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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.
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.
The peer-to-peer framing is roughly right, but most prediction markets still have market makers who effectively act as a house and take a spread. The stronger argument is probably information aggregation - prediction markets tend to price things more efficiently than traditional bookmakers, at least when volume is high enough.
Knowing the window and knowing the exact timestamp are very different operationally. One lets you prepare, the other's what you'd need to actually trade on it.
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.
Right, the embassy notices were public knowledge. If someone was trading on that specifically, it's hard to call it insider trading — that info was on the front page. Knowing it might happen soon isn't the same as having privileged access to exact operational timelines though.
According to the Economist recently [1], Israel recently caught a couple of men who bet on the timing of the Iran attacks last year :
"Last summer one “ricosuave666” won more than $150,000 on Polymarket, a betting platform. Their true identity was not clear, but the source of the winnings was: ricosuave666 had bet, with suspicious accuracy, on the precise timing of Israel’s attacks on Iran."
So, these people can be found. Overall however, the magazine does not think that these markets should have a blanket ban.
This is the third major case in about three months.
Before the Iran bets there was a suspected Google insider who made $1.15M on Polymarket (22 of 23 correct bets in 24 hours) and Israeli soldiers criminally charged for monetizing classified intelligence on event contracts.
“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.”
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”
"Fees refunded" is minor if you actually lost on the position itself. And "last-traded price" is doing a lot of work here — if insider activity moved prices before settlement, then cashing out at that price still transfers money from uninformed bettors to whoever was on the right side. Which price exactly?
The "prediction markets reward better information" defense assumes the edge comes from superior analysis. But if someone is trading on classified government intel, that asymmetry is permanently closed to every other participant - no amount of research closes it. That's a real distinction, even if the legal framework hasn't caught up yet.
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.