It’s Always Shark Week

“Kalshi and its competitor Polymarket advertise themselves as life-changing tools for regular people—implying everyone has a fair chance to score. ‘I was about to be unable to pay my rent, but I got two years of rent through Kalshi’s predictions,’ gushed one woman in a Kalshi ad on TikTok. But for most users the reality is nothing like that. Instead, casual traders are bleeding cash while a small number of sophisticated pros—including trading firms with access to vast streams of data—eat their lunch.” WSJ (Gift Article): Why Almost Everyone Loses—Except a Few Sharks—on Prediction Markets.

+ Online casinos have developed ways to make their wares so addictive that people can’t stop playing even when there’s no promise of an eventual payout. Bloomberg (Gift Article): The $11 Billion Casino-Style Economy Built on Players Who Can Never Cash Out. “You download the game at no cost and start with a small stash of coins. But you’ll almost certainly run out—because, as at every casino, the house always wins. Then you’ll be prompted through a stream of pop-ups to pay real money for more coins, to avoid waiting (maybe an hour, maybe all day) for the game to dispense more free ones. Even when you pay, and win, you can’t cash out. It’s the defining element of a social casino; the prize is the make-believe coins, and perhaps some dopamine.”