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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Anyone who's followed the news since the 2000s would have realized a strike on Iran would have happened around now.

Notice how the bettor hedged and bet on multiple days and hedged each of their bets with a "by" clause. This is a bog standard hedging strategy that anyone who's been to a racetrack would know.

On a separate note, gamified prediction markets should not exist - they create perverse incentives and are basically a gamification of futures contracts (which requires a degree of risk management and hedging experience the median individual simply lacks), but this specific example doesn't seem like insider trading, just a seasoned gambler who knows basic hedging strategy.

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No they were not hedging they were seeking liquidity because they couldnt get a total fill and ROI in the lowest probability market

What I mean is they placed multiples bets saying "US strikes Iran by $DATE" and set a window of various dates with each overlapping over the other in order to help hedge against earlier bets failing.

Betting a strike would be on Friday also tracks - anyone who's been outside the West knows they have Friday/Saturday off in Muslim and Jewish countries. It's the same way we in the West tend to conduct strikes on Saturday.

Edit: Ah I get what you are saying now.

I responded to exactly what you mean. The lowest probability date was the Friday because Friday was almost over, it had the highest ROI. It didn't have liquidity for their full amount capital without adversely altering their potential ROI. They searched for liquidity in other markets that would resolve "yes" to the same event. It wasn't a hedge, it wasn't uncertainty, it was liquidity seeking.

> this specific example doesn't seem like insider trading, just a seasoned gambler who knows basic hedging strategy.

why can't it be both? you think degenerate gamblers have never had a government job?

There are other much more lucrative, obfuscated, and legally defensible methods someone with insider information could take to monetize on insider information.

Using a public betting platform with KYC vetting is not that.

> prediction markets should not exist

If you don't like prediction markets, you don't have to use them.

Why do you think other people shouldn't be allowed to use prediction markets if they want to?

To quote golden age Simpsons - "Gambling is the finest thing a person can do IF he's good at it" [0].

In aggregate, most participants lack the background and experience needed to hedge against risk and bet intelligently.

Gamifying a financial instrument (futures) that is supposed to be used as an risk management device and advertising it to the lowest common denominator without providing the right checks and balances will leave a large portion of bettors worse off.

Heck, I'm decently good at blackjack, poker, and backgammon because it's fun to apply probability theory principles, but I would never dare put my personal money on such an investment when I would do significantly better in aggregate with other more diversified personal investments.

[0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Viz_cr8PCkk

1. It gives people a reason to influence events toward outcomes that they can make money on rather than the best outcome. The geopolitical equivalent of going down in the fourth on purpose.

2. It encourages the leaking of classified information.

Because we don't want people whose profession is maximally exploiting perverse incentive structures to flourish. A society that grants outsized rewards to bad faith citizens is bad for everyone. The more influence those cheaters have over the economy the worse off we all are.

You should not be able to get rich to the tune of a 600% daily return just because you're insider trading. That doesn't incentivize sharing your information with the market. On the contrary that incentivizes delaying communicating your secret information until the last second to maximize the return on your unexpected information.

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