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Comment by abustamam | Hacker News Reader

For whatever it's worth, Kalshi refused to pay out on the bet because Khomenei died, and they refuse to allow people to profit off of death so they returned everyone's bets.

https://xcancel.com/mansourtarek_/status/2029996077554815268

While I think this policy removes one avenue of incentivizing death of real people (many bets involving real people can probably be resolved by some sort of assassination attempt), I honestly think the whole concept of betting on real world events is ludicrous to begin with, including sports. It always incentivizes behavior that doesn't naturally occur (the trope of fixing horse races comes to mind).

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Just this afternoon I was reading an account of one of the earliest known betting ledgers, the "Betting Book" at White's, a private member's club in London. In the 18th century, one of the most common bets taken up by members was which Lord or nobleman would outlive another. One bet had a note under it that the wager was not settled up by the bettors because the subjects both died of suicide within a few months of each other.

Well, certainly, if they had chosen otherwise it is unlikely they could have continued to operate:

> ...the Commission may determine that such agreements, contracts, or transactions are contrary to the public interest if the agreements, contracts, or transactions involve—(I) activity that is unlawful under any Federal or State law; (II) terrorism; (III) assassination; (IV) war; (V) gaming; or (VI) other similar activity determined by the Commission, by rule or regulation, to be contrary to the public interest.

https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-12125/p-93

I'm unfamiliar with Kalshi's ethics. Would they have paid out if only non-famous human beings died in the ousting?

Not sure. For the record I don't think of Kalshi as an ethical company. I just found it interesting that it's the only company that seems to be getting press coverage for refusing to pay out because of this.

On the other hand this possibly forces people to put their mouth where their money is. It would be great to be able to hold all those politicians and pundits at least financially accountable. Oh,so you say that this spending is not going to be a problem because the economy will grow twice that much. Sooo, how much did you bet on that? And how did your bets go last year.

That's actually a great idea!

Definitely interesting idea given how lockstep parties operate. Ostensibly representatives should be uh, representing local interests, over party, but we've seen this isn't the case.

So if one side is claiming something, yes, would absolutely love to see how much of their net worth is tied into betting that something would come to fruition (like lowering inflation, or medical care, or increasing jobs, etc)

I guess it is just human nature to gamble on everything, anything. And when government puts down a heavy hand they turn to more lucrative underground shops.

I always thought that "Gray's Sports Almanac" in Back to the Future 2 would quickly become useless as all sorts of factors after large public bets would cause events to change and sports scores just wouldn't line up anymore.

What is xcancel?

Nitter instance for Twitter/X. https://github.com/zedeus/nitter

Thank you! Nitter looks great.

Only bets on fake world events?

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