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Comment by mahboi | Hacker News Reader

Trump's family being on the board is alarming for another reason. There are several markets about the president's actions that often involve missiles.

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If I were Iran I would regularly put up 10 million or more on bets that the US wont attack Iran the next day and if somebody takes up the bet you know you are on.

The markets for that already have decent amount of volume and liquidity, could just watch them

If you are referring to Polymarket, it's an advisory board, not a board of directors. Big difference.

That does very little to diminish the incredibly suspicious nature of having the family members of a notoriously corrupt president on the board of a dubiously-legal-at-best company whose product is a platform for betting on major world events.

There’s no difference because the point isn’t to take advice. The position is an excuse to award shares.

Why do they need an excuse to award shares? The fund he is part of has apparently invested over $500m in Polymarket.

Ok so he's a paid advisor and heavily invested in it.

I know those two are different things, but both have the same problem here. What point are you making?

These venues do not have enough liquidity to attract Trump and his cronies. There might be people lower down the food chain who are taking advantage though.

Don Jr made bets on these same sites, as did so many WH personnel.

Donald Trump Jr. is a paid advisor and investor to Kalshi and Polymarket. Why bother betting if they will just give you cash for having the right name.

Granted, the son whose wedding you skip has got to be lower down the food chain.

If the goal is to profit off of bombing other countries, why do you need Kalshi?

If you have advance knowledge of an attack, there are much less conspicuous ways to profit off that.

What's the less conspicuous way? Oil futures are more conspicuous. Though I'll bet he's doing that for someone less directly connected.

It's just another avenue for grift. In corrupt governments, the people up top ration out minor grifts to subordinates to keep them loyal.

Who cares about being conspicuous anymore? The president openly takes crypto bribes...

In fact, open corruption is preferred because it creates a co-dependence to prop up the system. It puts you under then thumb of the administration because they can decide to enforce the law at any time.

Keep the rats in line by threatening to sink the ship, so to speak.

> there are much less conspicuous ways to profit

What about this administration makes you think that's important to them?

"can't be brazen corruption because it's too obviously brazen corruption"

It's shocking that 10 years in people are still falling for the "it can't be X, because X would be too obvious and stupid" trap when it comes to Trump-land.

Nothing this administration does is subtle, inconspicuous or thought out.

These people are seasoned grifters. They don't look for one big winning ticket, but rather multiple streams. A million here, a million there, pretty soon you're talking real money. For your rank-and-file workers that's serious.

Like what?

as well as all the other points everyone else made, less conspicuous ways to profit may also have upper bounds, even if a prediction market has upper bounds two sources of profit will probably allow you to profit more than one.

it is true that a smart operator may like to profit only in the less conspicuous way, but what would cause you to think that applied to Trump and his family?

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