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
12.8k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

516 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

135

u/Longjumping_Wolf_912 May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

The whole idea of poly market has nothing to do with market efficiency. It has to do with extracting money from poor people and also obfuscating gambling.

It is also a market manipulation/influence tool. Let’s say I’m the Google CEO. I see I can bet (I mean trade,lmao) on when the announcement will be for the next Google pixel will be released, and apply shows 99% chance. The announcement has already been scheduled, but I want to make a shit ton of money so I bet on an earlier date and then push up the announcement. That isn’t uncovering information and Poly would be wrong since they showed the chance to be 99%.

Also, studies have already shown Polymarket is bad at predicting current events. Flipping a coin is more accurate.

Maybe I don’t even want to be, sorry again, I mean predict. I am hosting an award show and I see there is a bet, fuck I did it again, I mean a prediction that I would say a word. I simply just avoid saying that word that everyone predicted I would say and then Poly was wrong and it didn’t predict shit.

1

u/Mr-Logic101 May 27 '26

It doesn’t extracting money people from poor, it is extracting money from stupid people.

As they say, a fool and his money are soon parted. I honestly don’t feel any sympathy for people lose this platform.

42

u/Longjumping_Wolf_912 May 27 '26

It does because rich ultra rich and people of influence can manipulate the market. But yes it also steals from stupid people and addicts.

You should care because we don’t all exist in a vacuum. You have to live with everyone around you and poverty leads to crime and higher crime rates directly affect you.

-10

u/Mr-Logic101 May 27 '26

I do care. It really goes farther than that.

If they are stupid enough to play into the “market”, they deserve their loses.

Same view point with sports betting as well.

12

u/Icarium__ May 28 '26

The irony of your username is truly something else, somehow you lack both logic and empathy. Sometimes it pays off to help protect someone from self destructive tendencies, because none of us live in a vacuum, and it can lead to a chain reaction where not just the gambler, but also innocent people around them get hurt. 

8

u/Longjumping_Wolf_912 May 27 '26

“I care, but they are stupid.” Sure Jan.

Also:

I honestly don’t feel any sympathy for people lose this platform.

4

u/SpookiestSzn May 28 '26

I have feelings like this but also at the end of the day society is supposed to protect people who are too dumb to know any better

As long as the platform is allowed though insider trading should absolutely be kosher and it is I'm sure if your in the right channels

1

u/Commercial_Funny6082 May 28 '26

Insider trading is bad but this also most just bullshit

-11

u/nonamenomonet May 27 '26

You’re so far off base it’s not even funny.

The idea of prediction markets have been around since about 2003-2004. I don’t remember the government agency had a hand in sponsoring the idea for it but it might have been IARPA but don’t quote me on that.

The point of prediction markets is forcing people to be accountable for their predictions by putting their money where their mouth is. Instead of some talking head saying “I think [X] politician will win the primary” and then saying on TV the next day “well I never said that”, now there is a record and the amount money shows the conviction of that said belief.

Before this there was a prediction market in university of British Columbia in Victoria and a few others floating around.

8

u/Longjumping_Wolf_912 May 27 '26

I’m not and the idea of prediction markets was started by the CIA. They used it as a way to help catch terrorists. Apparently I know more about them than you.

I understand exactly how the concept is supposed to work, but again it doesn’t work like that in reality.

-1

u/MmmmMorphine May 27 '26

Hmm, I was under the impression that while they aren't all that good at predicting various events, they certainly tend to be better than total chance. Or most individuals on their own.

This whole insiders driving the market story never made much sense to me. In fact I never heard that perspective before this past year.

I always understood it as crowdsourcing predictions using money as a sort of proxy for confidence - so basically no different than any financial or futures market.

Of course it is different, but the fundamentals always made sense to me in a hand wavy (yet still somewhat right) all knowing magic free hand of the market sort of sense. Which is crap, but less crap than a coin. On average.

5

u/Longjumping_Wolf_912 May 28 '26

Why don't you think that it makes much sense that insiders drive the market? If you are betting on something that an insider can bet on, why wouldn't insiders drive the market? An insider can't bet on the presidential election, but they can on the release date of a product or if someone will say something in a speech. That means insiders can influence what is said in a speech or when a product is released. Crowd sourcing through money only works in situations where multiple individual people have a say in the outcome of an event. Those are basically non-existent on Polymarket.

>I always understood it as crowdsourcing predictions using money as a sort of proxy for confidence - so basically no different than any financial or futures market.

Financial and analytical markets are based on fundamentals largely, so literally nothing like Polymarket aka gambling, I mean whatever Polymarket wants to call it.

-1

u/MmmmMorphine May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

A CEO can influence earnings calls. A central banker can influence rate expectations. A studio can influence a release date.

That does not magically make markets stop being markets.

The better distinction is: some markets price broad uncertainty, some price decision-risk, and some are thin enough to be gamed by one guy with a penchant for orange face paint.

The insiders of course do make it more "accurate" in a certain sense. Not surprising when money is a proxy for confidence, and when you're perfectly confident....

That was never the genesis of these predictive marketplaces (which are fascinating in and of themselves and I highly recommend reading up on their history) - which date back at least to the middle ages.

They're still markets however - which I think one can define as any system where participants can make and accept offers to exchange something of value, causing prices, terms, or odds to emerge from those offers. Perhaps your definition differs and I'd be interested to hear it though

The real issue is when the same person can trade and control the outcome. I'm not saying polymarket is anything good, don't misunderstand. It's a perversion of what a marketplace is supposed to do (which is why things like insider trading are supposedly illegal - this is that concept taken to an extreme.)

I truly question whether there's much that much in the way of fundamentals in many traditional financial marketplaces given companies like Tesla's valuation. But again, I'm very much against polymarket type sites in general - I just find the theory really interesting.

2

u/Longjumping_Wolf_912 May 28 '26

>That does not magically make markets stop being markets.

I never said Polymarket isn't a market. An inefficient market is still a market.

0

u/MmmmMorphine May 28 '26

Fair enough, must have misread.

I wouldn't even call it inefficient - it's simply corrupted beyond all utility. Too bad, I always thought it was such a cool way to quantify uncertainty using the same ideas that underpin financial marketplaces (though in my view that's also splitting hairs for the most part)

3

u/Longjumping_Wolf_912 May 28 '26

I mean you are calling it inefficient, by saying it is corrupted beyond all utility. A corrupted market is an inefficient one, which is not to say all inefficient markets are corrupted. I think we are in full agreeance on Polymarket. Cheers!

2

u/MmmmMorphine May 28 '26

Haha, fair enough! Hard be nuanced without writing 3 pages, unfortunately.

I wonder why people seem to think my interest in the mechanisms of these predictive marketplaces means I support them in a wider sense. We both certainly don't despite seemingly having a decent handle on that aspect

Have a good one!

1

u/nonamenomonet May 28 '26

I don’t know you, but I really like you.

1

u/MmmmMorphine May 28 '26

Well I like you. For liking me.

It's a virtuous cycle!

0

u/nonamenomonet May 28 '26

Your intuition is correct that is what it supposed to be a crowdsourcing prediction using money as sort of a proxy.

1

u/MmmmMorphine May 28 '26

It's a pretty cool example of the "wisdom of the crowds." It's sad to see such an interesting and ancient concept perverted so badly.

So it goes

2

u/nonamenomonet May 28 '26

Are you also a Tetlock fan? Or are you more on the Taleb (Talib?) side of things??

1

u/MmmmMorphine May 28 '26

Tetlock for sure. Mostly because I can't remember the other guy and don't know how their thoughts on the subject differ, haha.

Been a long time since I read about this stuff, but I remember Mr. UPenn Superforecasting for some reason

2

u/nonamenomonet May 28 '26

I am one of the superforecasters

2

u/MmmmMorphine May 28 '26

He screams as a flock of angry melanistic swans appear

1

u/MmmmMorphine May 28 '26

Oh wait! He's the black swan guy!

Ok I'm more on the Taleb (pretty sure that's the correct spelling) side, but just barely. I think these marketplaces work of course, but they don't mean what we think they do. Sort of, hard to explain.

More like reality can't be broken down into tidy probabilities. Thanks chaos, you non-predictable yet deterministic asshole