That'd go a long way towards curbing the corruption of these things, while preserving (or even greatly enhancing) their "predictive power."
Another worrying issue with betting is just how prevalent the last election was in betting markets. In elections won by thousands or even just hundreds of votes, betting markets can skew results where betters vote for someone just purely for the bet and persuade, shill for the person they bet on.
I can imagine betters placing a bet on a candidate and then launching a defamation campaign against the other.
> Prediction market trader 'Magamyman' made $553,000 on death of Iran's supreme leader
They’ve been betting for 2 years but only recently starting profiting a lot.
On a personal note, I find these markets incredibly useful in day to day life. There's been a joke for a while that putting site:reddit.com in your google search is the only way to get (some) real information. It's becoming true that putting <search terms> AND (kalshi OR polymarket) is how to get accurate info.
Prediction markets have also directly affected my travel planning, helping me avoid a country that wasn't at war at the time but had (in my judgement) a too-high risk of war.
You're completely right about thinly traded markets; those are way, way less accurate. But they also offer the greatest opportunity for someone to bet the other way, which has the effect of 'correcting' the market.
It will become common knowledge that these platforms are exploited by insiders so people "trust" apparent flagged insider bets, so people will try to piggyback insiders, then it will be revealed that a sophisticated party with infinitely deep pockets burns massive amounts of cash to manipulate odds and these piggybackers will be burned badly, so in the end classical gambling and sports betting will resume as preferred ways for gamblers to lose money because of their disgust with the manipulation.
How quickly we accept the death of even the ideal of rule of law in favor of embracing a return to an explicit rule by might, fuck-you-got-mine mentality.
> In 1909, well before the Securities Exchange Act was passed, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a corporate director who bought that company's stock when he knew the stock's price was about to increase committed fraud by buying but not disclosing his inside information.
Based on anti-fraud common law alone the court decided it was illegal for an insider to trade stocks with non-public information. An explicit law would be nice, but a reasonable interpretation of basic law would see most of our ruling class behind bars. This is only highly-contested and technical because we've let our standards slip so far.
War Prediction Markets Are a National-Security Threat https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/03/polymarket-in...
This is a good effort. So is the ban on stock trading. This administration is such that it is bringing corruption to the fore in a way not seen in generations. Things are always hard to pass at the start. Keep pushing and this administration will create a massive opportunity to swing the pendulum if we can (as hard as it is now) retain some optimism.
Thanks for pointing that out.
For the record, I meant the latter. Let the downvotes commence!
I'd be in favor of senators doing prediction markets, just limited to small dollar trades so they can get better at predicting.
The public already does not believe this. Less than 25% approve of your work.
> This legislation strengthens the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s ability to go after bad actors
And this is designed to "increase trust?"