Comment by Y_Y
1 day ago
My hobby: monetizing cynicism.
I go on Polymarket and find things that would make me happy or optimistic about society and tech, and then bet a couple of dollars (of some shitcoin) against them.
e.g. OpenAI releasing an open weights model before September is trading at 81% at time of writing - https://polymarket.com/event/will-openai-release-an-open-sou...
Last month I was up about ten bucks because OpenAI wasn't open, the ceasefire wasn't a ceasefire, and the climate metrics got worse. You can't hedge away all the existential despair, but you can take the sting out of it.
> go on Polymarket and find things that would make me happy or optimistic about society and tech, and then bet a couple of dollars (of some shitcoin) against them.
Classic win win bet. Your bet wins -> you make money (win). Your bet loses -> something good happened for society (win).
Classic lose lose too
My friend does this and calls it “hedging humanity”. Every time some big political event has happened that bums me out, he’s made a few hundred.
people still use crypto? I thought the hype died around the time when AI boomed.
People use crypto on Polymarket because it doesn't comply with gambling regulations, so in theory isn't allowed to have US customers. Using crypto as an intermediary lets Polymarket pretend not to know where the money is coming from. Though I think a more robust regulator would call them out on the large volume of betting on US politics on their platform...
> a more robust regulator would call them out
Calling them out is one thing, but do you think the US could realistically stop them?
I don't know much about Polymarkets governance structure, if it's a decentralized smart contract, the US is DOA. Even if it's not... the Pirate Bay wasn't, the US really tried to stop them, and they basically didn't get anywhere.
1 reply →
Bitcoin is higher than ever. People can't wait until it gets high enough that they can sell it for dollars, and use those dollars to buy things and make investments in things that are valuable.
> Bitcoin is higher than ever
That's just speculation though. I saw a cynical comment on reddit yesterday that unfortunately made a lot of sense. Many people now are just so certain that the future of work is not going to include many humans, so they're throwing everything into stocks and crypto, which is why they remain so high even in the face of so much political uncertainty. It's not that people are investing because they have hope. People are just betting everything as a last ditch survival attempt before the robots take over.
Of course this is hyperbolic - market forces are never that simple. But I think there might be some truth to it.
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people use crypto for speculation, and for (semi)illegal purposes
only a small percentage of use is for actual legitimate money transfers
Unfortunatley crypto hype is still high; and I think still on the up, but that's vibes not market analysis.
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