Yeeee-haaaaa

Gambling is hot. It's so hot that some people now even think it's good. Dress it up in "prediction" and tell everyone you're "hedging" uncertain futures, "insuring" against disaster. You wanna play funky games and bet money on sports? Fine by me... but why make such a sanctimonious deal out of it?! And also, it quite obviously isn't a good deal for society being mostly negative-sum games (#1482802).

Anyway, Adam Iscoe has a feature in New York Magazine about some guys making out like literal bandits on the digital equivalent of one-arm bandits. Pretty incredible, long-ass read. Buckle in; this one is messy and wonderful -- I felt like I was reading a Michael Lewis book.

Gambling, predictions, insurance... It's all just suckers getting ripped offGambling, predictions, insurance... It's all just suckers getting ripped off

The joke among young men these days is that everybody’s got a little money riding on something: football games, foreign elections, the odds of a U.S. military strike. Except it’s not really a joke.

I know, I've got 4,000 Predyx sats profitably invested on the Champions League final Saturday, and another 892-sats stupid steamroller bet on the bitcoin price for May. Gotta eke out those juicy returns! (I don't have @grayruby or Undisc skills, nor @Coinsreporter balls.)

Polymarket and its main rival, Kalshi, are the two largest prediction markets in the world. My wagers were a drop in the bucket; together, the two platforms processed $25 billion in trading volume in April — up tenfold from a year ago. (That’s roughly one-fiftieth of 1 percent of the volume traded on the Nasdaq.) Both platforms insist that they’re not gambling websites — and that their users trade on “event contracts” rather than place bets — but, in any case, they’re becoming mainstream.

a recent poll found that only 4 percent of Americans, and 7 percent of young men, thought prediction markets were good for society. When I ask strangers what they associate with prediction markets, most people shake their heads and say something about sports betting or insider trading. It’s hard to blame them

oh and now we're talking:

In February, three economists published a working paper that found Kalshi traders tended to be as accurate as professional economic forecasters at predicting key economic indicators such as unemployment, inflation and even the Fed rate. Even more striking, the economists wrote, was that Kalshi markets offered not only accurate information but continuously accurate information, often in markets where no comparable financial instrument had previously existed.

Unlike a sports-betting app or a casino, there’s no house, just other bettors on the other side of each trade: Every dollar you lose is a dollar won by someone else.

(Not quite right, there are trading and transaction fees; that's a house cut, just like any other casino.)

Traditional financial markets — stocks, bonds — have thousands of sophisticated players battling over trillions of dollars. This means that market prices usually reflect reality, and it’s incredibly difficult for even the most seasoned Wall Street traders to find an edge. Prediction markets, on the other hand, are so immature and so illiquid — there’s just not enough money moving around in them — that the price may not reflect reality. That means there are opportunities everywhere for money-hungry traders. Insider trading is one of them.

aaand tl;dr extract on the entire philosophical convo about taking others' money:

Brandon Fean, the trader who lives with his parents, told me that he doesn’t like to think about people losing when he wins. “It doesn’t feel good, so I’ve created a whole narrative in my head that it’s a video game and the money is ‘points,’ and that’s what I do to make myself feel better,” he said. “It kills me that I’m basically taking people’s money, but at the end of the day I have to remember that everyone is doing this at their own volition.”

A whole other can of worms, insider information leaking into the public via subterfuge. Alas.

"not everyone needs insider tips to get rich on prediction markets. An army of 'sharps' — a loosely coordinated group of traders who are each making six- and seven-figure annual returns — has found something far more valuable and far more interesting: a gap in the financial world order.""not everyone needs insider tips to get rich on prediction markets. An army of 'sharps' — a loosely coordinated group of traders who are each making six- and seven-figure annual returns — has found something far more valuable and far more interesting: a gap in the financial world order."

Ah, flashback. #735212. Also: hashtag, an honest journalist.

CRYPTO KIDNAPPED?!CRYPTO KIDNAPPED?!

I mean, I guess that's what any wealth/money-oriented kidnapping is now called?

Also, dope:

@PrinceHal, a struggling screenwriter turned full-time Kalshi trader, has been trading for about a decade. He showed me how he builds inflation-forecasting models that consistently outperform major financial institutions to the tune of $3.7 million in lifetime profits. “Me and the banks are doing the same thing,” PrinceHal said.

Amazing, this I love. Maybe there's a meaningful future for this play thing after all.

...But, the suits are coming:

Wall Street is increasingly paying attention to prediction markets. Big-bank analysts are starting to write reports; the trading firm DRW recently began hiring prediction market traders. Jeff Yass, a former poker player who co-founded Susquehanna International Group, one of Wall Street’s largest and most respected trading firms, told me that Susquehanna is bullish on them.

The sharps interviewed for this feature have had job offers from the big guys, but "Why work for Wall Street when you can beat Gordon Gekko at his own game?"

TL;DR I freakin love long-form journalism. Like the squatter-katana feature in Reason (#1496074), it's just wonderful to follow along in a real person doing real things and having worked HARD on the thousands of words presenting it, making it a splendid, proud achievement. Fuck attention span decline (...and fuck the boomers); BRING BACK LONG-FORM journo!

In a separate reflection, this is what Bitcoinland used to be: competent nerds and wackies, profiting off others' ignorance or stupidity [insert Big Short quotes].
Instead, now we're all suitcoiners, peddling permissioned stocks and asking for government blessings. It's pretty pathetic.

clicking around the usual paywall busters I got this funky thing to work. https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/magazine/polymarket-prediction-wall-street.html

...and after all that looking, turns out the author had a NYT gift link pinned to his Twitter. -.- Here you go, Stackers: https://t.co/Fa1MQYT6rp