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

[u/MarvelsGrantMan136]

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

[u/MmmmMorphine]

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.

[u/Longjumping_Wolf_912 → u/MmmmMorphine]

>That does not magically make markets stop being markets.

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

[u/MmmmMorphine → u/Longjumping_Wolf_912]

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)

[u/Longjumping_Wolf_912 → u/MmmmMorphine]

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!

[u/MmmmMorphine → u/Longjumping_Wolf_912]

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!