[snaily]

Here's an alleged secondary effect of 2 in a quote by Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan[1]:

“When I get hit up by people in the Middle East who are saying, ‘Hey, we’re looking at Polymarket to decide whether we sleep near the bomb shelter; we look at it every day’ and I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s really that popular over there?’” he added. “That’s very powerful. That’s an undeniable value proposition that did not exist before.”

I'm with Matt Levine here[2]:

"There is something particularly dystopian about the idea that:

a) Some countries will bomb other countries.

b) The people doing the bombing will profit from the bombing by insider trading the bombing contracts on prediction markets.

c) This will cause the prediction markets to correctly reflect the probability of bombing, allowing the people getting bombed to avoid being bombed."

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-07/polymarke... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-03-12/lev...

[moconnor]

This is naive. The people deciding about the bombing will profit most by taking a very large and unlikely position against the market’s predictions and then carrying it out immediately.

Anonymous trading on prediction markets leads to unpredictable chaos in the end. And as destruction is easier than creation that’s what we will see more of.

Example: a fake German market for train punctuality was announced to make a point recently. If it had been real, train staff and passengers could trivially have profited by betting against any expected punctual train and blocking a door for a few minutes. Or betting against many trains and throwing a hopefully fake body onto a busy line.

Having nice things in society is fragile and not a given. They mostly exist through mutual consent and mild disincentives to destroy the common good. Allow people to profit by destroying them and enough of them will.

[starbugs]

> blocking a door for a few minutes. Or betting against many trains and throwing a hopefully fake body onto a busy line.

Not necessary. If you just bet against them being punctual always, you'll have a 80% plus success rate.

[vincnetas]

yes, but win ratio is adjusted to that.

[joe_the_user]

Oh,

An adding bonus would be nations tilting prediction odds to get people sleeping in vulnerable places and then bomb those place - ideally the nation also reversing their deceptive bets at the last minute.

[pnt12]

And as a cherry on the cake: making a bet a few hours before so they can profit (even more) from it.

[kqr]

I think the other side of the argument goes that (a) the bombings would happen anyway, and (b) bombing is very expensive so nobody actually profits from the insider trading. (The bombs "only" get marginally cheaper.) Thus the only actual effect is the early warning, which is a good thing in this case.

Like if someone managed to figure out a way to make slightly cheaper bombs but with the tradeoff that the cheaper bombs gave a few hours of eary warning to the people being bombed, I think I would prefer you used those bombs.

(There are many other cases where insiders may change the outcome to align with their bet. That is bad if the outcome is bad.)

[dwaltrip]

> (b) bombing is very expensive so nobody actually profits from the insider trading

The people profiting aren't buying the bombs with their own money.

[croes]

>bombing is very expensive so nobody actually profits

You don’t actually believe bombs are sold without out a proper margin.