Comment by joks
5 hours ago
It was only a few years ago that sports betting was significantly more heavily regulated and limited, and stuff like Polymarket didn't exist (just non-monetary forecasting sites like Metaculus.) Even if there was more demand for "underground gambling" before these changes, the net negative to society was still significantly less.
There were other prediction markets like Intrade which was founded in 1999. I had coworkers who made a significant amount of money doing prediction market arbitrage for the 2012 election.
Intrade confuses me. It was illegal to use Intrade as a US citizen; in fact, some people I personally know who were into that scene had to maintain foreign bank accounts.
What has changed, exactly, to make Polymarket legal where Intrade was not?