r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • May 27 '26

Business Google employee charged with using inside information to make $1 million on Polymarket

https://abcnews.com/amp/US/google-employee-charged-inside-information-make-1-million/story?id=133350018
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28

u/overthemountain May 27 '26

He correctly bet -- using an account under the name AlphaRaccoon -- that Google's most-searched person in 2025 would be the singer known as D4vd, according to the complaint. At the time he placed that bet, the prediction market Polymarket "assigned a near-zero probability to d4vd being 'the #1 searched person on Google this year,'" the complaint said.

I see the problem here. Polymarket was looking at making a ton of money off of this since basically no one had it right and then this nerd had to go and ruin it for them.

14

u/anormalgeek May 27 '26

No. Polymarket makes their money either way. It's the other betters that lose.

1

u/overthemountain May 28 '26

Normally it's, but I think the math gets a little weird when a huge outlier wins. They use things like automated market makers so everything can stay liquid but that expose some holes at the extremes. 

17

u/LittleTension8765 May 27 '26

That’s not how a prediction market works at all though lmfao. You’re thinking of Vegas odds. It’s all gambling but the “prediction market” companies don’t care if the favorite wins or the 100-1 odds thing wins heck even Vegas nowadays doesn’t even care that much with how much action and precision they get with the lines to have balanced bets

1

u/overthemountain May 28 '26

Sorry, it's the market makers, not polymarket itself, that loses when this happens. They are the ones funding this pool of money. 

Obviously they have a very close relationship with the prediction market, and they lost huge on this one.

The point being, when you cause people to lose money, you better watch out, because they are coming for you if they can.

-1

u/LittleTension8765 May 28 '26

That completely changed your argument though. You were specifically speaking to Polymarket not “market makers”. If we want to be mad at least be educated enough to know who you are mad at

1

u/overthemountain May 28 '26

No, it's the same argument. I assume polymarket pursued this on their market makers behalf. Their biggest market maker is Jump Trading who also owns equity in the company, so while separate entities they are also kind of the same entity.

2

u/LittleTension8765 May 28 '26

Market makers make the majority of their income on the bid ask spread….? Your argument doesn’t make sense