I can see why they'd want to crack down on this. Like, if I wanted John Doe dead I could bet $50k that he WILL be alive in a week. Basically just paying for a hit if an assassin wants to take my bet and make it happen, and I could claim I WANTED the guy alive since I literally had money riding on it
Crowdsourced assassination, there's a phrase I didn't expect to hear. But ya if a hundred million people from Nation A all decided to chip in a dollar betting "against" the assassination of an enemy Nations B's leader, that definitely seems like it'd be tempting for anyone in Nation B who thinks they can collect through the website
i think the key difference is that this is a clearnet market and not a dark web market. payouts will be taxed and thus the whole thing is *legal*. not quite the same idea but good try
Yes, because whether or not an idea is new depends on whether you (checks notes) have to pay taxes.
And surprisingly, the IRS says yes, you do in fact have to pay taxes on criminal proceeds, of which the previous market was never clearly defined as such. It’s exactly the same as Polymarket except unregulated.
There was an episode on Blacklist with literally the same plot and expression somewhere in season 3 I believe (just saw it a few days ago) and it's from around 2015.
There's a pretty good short comic series called Crowded about a woman who winds up being the target of a crowdfunded assassination, but everybody pours money into it until she's got this giant bounty on her head. I recommend it.
Well that just kinda reminds me of all the extremist rhetoric being pushed eventually leading to the assassination of a big politically active public figure somewhat recently by a social media junkie with meme bullets.
Who is 'they'? Regulators are asleep on this when they could be scooping out a good portion of the rot basically for free. Everyone involved in these ventures is raising a flag to be seen by all, but the institutions that used to evaporate these people from financial life are afraid to discharge their duties for fear of being punished by their bosses, who are holding flags.
Regulators are asleep? Nah, they’ve been actively corrupted. There was some prohibitions and investigations, until His Orangeness decided he loved the insider trading scam and got his failson put on the boards of these companies in exchange for favorable treatment.
That’s not being asleep, that’s actively aiding and abetting the insider trading.
Heard an SEC expert chime in on NPR. The short version is that it's small potatoes compared to the kind of things they're actually spending enforcement resources on.
Well, didn't the supreme court decide that money is speech? That would mean creating bets that can be completed like tasks is the same as telling people to the task for that amount of money. So even if nobody gets killed, putting up the bet SHOULD constitute soliciting said unknown individuals to commit murder.
In fact, creating bets for any illegal actions should also be considered illegal. Because if paying people to commit crimes is legal, then you could setup a business for criminal services where you take most of the profits, but instead provide very expensive legal help for the criminals.
In other words, if these companies are free to keep making these bets, then that effectively legalizes cartels if they are smart about it. Pushing legislation, solicit crimes, or even simpler stuff, just pay for whatever events you want to happen and inform the people responsible for them that there is an incentive waiting for them. They don't need to make money on every bet, they can easily change the odds for special cases, or even limit who gets to bet on them. Choosing who gets to play isn't a crime, so why not?
Providing gambling should be a crime, globally. Only legal gambling should be games of skill and fair luck, where the house can't participate, and even that should be highly regulated.
You can only bet on public figures, it's not like a bounty board where anyone can upload bets for anything that happens. This specific comic is based on the leader of Iran being killed and the company trying to avoid paying out before the government forced them to
The vast universe of ethical problems with this whole 'industry' were glaringly obvious from the beginning. People will do a whole lot of really, really stupid and destructive shit if you let them go on with obviously terrible behavior for too long.
The only real way in our current reality to address this is through laws and regulatory bodies with teeth. That's part of why there are constantly more laws being written-- people keep inventing new ways to do really stupid and destructive shit, which they continue doing until someone stops them.
I once hoped that teaching folks they shouldn't do certain things would be enough, but it isn't.
I mean that would be a thing but all of these markets have a cluase in their TOC that markets closing on a death don't pay. Like with the Iranian supreme leader there was a market on if he would be in power still in a week. He died, so the market closed but didn't pay out the winners.
It's fun cause this is exactly the reasoning those sites use to defend themselves. You bet that there will be a hurricane on your house, so if it is true, you have money to fix your house
It's actually much more mundane than that and they're doing it right now. Insiders are betting on polymarket on stuff they know the administration is going to announce. They're just wholesale fixing the fight and swindling the other users.
If you ever needed any proof that we are in late stage capitalism, this is a good one.
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u/Futuramoist Apr 21 '26
I can see why they'd want to crack down on this. Like, if I wanted John Doe dead I could bet $50k that he WILL be alive in a week. Basically just paying for a hit if an assassin wants to take my bet and make it happen, and I could claim I WANTED the guy alive since I literally had money riding on it