’Abhorrent’: the inside story of the Polymarket gamblers betting millions on war

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/apr/11/polymarket-gamblers-betting-iran-war-ukraine-news-truth

73•sandebert•1h ago

Comments

cyanydeez•1h ago

'Capitalism': the inevitable reduction of all humanity to fungible currency

PowerElectronix•53m ago

Betting with one another predates any notion of capitalism, or economy.

delichon•34m ago

I think they all coevolved. Some early human committed both a capitalist and an economic transaction by buying sheep and selling deer, and then bet on the next hunt.

ModernMech•19m ago

True, but capitalism eventually makes gambling the whole economy.

PowerElectronix•7m ago

I don't think it does. Capitalism only allows one to save one's fruit of their labor to use down the line. You exchange it for money, then use that money to buy other stuff.

People using it to gamble has more to do with gambling people than with capitalism people. You can have gambling in communism or socialism, only stakes there are limited because the fruit of the labor of people doesn't belong to them like in capitalism.

azan_•3m ago

How?

kingleopold•42m ago

alternative is gulag(s) and literally famine(s)!

but hey keep understanding things wrong, surely it helps?

humanity advanced way more under capitalism than anything else in history. This does not mean capitalism is perfect, it's just fits to human greed and human behaviour more. Others systems are worse

kodegod69•33m ago

Sure keep saying that to yourself. All of you sound so damn sure when speaking about socialism. Like the first nation to pierce the firmament of human fabric wasn't a socialist one. And that the union wasn't making great strides in technology.

logicchains•24m ago

Such great strides in technology, their standard of living was so high that their president was literally shocked just by the abundance of food in a normal western grocery story.

deadbabe•24m ago

Whether you like it or not, socialism is the key.

948382828528•1m ago

Agree, comrade. 140 million dead are a small price to pay for our socialist utopia.

We just need one more chance.

croes•30m ago

Capitalism neither prevents gulags nor famines.

And you can bet (pun intended) someone will create them on purpose if they can make profit from it

logicchains•27m ago

Please do share what capitalist country had a famine in the past century.

forinti•19m ago

Lots of African countries have market economies and also poverty and hunger.

throwthrowuknow•9m ago

Poverty and hunger are not famine

ModernMech•13m ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

iso1631•10m ago

Niger springs to mind, massively capitalist with a lot of oil and mining

ceejayoz•7m ago

Give it a bit!

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/26/g-s1-115240/iran-war-strait-h...

(I'm being snarky here, but COVID definitely exposed some supply chain vulnerabilities.)

forinti•20m ago

Doesn't the US already have an above average incarceration rate and private prisons? Maybe, just maybe, there's some relation?

abound•1m ago

"Above average" is underselling it: the US has by far the the highest incarceration rates of the rich world [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

throwthrowuknow•18m ago

Except it does? Capitalist countries don’t seem to have any famines. You could argue that for profit prisons are similar to gulags in some ways but the important differences are so vast it’s hard to compare them honestly.

ModernMech•8m ago

Capitalist countries don't have famines at home. That's different from "capitalism prevents famines". Capitalism is happy to cause hunger, inflict death, or imprison people if it's profitable for capitalists, that's baked into the structure of the structure of the system. There's no systemic feature of capitalism that directs capital generating activity unless it violates natural and human rights.

azan_•2m ago

It actually did prevent lots of famines.

airstrike•23m ago

Capitalism is just a projection of our natural competition for scarce resources onto an economic system.

meroes•47s ago

Then the US isn’t capitalist, more of a corporate welfare state.

gib444•14m ago

The price of everything and the value of nothing.

srameshc•58m ago

> There is now more than $500,000 (£371,000) staked on whether Russia will capture Kostyantynivka this year .

Now everyone has a chance to profit from war ! Thank you Polymarket

paulnpace•15m ago

War profiteering for the people!

Chrisszz•56m ago

This is becoming the kind of "VC platform for online war investments". You: 1. Plan 2. Bet 3. Invest money upfront 4. Execute 5. Redeem your profits

PowerElectronix•52m ago

Now, can you find enough liquidity in the market to turn a profit? Can you find it before it becomes aparent something is off in the bet?

azan_•36m ago

Could you explain what do you mean? What's the plan and execution here? Planning and executing invasion? If so, there are much better markets than polymarket for making such bets.

Throaway199999•25m ago

honestly the profits aren't big enough when you can just go into business if you have that kind of influence

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