Comment by hpdigidrifter
17 hours ago
This was discussed on polymarket with the Galve Goat burning bet and assume it's why
Essentially it's a big straw goat in Sweden that vandals sometime set on fire.
Right towards the end as the probability approaches zero there's a huge profit incentive, "done deals" usually go under well under 1¢ meaning 100-200x returns.
A US man once traveled to Sweden to set the goat on fire, he was caught, fined $20k(?) and then fled the country before paying the fine.
Risk reward in a situation like this absolutely creates a situation for prediction markets similar to the observer effect in physics, it's no longer predicting the future and instead altering it.
I think as this becomes a reality, in general people will stop trading so close near the deadline for so little gain.
As it gets closer to the deadline, the timeframe shortens, so the gain does increase. A 1% return which you're paid on tomorrow is a 3,778% annualized return.
There’s still limited liquidity. You need to find someone willing to put up a very large amount of money for almost no gain. I also doubt these websites have enough activity to well calibrate near 1 dollar bets, so it’s not clear the market is giving you accurate predictive power with very expensive bets, which means you’re risking a lot (again, for almost no gain).
Ok, but the risk of manipulation increases as well, since the payoff for event manipulators is the highest near the deadline.