Polymarket refuses to pay bets that US would 'invade' Venezuela
ft.com
ft.com
>This market will resolve to "Yes" if the United States commences a military offensive intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela between November 3, 2025, and January 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to "No".
>For the purposes of this market, land de facto controlled by Venezuela or the United States as of September 6, 2025, 12:00 PM ET, will be considered the sovereign territory of that country.
>The resolution source for this market will be a consensus of credible sources.
Now, sure, that's kind of a lie. But (ahem) By The Definition of The Bet, actual control is not required. Only a military offensive intended to establish control. What purer definition of intent can you have than the decisionmaker's literal statement? QED.
No, this is cheating. Now, sure, the bets placed seemed very likely to be fraudulent. Which is cheating too. But there's not "technically" here. Polymarket is playing games with its bets. And that's fraud, even if it's got company.
Also, what definition of "invasion" are you thinking of (please cite) which does not apply here?
With all respect, that's 100% bonkers.
> Also, what definition of "invasion" are you thinking of (please cite) which does not apply here?
No idea what a better definition of "invasion" could have been, but the only one that's relevant for the resolution is that listed on the market description on Polymarket (which many traders don't even read, but that's a different story).
Someone flips the bits to the bet.
> This market will resolve to "Yes" if the United States commences a military offensive intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela between November 3, 2025, and January 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to "No".
1. Attack intent to control did not happen.
2. De facto control of Venezuelan territory did not happen.
The way I read it, the second paragraph serves as the definition of territory ("any portion of Venezuela"), not as a condition for resolving the bet. The invasion doesn't need to be successful, it just needs to have the intent you specified in 1.
...which makes the entire bet like quicksand, because it relies on the public statements from a regime known for its "inaccurate" messaging.
The more interesting question for rules lawyers is whether the president itself classifies as "any portion of Venezuela" -- the claim doesn't explicitly limit itself to only geographical portions.
The second "de facto" part is about the preconditions of the bet, to define what is Venezuela versus the US.
I personnally view it more as a marketing stunt.
USA did not achieved control, but its leadership apparently think they have it.
Might as well have bet "doll hairs"…
Is it having heavy influence over through proxies? You can't just snatch a guy like Maduro out of a country without some local help. Help that would presumably be aligned with you on goals.
Or is it setting up a complete government like in Iraq, postwar Germany/Japan, etc.?
I mean, official American goals are "taking oil and getting money from it, putting it to offshore account". There is no "alignment on goals" possible, but there is a space for corruption and pressure. Venezuela is highly corrupt country after all.
> Or is it setting up a complete government like in Iraq, postwar Germany/Japan, etc.?
That would require actual invasion and actual control over land - military on the ground. Soldiers in high numbers, patrolling streets and shooting it out with militias. There is nothing of the sort going on. Besides, Iraq was failure.
Germany was literally defeated and destroyed after the war. Fight capable men were already killed in large numbers and Germans themselves seen themselves as losers of that war. And comfortably, their ideology of "might is right" meant that once they were destroyed they accepted to loss.
Trump and Vance may be able to peer it with militias, as another gang competing with local gangs, but they cant build equivalent of post WWII Germany. Because both sides are different - Venezuela is not defeated, there is no American military in there and American ideology is closer to that of past Germany then that of post WWII America.
It’s possible we have de facto control of the regime through some backroom that only the Trump Administration knows about, but that’s just speculative on my part. We don’t know this is actually the case, and thus far there hasn’t been anything to substantiate the existence of such a thing.
So we’re at at a point where if put on the spot, gun to my head, I had to answer whether the United States controls the Government of Venezuela in any meaningful way, I would have to say “No” despite what Trump himself said. This is subject to change, pending further evidence made available to the American people.
>This market will resolve to "Yes" if the United States commences a military offensive intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela between November 3, 2025, and January 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to "No".
I see your argument, and I think it is even defensible but I think it falls short. An actual resolution to this question may require a judge to weigh in on the contract.
Now realistically no one in that regime is any safer than Maduro was, but it’s also a possibility they resist and carry on without Maduro. It’s only been since Saturday. I’m not saying there’s no world where Trump & Rubio are correct today or when they said it over the weekend, I’m saying that there is no public information substantiating those claims. Near as I can tell, it’s a “listen to us or else” kinda deal, which could be enough, but then we would see the effects of that through cooperation with the Trump Administration.
I am prepared to be wrong on this one, but I just don’t think that Trump & Rubio’s words after the fact are enough.
In fact, citing them as an authority leads to the transitive property applying to credibility in an argument.
All of us here know Trump is an unreliable person, why is he being cited to support definitive claims? And Yes His unreliably most certainly extends to his own aims, there is no question on that.
That’s pretty funny.
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool me 500 times, I want to be lied to”
Similarly no one believes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was to “denazi-ify” it as Putin and the kremlin claimed many times among other things.
Neither was the troop building up in 2022 near Ukraine purely for training as repeatedly claimed by the top Russian officials.
Trump is equally credible.
Not quite.
They're trying to establish control by threatening to kill or imprison the leaders and by blockade.
Venezuela apparently handed over a lot of oil, it seems like they've been able to do something.
That said - we don't really know how much 'control' that is.
If I were Polymarket, I wouldn't say that the US has control either, but, it's entirely plausible.
We'll see.
This could go the way of DOGE or the Trade War aka just a trailing mess of ongoing concerns that people forget about, though to play my own devil's advocate, ICE is consistently ramping up.
FTFY
The things the POTUS says, are intended to further the US Government's goals. The actual statements made may be true or false.
If POTUS says "We did X because Y", that's no guarantee that Y is the reason that X was done, or even that X was done at all. That just means that POTUS would like people to think that Y was the reason X was done.
That Trump is also a serial liar is not actually relevant here, this is true for every President. They make statements in service of their agenda, not in service of the truth.
There are other credible sources whose consensus could be checked.
An invasion with the intent of taking control of the country would not involve troops arriving in the capital, completing their mission perfectly with no losses on their side, and then everybody leaving, such that no enemy troops remain.
Your understanding of the relationship between the truth and the words being spoken by POTUS are the only discontinuity here. Update that expectation and everything makes sense.
The bet was, specifically:
This market will resolve to "Yes" if the United States commences a military offensive intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela between November 3, 2025, and January 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to "No".
Maybe Trump's eventual goal is to invade Venezuela with the intent of controlling it. I don't know. I do know that the intent of the brief military offensive was not to control it, because of what was done.
Secondly, even if argument could be that 'some other, more credible president would lie' - this actually does not hold up, because nobody could operate in those terms.
The presidents statements in an official context are official, that's it. Except in rare cases.
"He tells people what to do on a whim" and "has longstanding personal beefs and gripes" - that's it.
We don't know what he's going to wake up and tweet tomorrow so all we have are his statements.
Also, I think we give way to much credit to this notion of '4d chess' - he lies in the moment because he can get away with it, not out of some well plotted deception. He's not servicing some complicated scheme - just his gut.
He'll say something else the next day, but for that moment, what he says is policy.
You are welcome to believe everything that President Putin is saying about anything, including Ukraine.
That's a profoundly absurd statement. Appeal to authority is a fallacy, especially with a trackrecord of an "authority" lying.
If the President's words are the truth, what to do with the statements in which he contradicts himself? What about situations in which 2 presidents disagree?
>The presidents statements in an official context are official, that's it.
Official, perhaps most of the time. Truthful, definitely not.
What's up with the inability to separate "opinions/statements" vs. "facts/truth"?..
But his statements are the position of the US government aka the most 'truthful' representation of US policy.
I'm responding to the notion that because he lies and misrepresents, his statements don't count as representative somehow, which is not true.
If he says 'military force is on the table' for acquiring Greenland, we should assume he means to invade if wants.
2. "Truthful representation of US government policy"
They are 2 very different things. And even the second one can be easily debated against due to:
1. Discrepancy between what countries say vs. what they actually do. Threats, lies, dishonesty, hiding truth, creative paraphrasing, etc. are normal ways the politics operates.
2. Trump's twitter messaging. What he says does not necessarily represent even his own opinions and policy. Case in point, when he announced the no-fly-zone over Venezuela a few weeks ago. The problem? It was only a tweet. No actual commands/decisions were made/given to the diplomats, bureucracy, military. It was a fake news by the President himself.
* "Statements", not "statement". Past statements can be used to assess the credibility of more recent ones.
* Actions speak louder than words. Pardoning the king of cocaine trafficking demonstrates just how seriously the administration is trying to counter drug trafficking.
I'm sorry, this is nonsense. "He makes things up, therefore we have to take the things he says as credible"?
The President is not an oracle of truth, nor are his words the most accurate representation we have on the intentions of US government actions.
Let's say he had said directly, "The January 3rd operation in Venezuela was a best-effort attempt by the US to take control over Venezuela".
Now let's say he had instead said "The January 3rd operation in Venezuela was a best-effort attempt by the US to take control over Madagascar".
You would genuinely, truly believe that in that moment, the capture of Maduro from Venezuela was the most effective thing the US government could do to take control of Madagascar?
The presidents statements are the legitimate statements of the State of the United States of America, it has nothing to do with what you or I think about 'Madagascar'.
He is POTUS, his words are nominally and pragmatically state policy.
If he makes a declaration of 'use of force' against another it should be taken at face value.
This would be true if were only a nominal figurehead, leaving policy to others, but he's not, he has material power and wields it.
Given the construction of the balance of power - 'He is America' at least for the time being.
The statements POTUS makes to the public are simply statements by a person and should be taken as such.
The instructions the POTUS gives, privately or publicly, to the various apparatuses of the US government, are what is nominally and pragmatically state policy. When these contradict public statements POTUS has made, it is these instructions that are what actually matter.
First this: "The statements POTUS makes to the public are simply statements by a person and should be taken as such." <-- this is definitely not true, even with a basic deference to the more traditional, formal view of the US president's role, or the role of any Head of State for that matter.
The US Presidents proclamations are policy, and always have been. Obviously - a statement at the 'correpondents dinner' is not the same thing as a quick media response, is not the same thing as a statement from behind the podium, is not the same thing as a prepared address or document - but anything above board is representative of the State.
Particularly given the current POTUS leverage over Congress and wide Judicial deference to his power.
Obviously, POTUS is going to have private discussions and give directions that are not consistent with public statements - that adds to the ambiguous nature of his statements, but his public statements are still facto policy and must be taken at face value.
A statement like 'force is on the table' internally may seem like a negotiating tactic or 'populist politics' or 'stuff tough business guys say' or even 'fodder for fox news', but geopolitically it's borderline a declaration of war. It should be taken seriously.
Sure, what a head of state says should be taken seriously. It has the potential to resemble what the country does.
That's not the same thing as "the most recent thing out of the mouth of the head of state Is The Best Idea We Have Of Current Policy". That's asinine.
i dont think it is intended to be used as a meaningful investment platform, or even a serious gambling establishment like an actual casino.
its whole angle is "wouldnt it be funny if you could bet on ____" and then you can
Isn't the entire Polymarket concept rife with ways to abuse the system? If I have insider knowledge I get shills to create a market for that knowledge - then make an extreme bet at the last moment. Seems sort of like betting the 49ers will not win the Super Bowl because you know that Purdy's kneecaps are about to be busted. Or large options trades the day before the Senate votes on Healthcare bills.
Unfortunately, it's pretty easy to see something, eventually, like "X won't be seen in public after December 31st, 2026" essentially creating an assassination market.
Basically, boil finance bros down to sociopathy.
That may be the case, but the US clearly does have control over the land, as they're literally telling Venezuela what to do with it.
That the US skipped a few steps of deploying troops on the same land first doesn't really seem to be here or there.
It’s not great for the gambling addicts but helping people better themselves doesn’t seem to be a theme in federal policy at the moment
- throttle how much a new account can wager, allowing more to be placed after the account gets older
- limit double-down bets to some fraction of your initial. To reduce the benefit of last minute wagers
- end wagering at a random time before the deadline.
- ban accounts that act in concert to evade the throttling. Or charge a hefty one-time fee or escrow that you eventually get refunded
Further, "insider trading" in prediction markets is probably fundamentally illegal under existing commodities fraud laws in the US (I am not a lawyer,) but there's probably nobody actively policing it, and probably no precedent in how to prosecute the cases.
Sounds pretty much like it
The condition is based on intent, not outcome. (It’s a poorly-drafted contract.)
It was a helicopter evac. I guarantee you 100% at some point they intended to, and did control, the roof of a building or an area of land for some length of time in order to perform the helicopter evac. I bet they even said so, over the radio. I bet if it's not classified (unclear), you could get the operators to testify to this.
Even if it had been a boat evac they would do the same for the boat landing/evac area.
There is a 0% chance the planned military operation did not involve deliberately controlling some area, for some length of time, inside venezuela, for exfil.
The terms do not require they establish permanent control, or control for any significant length of time. Just that they intend to control, and did control, some area.
2. "Establish an area" also means that the area would be big enough and control significant/independent enough in order to maintain (!) it. E.g. imagine if most of the Delta were eliminated and only one guy survived, holding a maid hostage in the toilet. That would not count because the area is small, the control is insignificant and keeping the toilet space was not the original point anyway. Similar as attacking Brazilian servers would not count only because the traffic went through Venezuela's network.
Especially taking terms about a military operation and appling regular dictionary definitions to them makes little to no sense.
For example, in the legal and contract realm, something like establishing control means simply having authority over something, even temporarily. IE statements of the intent to run venezuela would suffice, even without any land control, ability to do so, etc.
In practice - a court is going to give it a fairly broad reading consistent with an everyday person's understanding, since that is who is betting. They will additionally rely on public statements about intent, etc. This assumes nobody can get enough information about the actual operational plans.
So if the court wanted to interpret "establish control" (which, again, it would not do separately from the other words, but let's say they did), it would do something like the following:
1. Is it defined in the contract? Yes - contract definition controls
2. Is it consistently used in context? Yes - context control
3. Is it a term of art in the field? Yes - definition of term of art controls
4. Is it still ambiguous? Yes - evidence about what it means gets presented by both sides
Part 4 is where you'd present a dictionary definition.
In any case, there is no point in having this argument, as polymarket's TOS almost certainly allows them to do what they want, and nobody is going to care what random internet commentators who suddenly have turned themselves into full blown lawyers, think :)
(In fact, polymarket's terms requires you to agree that they have no control whatsoever over contract resolution, etc. They are also governed by the law of panama)
“We will run the country, yes” - Trump
There are two conditions:
(1) A military offensive: obviously satisfied, and
(2) That military offensive being intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela: The President explicitly stated that the intended outcome was that US would run the country, and that, if it was necessary to use additional military force beyond the original act to secure that because of the lack of cooperation of the remnants of the regime left in Venezuela, that additional force would be applied. So, that part is also satisfied.
Any denial that the conditions were satisfied is pure sophistry.
That's also not possible, as far as I understand. If the smart contracts are worth their salt, the only possible outcomes per binary option is to pay out in full to either "yes" or to "no" holders, not to any other unrelated party, including Polymarket.
The real risk is somebody subverting a sufficiently large proportion of (anonymous, stake-based) arbiters on UMA, which is the on-chain entity that actually arbitrates outcomes and as such releases funds to one side or the other. Then, somebody could buy the "wrong" outcome tokens for cheap and flip the payout their way.
No idea how feasible that is and which game-theoretic protections UMA/Polymarket have against that possibility, but I don't think we've seen a smoking gun for that yet.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/1jki1lj/pol...
How would we know if Polymarket was an active participant in these bets?
Can you influence outcomes on Polymarket by purchasing enough UMA tokens?
Why would people accept this? Especially if ownership is anonymous and could overlap with market actors?
People are very good at convincing themselves that because something has not happened, therefore it will not.
When UMA is eventually abused to make a lot of money, then perhaps things will change.
Because A) they're not paying attention, B) they're in denial and C) because they think they can profit in the short term before it collapses, or that the odds are in their favor to profit despite the risks.
I've found that dishonest bookies will commonly bet when they have insider information or some way to push the outcome in one direction.
That's why the mob both employs bookies and pays boxers to throw fights.
Polymarket settles bets via a blockchain-based voting mechanism which, in theory, reduces to a simple YES/NO decision based on two inputs: the contract wording and whether the specified conditions were met by the relevant date.
While that sounds neutral in principle, in practice it’s vulnerable to interpretation of ambiguous wording and to classic vote-weight effects, where financially motivated participants can tilt outcomes away from the most reasonable reading in order to profit.
It’s actually a genuinely interesting system and an unresolved design problem - one that Polymarket doesn’t yet seem to have fully solved.
Ultimately, "invasion" is one of those terms that gets used for rhetorical effect more than a concrete claim about the world. If you think the US "invaded" Venezuela, and I think it's better to say they "attacked" Venezuela and "kidnapped" the president, we're not normally going to get into an argument about it - we'll just each use the terms that make sense to us, since we clearly agree about the facts of the terrible thing that happened. But Polymarket has to force the dumb semantic argument because they have to resolve the prediction one way or another. (One of the reasons to be skeptical of prediction markets as applied to geopolitics.)
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."
Was it a large scale one, sure. But it was not an invasion.
But you can also have an invasion of privacy or invasive surgery. In that sense it is about unwelcome intrusion into one's body / sovereignty.
And people are entertained by news articles with titles like, "10 times countries accidentally invaded their neighbors." Clearly the intent to violate sovereignty matters.
I think you can argue that the Bin Laden raid was and invasion into Pakistan. Anytime a military forces enters uninvited, that's an invasion.
It's written there.
I'm looking at it right now but not copy pasting it here.
> An invasion is a military action consisting of a large armed force of one geopolitical entity entering the territory of another with the goal of militarily occupying part or all of the invaded polity's territory, usually to conquer territory or alter the established government.
What happened on Saturday was not an invasion. It was an extraction/capture operation. It was a large scale one, but they left after they captured Maduro and his Wife.
> I think you can argue that the Bin Laden raid was and invasion into Pakistan. Anytime a military forces enters uninvited, that's an invasion.
No it wasn't. When they killed Bin Laden they didn't "invade" Pakistan. They infiltrated, then assassinated him and left.
Invasion in this context has a specific meaning. The bet on the market would have been done with this specific meaning in mind.
No invasion, means no payout.
It would be like making a bet where someone scores in Football/Soccer from a penalty, but in the game they score from a free kick outside the penalty box. You wouldn't pay out on the bet, because a penalty is not a free kick even though they are similar and had the same result.
I think the Kalshi one is bad because “intent” is not something that can be objectively defined.
The definition on Wikipedia seems reasonable:
> An invasion is a military action consisting of a large armed force of one geopolitical entity entering the territory of another with the goal of militarily occupying part or all of the invaded polity's territory, usually to conquer territory or alter the established government
What the US did wasn't a military invasion by that definition as they left after they grabbed Maduro.
> transitive. To enter in a hostile manner, or with armed force; to make an inroad or hostile incursion into.
The US forces left immediately after the target (Maduro and his wife) were extracted. So according to the definition I gave (which is more precise) then it isn't an invasion.
Whenever I envision an military invasion, I think of troops storming Normandy Beaches to invade Europe, When the Falklands invaded Argentina or When Hitler invaded France. All of these actions were with the intent to hold seize and hold territory.
An operation where people fly in, knocking out critical defences, capture someone and then leave clearly isn't the same thing.
The word "land" was not used. Is El Presidente not considered a portion of Venezuela?
What exactly do you think is going to happen to the oil in Venezuela? Are you under the impression that they will simply leave them be and hope for the best?
United States will be placing military assets to secure it, just like they did with IRAQ. The entire point of this was to secure the oil and now they have to to guard it.
Establishing military bases on sovereign nations that you captured by force illegally is an invasion.
I didn't bet on that one, but I'd seen something about it on Twitter & gotten curious how they could come to a firm conclusion one way or the other. AFAICT the market didn't have a solid way to be sure & were just taking a White House press briefing that said it was probably destroyed at face value.
Depends entirely on what they're doing.
One could be an invasion. A million might not be. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_military_inst...)
https://docs.polymarket.com/polymarket-learn/markets/how-are...
"After the debate period, Uma token holders vote (this process takes approximately 48 hours) and one of four outcomes happens:"
Doesn't this whole model break down when the Polymarket market far exceeds UMA's market cap?
UMA's current market cap is $68M. There are some Polymarket markets far exceeding that.
Here's a decent enough starting point.
I'll use that in my travel insurance claim because I've been stuck in the USVI all week and I'm confident my carrier will deny all claims because they will claim this is a declared/undeclared war, which is not covered. If this is a DEA extradition, I'm good.
If they start engage in such technicalities, eventually it would mean that typical bet should be several screens long lawyerspeak/legalese, like EULA, otherwise it can be just rejected more or less arbitrary, based on wordplay, and that will scare off potential bettors.
Raids don't qualify.
This issue already happened with the war in the Middle East when Israel engaged in cross border raids that weren't intended to establish permanent control.
If a nation assassinates a leader, then leave the country to their own devices (which may include a more friendly replacement), I could see the ground on this logic. NEITHER of these events (killing nor elected replacement) has happened. The US has asserted control.
It's obviously far closer to assassinating a leader and leaving the country to its own devices than the complete destruction of the Iraqi army as a viable fighting force, installation of an entirely new government and extended military occupation, or even something like Russia's ultimately unsuccessful annexation of Kherson.
How slowly would it need to be done to be counted as an invasion? A day? A month?
But if the intention is some other military objective: blow up a military base, kidnap a president, etc, and get out quickly, then I don’t think the word “invasion” applies.
With certainty that is not the original meaning of the word. In Latin and in classic English, the meaning of the word is just: "enter in a hostile manner", as it can be verified in any dictionary.
As long as foreigners have entered the territory of another country by force, that is an invasion.
It does not matter which was the duration of the invasion or whether the intent of the invasion was to stay there permanently.
An invasion may be followed, or not, by a military occupation, which is "establish sustained military control".
And imagine how silly it would be if 1-5 soldiers came across the border by force and left a few minutes later and that counted as a major world event!
Oxford Languages, for one, who provide the definition used by Google:
invade /ɪnˈveɪd/ verb
(of an armed force) enter (a country or region) so as to subjugate or occupy it.
Nevertheless, even here it says clearly that "invade" refers only to "enter", and neither to "subjugate" or to "occupy".
Other dictionaries explain better the distinction between "invading" and normal "entering", which is in the manner how one enters, i.e. "in a hostile manner" or "by the use of force".
Your dictionary explains the distinction by intent, not by manner, but this is wrong, as at the time of the invasion one cannot know which is the intent, which will become known only in the future.
By this definition one could never recognize an invasion while it happens, even when one sees a foreign army entering and killing everyone on sight.
I agree however, that the Polymarket bet has specified that the object of the bet was an invasion followed by an occupation of the territory, so the conditions of the bet have not been met.
The presence is global. The threat is the same as anyone taking over another country. This is some serious hair splitting.
It's really not "serious hair splitting" to point out that they haven't "invaded" a country they haven't even attempted to maintain non-covert presence in, particularly not when you've conveniently provided the perfect analogy of a state assassinating a leader and then letting them pick a successor who might be more convenient.
Venezuela regime did not changed either. The same generals and politicials remain on power, altrough there is bound to be some power struggle between them.
No part of Venezuela (referring to its sovereign territory) was indefinitely occupied by the USA. That's why the market is "No" right now.
The number of dead people isn't relevant here.
Polymarket rules sometimes diverge from what you might consider an "invasion", but those are the pre-agreed upon and standardized rules.
Edit: I see now that you have to select one of the possible dates, scroll down to the rules section, and then expand it.
Predictions and betslop are a scourge on this poor and fiscally irresponsible nation.
When there's money on the line, I have years of hard evidence that arm-chair lawyers (ie. betting exchange clients) will do absolutely anything to find potential loopholes in settlement rules and argue that their bets should have paid off.
A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall
Not only did they correctly hold a Yes bet about Maduro they also "correctly" made a bet about the US invading Venezuela and then they _sold_ it early at 18c for a profit as opposed to holding it to maturity (which would've been a "no").
They also did this the correct hold vs sell-early on 4 contracts.
So for an example contract "Trump invokes War Powers against Venezuela by...?" - https://polymarket.com/event/trump-invokes-war-powers-agains...
It's maturity is ideally the date listed in the contract (i.e. by Jan 9th) but may extend for 10 days in case a report's publication was delayed.
That said, you can sell contracts to other users (which is typically what happens ...) so when people buy a Yes contract for 5c they're not buying from Polymarket; they're buying it from somebody else. This allows you to make money before maturity. The reason for this is that you can mint YES+NO contracts by paying Polymarket $1 which nets you 0$ as you spent $1 and between the Yes and No contracts Polymarket pays back $1. But if you spend $1 for a YES+NO and sell the No for 50c to another user and the Yes for 70c then you net 20c or alternatively you sell the No for 5c to another user and hold the Yes to maturity and get the $1 back from Polymarket.
Although to be clear, I don't exactly know all the inner workings of Polymarket so it could be the case that they've started to act more like a House than a Market and they're actually putting money on the other side of the contract (IIRC, Kalshi is starting to do that for Sports-based contracts either that or having a partner company do it as opposed to actual users).
Ignoring that for a second, most of these comments miss the point - they are arguing over control of oil fields, etc.
The resolution terms are clear:
>This market will resolve to "Yes" if the United States commences a military offensive intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela between November 3, 2025, and January 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to "No".
They commenced a military operation.
It was (apparently) a helicopter evac. I guarantee you 100% at some point they intended to, and did control, the roof of a building or an area of land in order to perform the helicopter evac. I bet they even said so, over the radio. I bet if it's not classified (unclear), you could get the operators to testify to this.
Even if it had been a boat evac they would do the same for the boat landing/evac area.
There is a 0% chance the planned military operation did not involve deliberately controlling some area, for some length of time, for exfil.
The terms do not require they establish permanent control, or control for any significant length of time.
The War Powers Resolution (WPR) of 1973 sets a 60-day limit for U.S. forces in hostilities without a formal declaration of war or congressional authorization, allowing for a potential 30-day extension for withdrawal, totaling 90 days, after which the President must remove troops.
Airstrikes on Libya (2011): Obama administration argued they did not need Congressional authorization because the operations did not constitute "hostilities" as defined by the War Powers Resolution. Therefore, the Obama administration argued, the 60-day clock never started.
The bombings involved 26,500 sorties over eight months, including 7,000 bombing sorties targeting Gaddafi's forces.
Also, on-the-day commentary about "regime change" was very much premature. A "regime" is not a single person, it is a ruling group, a system (1). The existing regime in Venezuela is still very much in place. It is undergoing change for sure, even having a crisis (2). But as this implies, it has not yet been swapped out for something else.
1) https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/regime
2) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/07/caracas-venezu...
What I said was "on-the-day commentary about "regime change" was very much premature".
My apologies, for the avoidance of any doubt I should have said "on-the-day commentary about "regime change" having already occurred successfully was very much premature".
Does "The existing regime in Venezuela is still very much in place" not emphasise that meaning?
Is that clearer to you? I didn't think it needed to be added, but people can be creative with misreadings. This seems like a issue at your end.
They went in and out. They used force to enter, but they did not took control of another country. The government and regime is basically intact, maybe with some bruised ego assuming existing players did not tacitly allowed this to happen to promote themselves.
Functionally, the situation is very similar to the situation from before the event, except there was some display of force and it was made clear someone inside is cooperating with usa.
>"Don’t ask me who’s in charge because I’ll give you an answer, and it’ll be very controversial," Trump told a reporter.
>He was then asked to clarify, to which Trump replied, "It means we’re in charge."
Whether or not he's right, the US President's words seem to reveal an intent for the actions to result in the US being in control of Venezuela.
It might happen, if Trump doesn't get distracted by a shiny object first, but it hasn't yet.
Trump is a mob boss. He considers himself "in charge" of them now because he has clearly dominated them, expects them to comply with his future demands, and will continue to use force against them in the future if they don't do what he wants.
To me, it's simple, a foreign army enters your country in violation of your sovereignty? That's an invasion.
They kidnapped the president, lmao, what else could be more against the sovereignty of a nation.
Vague everyday language is unsuitable for contracts. When there are multiple reasonable interpretations, it's impossible to know what has been agreed. It's better to be pedantic and use precise language and narrow technical definitions of words.
Try to "aschkually" a judge irl and you'll find out. Hilarious.
In this particular case, the bets were clearly about military operations with the intention to take control of Venezuelan territory. This is the established meaning of "invasion", in contexts where people care about distinguishing between different types of military operations. But because people could plausibly interpret the word in a different way, the rules did not use words "invade" or "invasion" at all.
It just didn't work.
It never made an iota of economic sense -- if insurance underwriters are on the wrong end of that deal, they aren't doing their jobs very well -- but a number of large corporations would do it, and gleefully pocket the payouts when rank and file employees died.
A sufficiently liquid prediction market on a human life is indistinguishable from a bounty. That’s exactly why you can only take out life insurance if you have some reasonable financial stake in somebody staying alive and not the opposite.
Someone gambling on human lives is getting paid no matter what, though.
"Prediction betting" maybe? "News betting"?
I love the idea of prediction markets, AND I personally enjoy gambling, but legalized gambling has been a disaster in the united states, and (some?) prediction markets are shamefully leaning into that side of it as hard as they can.
On the surface, it sounds pretty simple -- as an institutional investor, you can buy and sell insurance for credit events on corporations and nations. In practice, there are simple credit events, and there are complex credit events (example: how are minority vs majority state owned enterprises handled during credit events... complex!) About the second type: There has been near continuous lawsuits and arguments over the last 20 years about what exactly is covered by the standard ISDA agreement. How recovery is determined (how the CDS settles is actually separate from the actual recovery because the actual one can take years) has also been the subject of heavy debate. Also, there have been less-than-ethical market participants who have tried to manipulate various events to trigger or delay them... or affect recovery rates. All of these have been subject to lawsuits and/or regulator investigations. I'm not an expert in this product, but the results of all of this legal activity has served to further clarify what exactly is covered by these ISDA agreements. (I think there have been minor adjustments to them over the years.)
Mind you: These arguments are happening between highly sophisticated parties and governed by excellent legal systems and well-respected regulators (US/EU/JP).
For this case of Polymarket's behaviour, I'm not surprised that this "bet" ran into trouble. After all, if your entity is governed by the laws of Panama, well then, all bets are off. I have nothing against Panama, but there is probably a good reason that large numbers of offshore commercial contracts are not subject to Panamanian law (like they are for New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, etc.) -- trust is low and their contract law and accompanying legal system probably pales into comparison to the world's best. The solution seems to be for a competitor to emerge that willingly submits to a serious regulator and legal jurisdiction. Personally, I don't see this happening any time soon. Just like crypto exchanges before, I wondered why the world's largest investment banks did not start one of their own. In hindsight, the answer is obvious: Legal and reputational risk, not limited to AML/KYC. I am wondering the same right now about "predictions markets".
Hot take: Can we stop using this slimy term "predictions markets" and just call it "gambling for geopolitical events"? That feels more honest to me.
https://xcancel.com/lolams768/status/2007845728333484207#m
With this in mind, the abduction of Maduro apparently was a desperate "Plan B", and it looks like everything the Trump admin is saying now is being pulled right out of thin air because this op clearly wasn't executed as planned at all.
Make of that what you will.
A small detachment of US troops didn't succeed in taking some sort of secondary objective like taking out a coastguard station or comms node, maybe.
One of the strangest things about the entire operation is how the US left absolutely nobody behind to administer the country. Not even a consultant. The Venezuelan VP is now in charge and the government is largely intact. It's hard to see how this affects any meaningful change in the country. I did find it amusing that the opposition leader released a statement with her lips firmly planted on Trumps ass and even talked about "sharing" the Nobel Peace Prize just to see if he's enough of an idiot that such obvious flattery would work.
It's a threat - "Do as we say or you're next." Which the US was pretty public and explicit about. They don't need anyone on site for that. It's not like they actually care what happens beyond the resources use.
What's more likely: the US "desperately" stumbled upon a capture of Maduro at almost zero cost to them after their real plan to seize Venezuelan territory went awry due to heroic Venezuelan defending as the parent implies, or that the intention was to capture and remove Maduro without invading and this was what they did, regardless of whether a few peripheral targets got missed?
That sounds unlikely. They have aircraft carriers and just a large modern navy but a helicopter comes under fire and they cancel the invasion?
With a myoptic view of the battlefield it is easy to convince yourself that the distractions launched to keep the military busy were the primary objectives.
> No, Polymarket is not the house. All trades happen peer-to-peer (p2p).
(from https://docs.polymarket.com/polymarket-learn/FAQ/is-polymark...)
This term is a bit ambiguous, and there's some nuances that make it different from both sportsbooks and poker.
They don't ever take a nominal cut, their revenue model is in holding USD deposits and making money of interest.
> No, Polymarket is not the house. All trades happen peer-to-peer (p2p). The documentation is purposefully misleading, but it's true that unlike a sportsbook, they don't take the risk of bets. It's a classic case of a blockchain company exaggerating to what extent they are on the blockchain and to what extent they are centralized and just minimally wrapping the blockchain, like when NFTs were actually a URL to an image.
Trades do NOT happen p2p, polymarket functions as an escrow, payments are sent to polymarket accounts and released by polymarket. Each prediction market does have their own contract, but Polymarket staff rules on each event through off-chain (although they are based on the wording used in the specific event).
New events are solely released by polymarket staff (although users can 'suggest' markets).
Theoretically, no. Predictions are resolved through UMA, a decentralized stake-based oracle system, which is at least theoretically decentralized.
Practically, I have no idea how big the overlap between Polymarket staff and UMA stakeholders is.
I ended up losing a $500 bet in Las Vegas on a Soccer game because the game went into extra time. Even though the team I bet on won, the fine print didn't cover it and they took all my money. The betting companies are ruthless and will screw you in every way possible.
What you ran into is a fairly standard term, and you were equally likely to be benefitted by it. If you would have bet that the team tied, and the match went to extra time before deciding on a victor, you would have gotten an unexpected payout.
There's other ways they fuck you over, this just isn't one of them.
I absolutely doubt it. Why would they even need to? Seems like much more risk and work than to just rely on negative expected values, the law of large numbers, and human nature.
1- Having each game have negative odds for the player to begin with. 2- Making it conveniently easy to deposit, but very hard to cash out, at that point compliance and KYC suddenly becomes very important to casinos. 3- Using shady jurisdictions to avoid law enforcement (Curacao, isle of man,etc...) 4- Banning players that find an edge, like in BlackJack. (Was way worse before, using physical coercion) 5- Prosecuting players that find an edge and recovering the money when they lose (see Phil Ivey's case)