Notice how the bettor hedged and bet on multiple days and hedged each of their bets with a "by" clause. This is a bog standard hedging strategy that anyone who's been to a racetrack would know.

On a separate note, gamified prediction markets should not exist - they create perverse incentives and are basically a gamification of futures contracts (which requires a degree of risk management and hedging experience the median individual simply lacks), but this specific example doesn't seem like insider trading, just a seasoned gambler who knows basic hedging strategy.

I think it's pretty obvious when betting on events that are inherently just decisions by one or a few people (e.g. when will Trump launch an attack on Iran, when will a company launch a new product, will some company acquire another one, etc.) that they will attract insider trading and corruption by their very nature - all that's necessary is to have information about the decision maker. This is fundamentally different than events that are subject to forces that no single individual controls - e.g. who will win an election, where will a crypto price be in a year, movie box office results, etc.

I think betting on "single decision maker" events is just a "sucker is born every minute"-type bet.

Looks like “we” need to update our relationships with markets

Price discovery is a visualization of the collective conscious, and the evolution of markets gets closer and closer to direct exposure to an event. Share and derisk a transaction, cleanly, quickly

Reduce all frictions towards doing so

Frictions include finding the person making the transaction, negotiating with them, trusting them to perform, disputing resolution, insurance. These hamper anything from occurring, or occurring quickly, and the pricing is too variable. Prediction markets are an example of all of those frictions being reduced to almost non-existent. And dispute resolution will improve further and attract more liquidity.

Some insider selling changes the prediction downwards

The WANT the information

I dont think I was special or unusual.

The point is for business with vested interests (and therefore often inside information) to use these markets to hedge for things that will materially affect their profitability.

For example, in this case, suppose you ran a company that was shipping goods through the Middle East, and a war would disrupt your business. You would then place bets on there being a war, so that if it does happen you will recover some of your losses. You might know inside information because your work in the region, but that is expected.

Importantly, people who either thought they had better information (and were sadly wrong) or people who were simply gambling. It’s not like prediction markets are taking money from orphanages.

[0] https://polymarket.com/@magamyman

But in this case I guess there wasn't enough pushback. And the thing that made it if not obvious certainly rather likely was the aircraft carrier movement which isn't exactly subtle, though very often just used for intimidation.

The thing which is at least a little surprising is the talk about aircraft carriers being very vulnerable to attack with drones / cheap missiles / etc. didn't materialize and if it were going to, Iran would be the one to realize it unless a full on world war were to erupt.

The large protests passed their peaks a while ago. The American military has been deploying to the area for a while. This attack could've happened any day in the past weeks, or it could've taken another couple of weeks of shit flinging, slow escalation, and meaningless threats from Iran's government.

> "we design the rules to prevent people from profiting from death"

Read the fine print!