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Very close already. Death threats went to this journalist; seems someone bet on missile hits. https://factkeepers.com/polymarket-gamblers-vow-to-kill-jour...

It also incentivizes leaks from insiders, sometimes endangering others. A soldier was charged for betting on a military operation. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-soldier-charged-using-clas...

And of course throwing pro sports, but that's been happening for ages. Sports has always been crooked: eg the Eupolus Scandal from 388 BCE.

Yeah. You aren't allowed to set up a life insurance policy on someone else's life, or a fire insurance policy on someone else's home. For obvious reasons. But buying an event contract that pays if someone dies or someone's house burns down is fine?

> as they incentivize people with power to manipulate the real world

I would argue that the ratio between "power" and "money to be won" is too big (at least right now) for this to materially matter. No fortune 500 CEO is going to postpone a product launch so they can win $5,000 on polymarket. But some random guy will get his hair dryer to win a socially meaningless weather bet.

It's not discussed often, but the liquidity of these markets is often awful, and you can only win as much as people are willing to take the other side. Which is harder when people know it's easy for insiders (or the outcome decider themselves) to play the other side.

Basically the more socially consequential the outcome you control, the less likely you care about a betting market, and the less the betting market cares about you.

The real winners are people with little or no power to effect outcome, but with insider knowledge. And athletes.

> I would not be surprised if people are murdered at some point to reap the payout of some related bet.

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

The genie is out of the bottle. Crypto-only underground prediction markets will always exist. I think it is better to heavily regulate legal options instead of pushing them underground. That didnt work for drugs or prostitution, and it wont work for gambling.

> should be illegal globally

Let's not pretend that Spain of all places is caring about horribly destructive psuedo-gambling.

Banning "unregulated gambling" is just pressure to make sure that the Spanish gambling racket stays intact for the bookies already at the top.

I think they are illegal already in most places under the insurable interest doctrine.

Its a small step from betting on ships sinking to making sure they go down.

Maybe we should ban the stock market too.

In 2017 someone tried to bomb the bus of the BVB soccer club, after he bought puts options on the BVB stock.

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

Yup, that idea has been around for a while: https://cryptome.org/ap.htm

Insider trading is already illegal. What needs to be regulated is not markets, it is politicians. Once that is done, markets can peacefully continue the way they are.

Unfortunately there are ways for people to spend money on these sites. That's why the Netherlands has legalised gambling because the bad websites couldn't be stopped.

Someone should place a bet on the lifespan of the polymarket founders.

That happens already at a much larger scale, without prediction markets.

These markets decentralise that information asymmetry.

> they incentivize people with power to manipulate the real world in horribly destructive ways to win a bet.

How does the same line of argument not also suggest that stock markets be prohibited?

They become hyperstition engines.

They'll be illegal anywhere democracy wants to properly function. How can I bet on this ripe assumption? Is there a market somewhere?

Historically similar services have also been used to try to manipulate the real world by using bets for creating opinions. Like if you get to vote between candidate x and y and x leads by 75% to 25% on Polymarket maybe you don't vote for y even if the real numbers may be way closer.

I would go further than this: all forms of online gambling should be banned, globally. It's probably sufficient to remove them from app stores and to remove their access to the international financial system, which is very doable.

The astute observer might say "ah but what about crypto gambling sites like Stake?". This problem isn't as intractable as crypto bros might have you believe. You simply issue arrest warrants for people who allow your citizens to gamble in violation of your local laws and you threaten any bank, brokerage or financial institution that allows them to convert their crypto in fiat currency. This is fairly easily covered by KYC/AML regimes alreaqdy. It won't be perfect. It doesn't have to be. As soon as someone can't be an open billionaire by selling crypto gambling without fear of being extradited to the US if they travel internationally, the shine disappears real quick.

Prop betting on a transparent and equitable Exchange is a perfectly reasonable and egalitarian proposal - it's the Betfair Exchange vs Betfair Sportsbook model expanded outside of the scope of sports.

Allowing prediction markets to overlap with criminal incentives is a platform TOS and moderation problem; not a prediction market or betting exchange problem.

well I see more problematic the people actually doing the Iran attacks and murder of heads of state. Betting on those is distasteful, but doing those things is where the damage lies.

something is deeply wrong with some humans

It’s icky to see someone make a moral argument to have something banned, and even worse if they want the government to be the arbiter of morality.

Did we really kill God to have some bloodsuckers in suits tell us what’s right and what’s wrong?

It's a roulette that you can actually manipulate. that 's why it's worse.

Can you further explain the semantics you are talking about here? Are people not trying to predict things? Thus it being a market for people making predictions?

Could they be called that if they sold fortune cookies?

There is no house? Betting is against other players

There are bets everyday, so no matter when the ban is announced, you can always attach a conspiracy to it.

Seems the blocks aren't in effect yet, I'm on Spanish ISP (Vodafone) here and can still access polymarket.com and kalshi.com. Traditionally, Spanish ISPs tend to do DNS blocks yeah, at least when it comes to long-lasting piracy and other "clearly illegal stuff" like Women's rights.

It not until recently ISPs got asked to do blocks by IP, as Cloudflare wasn't responding to legal takedown requests, hence we currently seem to experience both types of blocking, but the IP-based blocking happens a few hours per week, the other ones are permanent.

You are stunningly more optimistic than I.

You need a license to operate in Spain. The license is fairly available (EU regulations enforce this). So, Polymarket is able to obtain a license if they wish to operate in Spain, if they follow the fair rules to obtain a license. Don't want to obtain a license? Don't want to follow the rules in Spain? No problem, but no business in Spain. Websites blocking works like that, too. Which makes sense: local law > remote law. Else I could host some websites selling LSD to Americans on the clearnet. No US government would accept that, zero chance.

Other countries such as USA work in a similar manner. Work permits such as green card, to name an example.

The people who complain about regulations and law either don't understand why they exist or how they work, or they have an interest in the abolishment of it because they benefit from that.

Then you get that BS about how USA is better off than EU. Well, if you're healthy, educated, and employed, sure. Otherwise? You can just use your eyes. Go drive through a rich and poor neighborhood in both. The poverty in USA is horrendous, and the effects are shown. We got poverty too, but not as severe. No need to go to that area between West and East coast. You can experience this right near the Bay Area. San Jose is supposedly a mess. I'd love to compare my visit to a Fry's in San Jose 2005 with today's.

no they have a securities license. Also while a lot of stuff in stock markets are gambling like, the stock market is a positive sum game where very basic techniques (e.g. index investing) have positive expected values.

The buyers and sellers are not the only ones there, there is also the companies injecting money into it via dividends and stock buy backs, I can be a winner on the stock market without there having to be a loser.

No because they're not gabling. They also don't have an alcohol license too.

Without Spain everyone up from Po Valley would be pretty much bankrupt trying to spend cheap money on Holidays and half of South America woudn't be able to commerce well with the EU and ditto with cheap gas from Argelia and the like. Crap out Spain and Center Europe collapses tomorrow. And not just the Lutheran Europe. South America, USA, and tangentially Russia and China too.

Spain is a hub between Atlantic and Mediterranean countries and South America and a good chunk of the US. Trade against Atlantic countries isn't something alien to us (just ask the Brits in the Industrial Revolution) and the Mediterranean, well, since Iberia, Carthago and Roma...

Spain sucks because the economy can't compete with North Italy? Well, it's miles ahead against South Italy, even the South of Spain hasn't a second world vibe like Italy down from Rome. We are more balanced at least and South with companies like Airbus are thriving.

So why did you write a comment

Off-ramping to fiat would be criminalised and pursued beyond the wildest dreams of La Liga/Cloudflare. A gambling site you can't withdraw your winnings from is of no interest to anyone.

You can block the web user interface and effectively block Polymarket for 99.9% of users. No ban is ever 100% effective.

Prison bars are an unpatched DoS vulnerability that affects all blockchains.

https://xkcd.com/538/

How do you defend these slimey companies? They’re actively running a mob casino and you still have people acting like government is the bad guys here. That doesn’t mean there can’t be better regulation of other markets, but comparing prediction markets to stock markets is a huge stretch.

Equities are underlying collateral. Prediction markets are literally just betting on an outcome, no underlying asset exists.

It's not like equities markets are unregulated, be serious.

Even if it was the same --I think it's not-- you'll need a "SIBE operator license", and cannot do it solo, you have to be an employee of an authorized firm (bank, broker or dealer).

Your comment explains long queues to lottery ticket offices every time I visit Spain:)

That works in a world where everyone has equal knowledge and ability all of the time. Unfortunately, when that is not the case, sometimes humans have been known to take advantage of others. Due to this, every society on earth has created rules against various types of these situations.

I agree with this.

Pretty shocking to see all the replies you got though. Over the last 10-20 years there seems to be a drastic increase of people who think government control is a good idea.

You can see this idea in action right now if you search “usa drug zombies” or similar thing on the internet.

Yeah great idea! Let’s also just legalise recreational fentanyl while we’re at it

Should there be taxes on alcohol and cigarettes? Should there be warnings on them? What about on heroin?

Next time there is a fire at your house I will say "he's an adult who should have been careful playing with dangerous things like fire, we shouldnt waste society's money and resources on saving his house"

yeah, lets make a government to enforce that.

There are entirely practical reasons that "private decisions of adults" can worsen society as a whole. We need laws and we can debate about nudging that line back and forth, the answers aren't easy. But acting like there shouldn't be a line is nonsensical.