Comment by dogcomplex
13 hours ago
Prediction markets are just fine IF they have some means of regulation against insider trading and perverse incentives. This phase is the same thing derivatives markets looked like before the 2008 crisis and Dodd-Frank, and several other waves before that of crisis and reform (Securities Act, Market Reform Act).
Every new financial medium gets its moment in the sun when all the crooks extract everything they can, before eventually market governance steps in. Crypto's been in scammer phase for a while. It needs decentralized governance to solve it this time though, since obviously classic governance is a dumpster fire and couldn't enforce anything on crypto even if it tried.
> Prediction markets are just fine IF they have some means of regulation against insider trading
Why?
If a prediction market is supposed to predict it makes no sense to exclude the best informed people. If I want to know the risk of a Boeing airliner crashing this year, Boeing insiders have much more to contribute than armchair observers.
And if a Boeing insider sabotages a plane to profit on a prediction market - that's illegal. If they're willing to break the law on sabotaging planes, they're surely also willing to break the law on insider trading at the same time. If we think this is a realistic risk, prediction markets should be banned entirely.
Only reason to exclude insiders is if the real purpose of a prediction market is recreational gambling.
I agree. Don't bar anyone.
But do require KYC on all customers and require their profiles and wagers to be public. The societal values of prediction market data would be an order of magnitude more valuable this way.
And use of illegal insider info would cease.
How do you suppose that would work? The only predictions possible are things which are virtually impossible to influence, like atmospheric events?
> This phase is the same thing derivatives markets looked like before the 2008 crisis and Dodd-Frank, and several other waves before that of crisis and reform (Securities Act, Market Reform Act).
Just because a rule was created after something bad happened doesn't mean that the rule is effective to prevent it from happening again. The most common result when they try to ban something without removing the incentive for it to happen is to cause it to happen less obviously. Then the rule (and all its unfortunate costs) gets credited with not observing the bad thing anymore, even though that's not the same as actually preventing it.
Notice that you can use the stock market in the same way as a prediction market. After that healthcare CEO got murdered the company's stock took a hit, as anyone could reasonably have predicted it would. That's a perverse incentive in line with betting that someone will kill the CEO. We don't really have a great way of preventing stock trading from creating that incentive, we mostly just rely on the fact that if you do the murder then murder is very illegal. But if that works for the stock market then why doesn't it work for prediction markets?
> Notice that you can use the stock market in the same way as a prediction market. After that healthcare CEO got murdered the company's stock took a hit, as anyone could reasonably have predicted it would. That's a perverse incentive in line with betting that someone will kill the CEO. We don't really have a great way of preventing stock trading from creating that incentive, we mostly just rely on the fact that if you do the murder then murder is very illegal. But if that works for the stock market then why doesn't it work for prediction markets?
This is true in theory, but in practice the impact of any regular individual's actions on a company is probably going to be small and uncertain enough that it's difficult to make a healthy and reliable profit from. Even the very extreme example of murdering the United Healthcare CEO seems to have caused the stock to drop ~16.5% (assuming the drop is entirely due to the murder). That's like placing a bet with ~1/6 odds. You'd need to short a lot of stock to make that worth the risk of murdering someone (leaving aside any moral issues obviously). You could use leverage to juice those returns but that is expensive and risky, too. If you can afford to deploy enough leverage to make it worth it, you can probably find ways to make money that don't carry a risk of the death penalty.
I guess viewed in this way a bet on a prediction market is like a very cheap, highly leveraged bet on a specific outcome. So the incentives are much stronger as the potential reward for the risk taken is greater.
> You'd need to short a lot of stock to make that worth the risk of murdering someone (leaving aside any moral issues obviously).
When they know exactly when something is going to happen, buying put options that are cheap because they're slightly out of the money seems like it would be pretty effective.
> I guess viewed in this way a bet on a prediction market is like a very cheap, highly leveraged bet on a specific outcome. So the incentives are much stronger as the potential reward for the risk taken is greater.
You seem to be trying to make this about leverage as if that's a thing that isn't available anywhere else.
Let's try another example. Some group breaks into the systems of some publicly traded company and gets access to everything. Now they're in a position to publicly disclose their trade secrets to competitors, publish internal documents that will cause scandals for the company, vaporize the primary and backup systems at the same time, etc. Anything that allows them to place a bet against the company gives them the incentive to do this; the disincentive is that the thing itself is illegal. Leverage gives them a larger incentive, but there are plenty of wages to place a leveraged bet in the stock market.
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