who theorized assassination markets.)
They're fundamentally broken and the fact that they're allowed is a sign and symptom of a dysfunctional society.
But doesn't Polymarket et al own their own platforms, just like Betfair owns their platform? There is no P2P going on, even if some markets seem to advertise themselves as such so again, seems like the same just minus gambling regulations?
https://docs.polymarket.com/concepts/prices-orderbook
https://help.kalshi.com/en/articles/13823828-the-orderbook
Tl;Dr there's an order book with prices set by supply and demand. So you're at the whims of the market rather than the whims of someone who is your broker, exchange, clearinghouse, and taking the other side of your trade. I don't know much about Polymarket but iirc Kalshi is only your broker and exchange, so dealing with them is materially less risky in my mind.
The most annoying part, somewhat surprisingly, is always with regards to United States KYC restrictions. I've had a fair bit of annoyance trying to move crypto off of services that were once accessible to US customers and no longer are.
[1] "Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling" (2026) by Danny Funt
Incidentally this is also what makes chess games relatively profitable. Moderate-info bettors will do things like flip on their chess engine, look at the eval, and then bet on that. But a computer might say a position is a dead-draw when a stronger player can tell you 'white has big practical winning chances'.
Even in the most optimistic case, betting market accuracy will be limited by the commission (if you have a better estimate than the market, but not sufficiently better that you'll make money on it, you don't bet), and I think even a not-terribly-smart model can get you there for chess games. We don't need betting markets for the prediction's sake.
And I think the reason for that is because a lot of these factors are unquantifiable, subjective, and non-fixed. For instance determining the winning chances for a human in a chess position is surprisingly complex. There's even a huge chunk of profit to be made for somebody that could create such a model outside of printing money in prediction markets - it'd be an invaluable tool for players to use during opening preparation since positions where winning chances don't correlate with computer eval are sort of the money-shot in human prep that's often motivated by a desire to avoid computer prep. And that factor is just 1 amongst many that can weigh in on an expert bettor's opinion.
I think I enjoy the odds because it adds a sort of unspoken storyline to a fight, because those fighters themselves also know who's the underdog and it adds a bit of a psychological edge to the contest.
It's a lot like watching a chess game where the same stuff unfolds where you expect the favorite to push. Will the underdog look to survive, try to come and prove he's not to be taken lightly, and so on. Good times.
For example, can someone place a bet on an event that X person will be shot? That question now touches on a whole range of laws regarding murder, life insurance, incitation to violence, free speech? That you just don't touch at all in sports betting.
But if Poly and Kalshi are gambling joints, then of course fixing gambling bets is no no, and that is what actually happens. They ban wins of market predictors who actually correctly predicted something but did it by fixing the game. A market prediction service wouldn't care about that, but gambling joint would.
Did some research, and Kalshi (US based) is regulated by the CFTC, so they are already regulated by the same stuff that regulates securities, including price manipulation.
The subject of insider information is different because these are not public securities, there's no fiduciary responsibility. But it's not that there are no regulations, it's just that that specific regulation that we associate with the 2008 crisis just doesn't apply. But that doesn't mean there's no regulation, there's heaps, feel free to check out the CFTC website.
But I made some research, and here's the main body that specifically targets 'regulation' regulations for prediction markets https://www.cftc.gov/LawRegulation/index.htm
I can see the argument that they are piggybacking off a body of regulations that wasn't designed for this. I'm not an attorney, so I don't know if that holds, but even if it does, it's undeniable that there are enough parallels between commodity futures and prediction markets and that's why it's being used to regulate so far.
If you argue for more or more specific regulation, it's probably going to be a fork, not regulation from scratch.
And as mentioned in other comments, there's existing laws around the subject of bets themselves that mean that there already exist loads of regulations around these subjects, in the end they are just contracts, which is one of the main branches of law and has a huge body of law and jurisprudence, so either it's inaccurate to say they are unregulated, or it regulation means something much more specific that I'm unaware of.
But ok, let’s follow your thought process. Couldn’t someone place a bet on a sporting event and then murder a key player? Wouldn’t all the same laws be triggered?
Laws against criminal activity aren’t regulations. Regulations are limitations and oversight requirements on business activities.
Probably not, no. I would be very surprised if the sports betting shops didn't have some sort of "force majeure" clauses.
> Couldn’t someone place a bet on a sporting event and then murder a key player?
I don't follow, these are separate hypotheticals. For the record the answers would be:
1a) Can? Yes
1b) Legal? No, listing itself against public policy.
2a) Can? Yes
2b) Legal? No, murder is illegal
2c) Wager profits retained? No, slayer rule/No profit theory.
The U.K’s highest earner for a few years running was the founder of a U.K. betting site, she had something like a 500 million salary and there is an entire town’s economy supported by her business.
What does make this instance perhaps a bit surprising is that it's Polymarket themselves who are paying those grifters.
They're an incredibly well known US based company targeting US based consumers in a way that is patently illegal. It seems almost unbelievably dumb that they would do this even by the often grotty standards of gambling companies.
They must have realised this would be found out and that, when it was, an investigation and enforcement action would follow? I guess maybe some of the creators will find themselves in hot water as well?
I really don't understand what the long term play is here, other than to be litigated out of business.
I'm guessing that at some point, probably not very long from now, credit cards are going to cut down on this. They don't want to be held responsible for a bunch of debt from gamblers, when they've already paid the sites.
At some point, the fees won't be worth the combination of PR and actually losing money from bankruptcies / delinquencies.
So it's not like people need to go to shady lenders in the first place, they can be pipelined from normal credit card debt into less scrupulous debt collectors.
They accept Visa, Mastercard and Discover via Apple Pay for a 2% deposit fee.
But I also see it says they don’t accept credit card in their help docs. I’m not sure what that’s about.
There are other things as well, like they control which side wins, so they can leverage trade or even swing trade internally with a few bot accounts, not saying that they do but I don't see a ToC that says they can't.
There are no easy questions, the difficulty is set by the skill/investment level of your competition.
Seems like it's just a game of whack-a-mole, nothing is really being done to stop scammers from making new accounts and continuing their scams.
> “We’re depicting what actually happens,” he said.
The cope is real. They all know they are destroying lives by promoting gambling to young people and eventually some of them are going to overspend and get addicted. But yeah, it's just like an ad for a burger
I guess Polymarket too will learn to be more subtle now.
A few years ago crypto gambling really took off. The big fish here is Stake. Back when Twitch still allowed slots, there was a flood of slots streamers. Ultimately this led to Twitch banning gambling. This was such an issue that Stake created their own live streaming platform (ie Kick). That should tell you how lucrative it was.
But what came out was that there was different contracts the streamers had. Some were paid a hefty fee and they got to keep any winnings. Why anyone would choose this is beyond me because over time your expected return is negative. The other option was that you could "gamble" with fake money. None of it was real. And none of it was disclosed.
I never understood why people would atch someone play slots all day but some people did. I think psychologically it's a bit like mukbang where people live vicariously through someone else's gluttony. With gambling, the psychological hook is so strong that it can be triggered by watching someone else gamble. But that's just a guess. Luckily, I've never been bitten by the gambling bug. It's one of the worst addictions.
I think fake gambling in particular should be illegal or, in the very least, disclosed publicly.
If I were to have my way, I'd put a law in place that limits bets to $5 max and monthly bets to $150 per month. Letting them go higher encourages some of the worst aspects of society.
We will see crazy things like athletes being injured or murdered in order to win bets. We are already seeing crazy things like white house insiders placing bets on when wars will start.
One of the few ways to really solve this problem is reducing the possible amount of award so the individuals placing these bets don't feel like they have to take matters into their own hands to win.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
(p.s. Just to pre-empt the usual: no, this is not a defense of Big Gambling, just an attempted defense of HN thread quality.)
(apologies if arguing about mod decisions is frowned upon, I didn't see anything in the rules about it)
I’m respect your wishes but you can’t say you have told me anything if I didn’t see it here, sorry Dan but that’s only fair since there’s no way for me to see your message unless I randomly go back.
If you want to ensure people see these messages, then that’s a feature you’ll need to add. I’m fine with you using the email on my account for this purpose, too, but I’m not fine with getting a single message from you here and you expecting me to have seen anything else you’ve said in the past. As far as I’m concerned this is the first I’ve seen you ask me about this.
No affiliation, just a happy user. Also not trying to say you must use sth like that or anything, just a piece of software I’ve enjoyed. :-)
Also if people were downvoting my comments it’d be different but it’s just you for a frw recent ones down modding then, because before you get here they were up or even. Moderators should focus on those truly displaying bad behavior, I’m just swearing and saying relevant things.
I have a very long history of good comments here, arguing otherwise seems suspect, honestly.
I’ll back off like you say but I don’t agree at all. I’ve read the guidelines and tend to follow them.
Edit: I see like 3-4 questionable comments from me, two of who’ve are barely questionable. I get what you’re saying about the language but it’s really amazing you’ve targeted me here today, this us such low hanging fruit here, don’t you have better things to deal with? I’ll write better comments but I’m just really annoyed at your characterization of my behavior, it is very unfair in my eyes. I’ve done very good comments for ages and emotional language like this is rare for me. I expect better from mods here.
Wait until your account is shadow banned and you post in the void for weeks/months before noticing
And this helped weed out all but the most addicted gamblers. Now there is no friction, the platforms are free to create dark patterns to encourage problem gambling, and the vice has zero social cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiate_...
Note that it was not a close decision:
> Opinion of the Court
>The Court announced a 7–2 judgment in favor of Murphy on May 14, 2018, reversing the Third Circuit.[25] Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, and Neil Gorsuch and in part by Justice Stephen Breyer.[26][27][28] The majority opinion agreed that §§ 3701(1) of PASPA commandeered power from the states to regulate their own gambling industries and thus was unconstitutional. It followed New York v. United States and reversed the Third Circuit decision.
Prohibition had some unintended consequences.
Frankly, being able to buy drugs and alcohol online is probably a mistake, too.
It was almost certainly easier for most people to buy drugs than gamble illegally when both were illegal.
it was fun to put $0.50 on a game I normally wouldn't watch and tune in with a real rooting interest. i never bet more that $1 on a game because I knew that I would really dislike losing 'real money'.
the fact was that the stakes were completely irrelevant to me. the value came from definitively and publicly taking a side. if you're the fan of a team, you do this in every game. but with these little bets it's a way to sign-on for a little slice of being a fan in every game.
and that got me thinking that there's potentially a different type of gambling app that ignores the money and is more of a social/prediction-making platform. people love chasing worthless internet points (reddit upvotes, HN karma, etc), so why not build a platform that gives you points for betting?
you could let a chunk of the population scratch the itch they get to gamble without creating financial risk. they can still brag about their wins.
We have that in the Netherlands and we do it massively for every World Cup and Euro. The app my friend groups are on, Scorito, has 1.5 million competitors for the current WC, in the country of 18 million, and that's not the only app.
Normally a group would make a small buy in, like €5, where the winner takes all, but this year the legal department at work forbade that, se that sort of gambling Is actual illegal.
Give a player that is hesitant a good opportunity to place a pretty much guaranteed winning bet and try to get them to cross their threshold. Once crossed, it’s much harder not to cross it again for most people.
Also the operator is completely legal/compliant with it's jurisdictions laws as they allow us players (many now blacklist the us, but some not )
So they won't accept any foreign judgement . That's why most countries rather target their infrastructure (psps/banking etc ..)
Even Eu countries had/have severe problems with Malta (due e.g Article 56A of the malta gaming act, which shields the operator from foreign judgements)
If you really want to crack down on it, then it could be done.
I think I’d probably go farther. Next time you’re in a corner store or gas station, pay attention to who is wasting their money on scratchers or other lotto tickets.
You shouldn’t be allowed to gamble unless you can prove it’s disposable income.
It was regulated.
We are not suing polymarket. We are not suing the marketing company. And we don't want online censorship.
IMO, the marketing company / media company should be sued. -- They are (relatively) easier target to sue. Many are US based and not going anywhere. With enough luck, this might give us a better internet with less SEO bullshit.
Is the real crime here that they were too lazy to lie with selective facts?
If picking real winners and real winnings to feature in the ad was just as good, they could do that. If not, then yes, it makes an impact on the world to mislead people with that marketing.
Somehow there's a difference between things that happened and didn't happen, and that's a good place to draw a line in the sand of what you're allowed to advertise and not.
Doesn’t this make every ad fraud? It’s an actor pretending to enjoy drinking Coca Cola, every ad is the same.
First result with a summary of 16 CFR Part 465: Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials: https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2024/09/...
Is this even a question? Yes, it would be less fraudulent.
"Celebrity X won" was not.
I am not a fan of gambling, nor gambling advertisements, but this was outright fraud, and a violation of FTC rules (https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorse...) on disclosure.
There was no "promotes healthy whatever" it was like "this will make your skin younger and eliminate/prevent wrinkles and other signs of aging."
Then the quiet fast-talking guy said that none of their health claims have been reviewed by the FDA.
So that's where we are now. Everything is scams and nobody will do anything about it.
But apparently they can do that now, or at least they are doing it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_...
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/12/31/6738513...
edit: to be clear, if companies are committing fraud in their marketing, that should be prosecuted or if regulations around misleading marketing are weak, that should be legislated of course.
What would you rather have? More regulated gambling and less addicts, or unregulated gambling and more addicts? Personally, I prefer the former.
Honestly, calling it "personal responsibility" when a powerful group is actively working to exploit that flaw seems a little weird. But even accepting that, we outlaw plenty of things because we think society isn't currently responsible enough to handle them.
That's why you see so many college boy on their marketing video.
It's completely fine when you're old enough to be responsible, and to know that gambling is a degenerate behavior that you can allow yourself sometimes to release the steam, but these companies don't make money from us.
They make money from the kids overspending because they are convinced they are going to get rich doing that. That's manipulation.
It would be like showing McDonald ads to starving African kids, of course they are going to make the wrong choice when offered food. They can't think rationally in that state.
Yes online gambling and sports management actions are their personal responsibility. And we should blame them for harm they knowingly cause.
God I cant believe I wrote that
Consider the probabilities in polymarket as the prob. of the polymarket market itself outcomes rather than reality.
Do you think in a food commercial the people eating the product are showing their genuine emotion? It's all acting.
McDonald’s Canada famously gave a candid behind the scenes of dressing a burger:
But my biggest fear is for my kids. I'm doing my best to teach them about the duplicity that exists in this world, and that's precisely why I'm against blanket social media bans for under-16s.
By the time kids turn 17, they've hit the rebel stage. And that's exactly when the freedom to access social media arrives. At that point, they won't listen to parents. They are going to get soo badly burnt.
This is why I advocate for controlled, early access to social media for children. As a parent, I can monitor what they follow and teach them to distinguish right from wrong.
But with these blanket bans, that's taken out of my hands entirely. They grow up sheltered in a picture-perfect world...and then, boom.