‘Dict Picks
I believe the increasing popularity of prediction markets will cause a gambling addiction scourge the likes of which we’ve never seen. I’m so sure of it, I might go to one of the prediction markets and lay down a bet. Because these days, you can bet on anything. “Prediction markets entice enterprising nerds to make and lose fortunes by wagering on everything from politics to the weather. Here’s why they’re unstoppable—and only getting more powerful.” Zoë Bernard in Vanity Fair: The CEOs of Kalshi and Polymarket Are Betting On the Most Hated Experiment in Business. (Alt link.) At a happy hour for one of the leading platforms, Kalshi, a group of mostly young men, in their 20s, were swapping tips and stories about their experiences in “a marketplace that, until recently, had existed in a legal gray zone. Many were making thousands a week speculating on highly specific fixations: whether the temperature would tick up by a single degree in Colorado next weekend, who would win the Coney Island hot dog eating contest, the gender of celebrity babies.” … Yet only one person there mentioned the dirty word that everyone else had so carefully avoided … ‘You’re writing about this, but you have no idea what this meeting is, do you?’ ‘What is it?’ I asked, leaning back to avoid his spittle. ‘This,’ he said, taking in the barroom of traders, ‘is just the latest Gamblers Anonymous meeting.'”
+ The data from these prediction markets can be valuable, as it taps into the wisdom of the crowd. NYT (Gift Article): Thousands of Amateur Gamblers Are Beating Wall Street Ph.D.s. But people aren’t just predicting, they’re betting. And they’re betting on in-pocket slot machines that deploy all the most addicting techniques from casinos, social media apps, and online games. Think of it as a ‘Dict-a-phone.
+ These prediction apps fall under a different federal jurisdiction from gambling apps. And they largely avoided sports betting (which is legal in some states, but not others). But something changed, and all bets were off. “Until early last year, Kalshi, the leading US prediction market startup, was using its status as a federally regulated financial exchange to offer niche financial contracts tied to pop culture events and elections. The agency overseeing all this, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, had indicated that so-called event contracts tied to sports were off limits. Then Donald Trump won the election. Kalshi tested the waters by offering its first wagers on the Super Bowl in early 2025 and the CFTC did not step in to stop them. Those first contracts were little more than an experiment, but sports have since come to account for more than 90% of the trading volume on Kalshi.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Gambling Stocks Sag as Prediction Markets Steal Super Bowl Bets.
+ If you’re predicting that the Trump administration will step in and slow the prediction market roll toward being full-on casinos and sportsbooks, you might want to first consider the involvement of a notable ‘Dicthead. NYT (Gift Article): Leading Prediction Firms Share a Commonality: Donald Trump Jr. “At the intersection of the prediction market industry and Trump world is Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. He is both an investor in and an unpaid adviser to Polymarket, and a paid adviser to Kalshi, the two biggest prediction markets. And he is a director of the Trump family’s social media company, which recently announced it would start its own platform called Truth Predict.” (These days, laying some money against Truth may be one safe bet you can make.)
