Prediction markets are breaking the news and becoming their own beat

https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/04/prediction-markets-are-breaking-the-news-and-becoming-their-own-beat/

28•gnabgib•5h ago

Comments

ares623•1h ago

I dunno, I feel it's just democratizing insider trading. And as everyone knows, if it has "democratizing" in it, that means it's automatically good.

sixhobbits•1h ago

I (my agents) have been playing with the kalshi and poly market APIsv and whatever your opinion on the markets themselves it does feel like there's a bunch of interesting things to do with such a firehose of realtime data.

I hope they stay as open and generous as they are now with programmatic access

topspin•29m ago

"I hope they stay as open and generous as they are now with programmatic access"

Make a prediction for it: When will Gamma/Data/CLOB require subscription: 2026, 2027, etc.

throwaway0665•1h ago

These apps claim to let you turn your knowledge into money. What this means is the insiders get to cash out and the desperate suckers provide the liquidity. I'm amazed they've all gotten away with this for so long.

arowthway•51m ago

I don't understand, what's so fundamentally wrong with this form of insider trading? Is the accusation that it makes degenerate gambling unfair? Is it necessary for degenerate gambling to be fair? The gamblers don't seem to care.

wodenokoto•37m ago

> The gamblers don't seem to care.

Which makes me wonder if it is actually just money laundering.

amwet•14m ago

The obvious counter example is lotteries. People just like to gamble.

jessegeens•3m ago

Well, you can also use normal lotteries for money laundering: https://www.ftm.eu/articles/reynders-charged-in-money-launde...

sznio•20m ago

beyond the general idea that we shouldn't normalize gambling, betting on some real-life events is horrid. think about insider trading on a polymarket bet for someone's death.

CTDOCodebases•17m ago

Or even worse what happens when people start gambling that someone won’t die today? It opens the door to crowdsourced hits with plausible deniability.

yen223•19m ago

Matt Levine pointed out in a past article that the real danger of insider trading are company insiders being incentivised to damage the company to make a quick buck.

Terr_•14m ago

There's also the external side, where the insider sabotage wasn't self-organized greed, but arose because a "market" is laundering and facilitating crowd-sourced bribery by enemies or competitors.

Every time I see a prediction-market executive dismissing these kinds of issues, I imagine how their tune would change if the shoe was on the other foot. For example, if someone created a "prediction market" where people could anonymously bet on unusual deaths or serious injuries of... prediction-market executives.

bluecalm•4m ago

How is it different than shorting or buying put options and then damaging the company? The tools are already there.

yorwba•2m ago

Yes, that's why insider trading is illegal.

DonHopkins•11m ago

I didn't bet on the beat this broke on.

https://youtu.be/ZN4njIQcSR4?t=1815

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Prediction markets are breaking the news and becoming their own beat

Comments

John Ternus to become Apple CEO

Anthropic says OpenClaw-style Claude CLI usage is allowed again

A Roblox cheat and one AI tool brought down Vercel's platform

Louis Zocchi, inventor of the d100, has died

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Using Changesets in a polyglot monorepo

Tim Davis – Probabilistic engineering and the 24-7 employee

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