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Prediction markets will let you bet on just about anything, from how many tweets Elon Musk will post this week to the next president of the United States, with predictions sometimes showing shockingly (or suspiciously) spot-on accuracy. Polymarket’s CEO Shayne Copland has even claimed that prediction markets are “the most accurate thing we have as mankind right now.”
However, these platforms blur the lines — in terms of both function and regulation — between gambling and stock trading. As Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal said on The Vergecast, “All of the lines between trading, speculating, [and] gambling are just being completely torn apart.”
There are also ethical concerns surfacing around prediction markets, like whether it’s acceptable to be able to place a bet on virtually everything, along with concerns about insider trading. For instance, a newly-created Polymarket account made over $400,000 in January betting on the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
Portugal orders Polymarket to shut down.
Polymarket — the same platform someone made thousands of dollars betting on Nicolás Maduro’s arrest — has 48 hours to cease operations in Portugal after users wagered more than 103 million euros (~$120 million) on the outcome of the country’s presidential election, according to a report from CoinDesk.
Political betting is illegal in Portugal, and its gambling regulator says Polymarket doesn’t have a license to operate in the country, CoinDesk reports.
Snatching Maduro was all about the spectacle
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images
On December 31st, a brand-new account on Polymarket placed a bet: Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela, would be out of office by the end of January. It was the first in a series of increasing bets. On January 3rd, the US bombed the Venezuelan capital, kidnapped Maduro and his wife, and killed at least 80 people along the way. The account cashed out with almost half a million dollars.
It would be a misread to describe the surprise invasion of Venezuela as imperial expansion driven by the dictates of capitalism; it is, somehow, worse. Normal capitalism requires a working relationship with reality. Normal capitalism thrives on predictability. The Trump administration is behaving like gambling addicts chasing clout in an attention economy. Venezuela is a fucking meme stock.
Someone made a ton of money betting on Maduro’s capture
Screenshot: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge
Shortly before the US military launched an attack on Venezuela and captured President Nicolás Maduro, an account on Polymarket made some very suspiciously timed investments. The prediction market had been running bets on when or if Maduro would be removed from power, with prices for “out by January 31, 2026” as low as $0.07 late Friday evening. But within 24 hours of the military action, a newly created account invested tens of thousands of dollars, racking up several hundred thousand in profits.
The account was created less than a week ago and invested over $30,000 the day before the assault, turning a profit of over $408,000. The activity was flagged on social media, with people speculating that the person placing the bet was acting on inside information and perhaps even worked at the Pentagon. Joe Pompliano, an investor and podcaster, quickly pointed out on X that “Insider trading is not only allowed on prediction markets; it’s encouraged.”
Kalshi and Polymarket keep partnering with fake newsbreaker accounts on X.
Meanwhile, The Athletic is the latest (following Awful Announcing and Front Office Sports) reporting on sports misinformation X accounts like “Emma Vance” and “Scott Hughes” have spread while sporting those site’s affiliate badges.
Everything is gambling now
Here’s a list of things you can bet on, right this second. This year’s Super Bowl winner, sure. The winner of Survivor season 49, okay. But the number of gifts Santa will deliver this year? The number of tweets Elon Musk will send in the next 7 days? How much money Avatar: Fire and Ash will make at the box office? The next president of of Portugal? On Polymarket and Kalshi, if you can dream it up, you can probably bet on it. Welcome to the age of the prediction market.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we try to figure out where prediction markets came from, and why they’ve become so popular. Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal joins the show to track the rise of Polymarket and Kalshi, explain their controversies and ultimate acceptance, and put these companies in their correct place in the economy. Most of all, he helps us figure out if there’s actually something new happening here, or if the betting has been happening forever.
Election night at Kalshi HQ
Photo: Kalshi
This is an excerpt of Sources by Alex Heath, a newsletter about AI and the tech industry, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.
At 8PM on election night in New York City, I arrived at an unmarked office building in the Meatpacking District.
Here’s the $2,000 fully AI-generated ad that aired during the NBA Finals
If you’ve been on social media lately, you might’ve seen the unsettling AI slop videos showing AI-generated people in wild scenarios or just speaking a bunch of nonsense. On Wednesday night, the betting platform Kalshi decided to take this trend outside the social sphere by putting a nonsensical AI-generated ad in front of the millions of viewers watching the NBA Finals — and it apparently cost just $2,000 to make.
The AI-generated highlights various things “people” are betting on, like whether the Oklahoma City Thunder or Indiana Pacers will win the NBA Finals, how many hurricanes will occur this year, and whether the price of eggs will go up this month. It flashes between scenes of an elderly man wearing a cowboy hat while carrying a chihuahua, someone swimming in a pool of eggs, and an alien chugging beer.
Are prediction markets gambling? Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is betting not
Image by The Verge / Photo: Robinhood
Today, I’m talking with Vlad Tenev, the cofounder and CEO of Robinhood, which is one of the most well-known consumer finance apps in the world. It started as a way to open up stock trading, but the company’s ambitions have grown over time — and they’re getting even bigger.
Just a day before Tenev and I talked, Robinhood announced it would soon be offering bank accounts and wealth management services, which would allow Robinhood to be involved with your money at every possible level.
Polymarket quietly raised more money before the FBI raided the CEO’s apartment.
Coplan recently raised, but has yet to announce, a $30 million round of funding at a $350 million valuation. And in recent conversations with investors (a surprising number of whom passed on the round, which was less than Coplan hoped to raise), I’m told he was noncommittal about whether the company would work to get the Commodity Futures Trading Commission license it needs to operate in the US.
The FBI reportedly seized the phone of Polymarket’s CEO.
It wasn’t immediately clear what prompted the FBI’s search of [Shayne] Coplan, the 26-year-old entrepreneur behind one of the most successful prediction markets in history. But Polymarket quickly tied the raid to its track record in the recent presidential election, in which bettors on its platform correctly anticipated that Donald Trump would beat Vice President Kamala Harris.
Bloomberg also reports that Polymarket is being investigated by the DOJ for allegedly letting users in the US place bets on the site.
Why Robinhood’s CEO thinks prediction markets are here to stay
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
This week’s presidential election introduced a lot of people to prediction markets.
Kalshi was the number one app in the App Store on Election Day. The CEO of Polymarket claims the Trump campaign first realized they were winning from his startup’s stats, which showed them winning by a landslide hours before news networks called the race. There’s a sense in some tech and finance circles that these betting markets are now a better “wisdom of the crowd” indicator than polls.
Presidential betting platform Kalshi loads up on debt.
The startup has received “tens of millions from investors in short-term loans“ to make sure it can cover election bets:
Like most brokerages, the company offers instant funding to new users. This means users can start trading right away, even though it may take two to three business days for the funds to be officially transferred from the customer’s bank account to Kalshi’s.
Robinhood admits it’s just a gambling app
US citizens can gamble on the upcoming election on Robinhood, the financial nihilism app announced. Robinhood has termed this “unlocking a new asset class that democratizes access to events as they unfold.”
Let’s pause — I would like to reflect on this incredible phrase, about an asset class that democratizes access to events as they unfold. See, I thought we all had access to the events of the election because we all exist in reality and can find out about them. But apparently, if we can’t gamble on an event, it isn’t happening. This is a fascinating vision of metaphysics, and I would like to hear more about it. No one bet on my birth, for instance, and thus there is no asset class relating to my existence. So am I real?
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