Comment by fnands

11 hours ago

At least cryptocurrencies had some nice ideas behind them. Just sad they almost immediately got co-opted by swindlers and criminals.

9 comments

fnands

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Hammershaft  10 hours ago

Prediction markets also have very interesting ideas.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/10/pr...

  • NicuCalcea  10 hours ago

    The source is a company that works with Polymarket and sells Polymarket data (as well as Kalshi and other gambling platforms).

    • HDThoreaun  5 hours ago

      Marginal revolution has been talking up prediction markets since before they existed. In fact polymarket probably was created after its founder read Cowen's thoughts on prediction markets.

  • fnands  9 hours ago

    > 12 hour ahead prediction

    As the comments on that article rightfully point out, restricting the data analysed to 12 hours before the resolution feels like cherry picking.

    • localuser13  1 hour ago

      It may be cherry-picking, but I think some commenters misunderstand this (or maybe I do).

      The implication seems to be "12 hours before the resolution things are obvious anyway". But if that were the case, then I could pick some wager that is obviously true but has, for example, 70% chance, and putting my money on that. If it was true that "12 hours before the resolution it's obvious what the result is", everything would be in 0% or 100% buckets. I believe getting event with 30% confidence right exactly 30% times is impressive no matter if that's 12h or 120h before.

      Disclaimer: I don't know much about prediction markets, just what I understood from the blog post.

  • applfanboysbgon  10 hours ago

    Not really.

    1. As pointed out in the comments, you can inflate your prediction success rate by predicting things that are 100% to happen. There are plenty of 99.9% bets on Polymarket with degens betting on some 0.01% lottery event trying to strike a jackpot against the odds, and those will inflate the perceived accuracy.

    2. All you're really doing is paying insiders to leak information a few hours ahead of time. Insofar as Polymarket is unusually accurate on things that aren't ~100% to happen, it's likely because in the 12-hour-window that post measures is when all of the insiders place their last-minute bets telling you what will happen. This is extremely bad for society. It's wealth redistribution from stupid people to unethical people[1], and it could completely compromise national security when eg. an insider tells you 12 hours ahead of time that the US is about to launch an invasion of Venezuela. There is no societal benefit to this.

    [1] Even if you have no sympathy for idiots who bet their life savings on markets without having insider information, gambling addiction has extremely detrimental effects on society and directly results in increased crime rates, divorce rates, etc. as people lose all of their money and do bad things in desperation, so it is a problem that becomes everyone else's problem.