Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

If people can threaten journalists for money and get away with it, they will. If people who threaten journalists over money are sent to prison, then after a brief transition period it will mostly stop.

Global market is just the largest gambling venue. Always has been. No amount of "monitoring" and "leagues" will keep people from going Boeing whistleblower way.

"The whole point of sports (in my opinion) is X good thing therefore betting on sports is more acceptable"

Making bets on good things doesn't make the betting better. Just because Polymarket would allow you to bet money that the infant homicide rate goes down next year, doesn't mean it's a good thing to allow betting on.

"Red futures pay out at 2:1!"

"Get your future here on whether the dealer's cards are higher than your own!"

For illegal drugs, people who want them want them a lot, so them being illegal isn't a strong deterrent; although, legalization has still absolutely increased the number of users (i.e. legality was acting as an effective deterrent for some.)

For illegal gambling, sure _some_ people won't be deterred by legality, but most people aren't hardcore gambling addicts; they're just engaging as a form of "harmless fun." They're not looking to go to jail to toss $20 on a sports game.

Maybe prediction markets are net positives, or maybe regulating them will make them so, but banning them does resolve most of their negative effects.

Making it less vulnerable to manipulation would entail exposing less information too. You probably wouldn't be allowed to know the current odds, which makes gambling the same as reading tea leaves.

The problem can indeed be "the asshat contingent", but at the same time, it's not blaming the victim to say that certain situations open up opportunities.

A lot of our laws are in place to prevent people from taking advantage of such opportunities. That's why some laws seem bizarrely harsh, where you can earn more jail time than physically assaulting someone, for a financial crime. Or computer hacking.

The logic is "this is an easy way to break the law", and "we'll have to make the penalty worse to compensate". That's not blaming the victim. In fact, it's an attempt to protect the victim.

This sensible approach is akin to what you'd do if you entered certain 'sketchy' sections of many cities, at 2am. You certainly wouldn't walk around carrying a big box of 100 iphones, and people would say you were nuts to go into that area at 2am and do so.

Yes, the asshats who assaulted you, beat you unconscious, and stole your $100k worth of iphones were wrong. But, you'd certainly be considered a little dim for doing so I'd think. Why?

Because you're ignoring reality for a catch phrase.

Reality is just that.

In a very strict sense, you are right. But people influence other people, and people who wouldn't act this aggressively otherwise find themselves inspired to after taking a bet.

Saying that people who enjoy sport/ gambling "don't have anything to do with people who want to cheat and steal to gain materially from it" is a false dichotomy. It's nature. Ask yourself, would you throw a game in your sport of choice in a hobby league for 100 million dollars or whatever? Why not, no one gets harmed, it is a lot of money, it's not even a proper league. This applies to all levels of real world consequences, some people have a larger apetite for risk.

Many things that people enjoy are banned because it causes harm to other individuals or to society as a whole.

Not a difficult concept to understand.

[1]: For example, they did pay out on a bet over whether Jimmy Carter would attend Trump's 2025 inauguration; he didn't, at least in part because he was dead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Censor

I don't know how you extrapolated that from the parent's comment. It literally said nothing about the cause and effect of this particular event.

Knowing the odds in a prediction market IS a big part of the problem brought up in the linked article though (and the bets themselves). Knowing how much can be made from being right creates an upper-bound on what a financially-rational malicious actor will spend in trying to change the outcome.

This applies to governance as well. Note how there was a bet placed on polymarket on maduros capture mere hours before the raid were conducted, and this has lead to legislation moving forward in effort to combat suspicious prediction market activity based on whitehouse insider knowledge.

https://ritchietorres.house.gov/posts/in-response-to-suspici...

"Iran strikes Israel on March 10" is a difficult outcome to force one way or the other. But "The Times of Israel’s military correspondent or other credible sources reports that Iran strikes Israel on March 10" merely requires intimidating or bribing one journalist. The existence of the bet didn't cause the missile strike or the failed interception. But it did cause a significant, heavily motivated dis-information campaign from people who stood to lose a lot of money.

In a similar way, people fear that prediction markets estimating times of death are equivalent to assassination markets. But murder is an aggressively prosecuted serious crime. It seems that it would be far easier and lower risk to bribe, coerce, pretend to be, or literally be a reporter who got a false obituary published - wait until the "victim" is going to be offline for a few days and can't be contacted to prove they're not dead, trick some tropical country's coast guard into confirming that the victim's yacht exploded offshore, point Polymarket at the obituaries, grab all the crypto, and disappear. If you fail to disappear successfully, your worst crime is publishing a fictional news article/bribing/threatening a journalist. You don't have to risk being in the legal jurisdiction of the victim and getting your hands bloody, you don't even have to be in the same hemisphere: you only need convince the prediction market resolution criteria that something happened.

Scott Alexander wrote about a related issue last month in the colorfully named section [1] "Annals of the Rulescucks", where he described a half dozen scenarios where the outcome may or may not have diverged from the actual event. A bet isn't resolved by eyewitnesses, it's resolved over the Internet through another financial instrument.

[1]: https://www.astralcodexten.com/i/184065379/annals-of-the-rul...

That's in fact the entire argument behind Kalshi: the betting is the means of odds discovery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market

polymarket has an @died tag, which I assume is for betting on people's deaths (I never used the site, and it's currently inaccessible) given apparently someone recently made half a mil betting on Khamenei's death, and a cool billion was traded on bets on the timing of the bombing of iran https://www.npr.org/2026/03/01/nx-s1-5731568/polymarket-trad...

There are a number of so-called "bounty" programs like this for software, I don't know how well any of them work.

Case 1. sam0x17 has read TFA carefully and he is proposing, without spelling it out very well, that the oracle should point at anonymous deciders instead of at vetted outlets with well-known reporters. This is the charitable case, but it seems unlikely, and it carries its own problems.

or

Case 2. sam0x17 goes through his life wielding a giant hammer called "privacy", which he swings about wildly without ever feeling the need to look very closely at any given nail. In fact, he'll even shout "privacy" in the face of a situation where privacy *is the problem*. Goons are hiding behind privacy to threaten a reporter and his family? Let's give them more privacy, that'll fix it!

HN can be very predictable sometimes, but hey, at least nobody ITT has suggested Rust yet.

I personally think that entire social value rationale is actually what makes prediction markets dangerous / socially bad

Seeing the total liquidity, fine, seeing the odds in real time, really really bad, will shape real-world outcomes vs if the market didn't exist once liquidity is high enough

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4726248

On their page "Quincy Institute’s Position on Russia-Ukraine" they say at the very beginning:

> We categorically condemn Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and support U.S. assistance for Ukraine’s self-defense.

https://quincyinst.org/2022/07/12/quincy-institutes-position...

https://www.ncaa.org/news/2026/1/15/media-center-ncaa-urges-...

I linked this elsewhere, but I found Nate Silver's take interesting here. He specifically takes on the problem of player prop bets and says they produce abusive behavior toward players.

https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-nba-gambling-scandal-explai...

I think it's reasonable to research if there's some equivalent to player prop bets in other contexts, like anything that might hinge on what a reporter writes. There's the safety angle and there's also just the "more likely to be corrupted" angle. Like I said in my original comment, I'd just like them to evaluate this.

In contrast:

1. Any number of arbitrary unknown bettors on a could commit violence for reasons you'd never have even anticipated, like whether an event happened at 4:59 or at 5:01.

2. The violence can arrive from all sides, simultaneously. Bettors who like what you wrote are not your allies, and one way to ensure an existing report is not revised is to put the journalist out of commission.

3. The same "prediction" market can act as a criminal coordinator for subcontracting the violence, with a new bet: "Will $JOURNALIST revise $ARTICLE with $CHANGE on or before $TIME?"

For example, "Will Trump talk Macron before 31 of March?". Someone is going to get scammed no matter what: the market rules will set some basic resolution scenarios, but you'll find sources saying it was a letter, or sources several countries and in several languages saying that it was an exchange between their offices/assistants, or smoke signals, or god knows what, while a single US source will say they talked without any further detail, or it is simply reported 1 month after the fact when the money has long moved wallets, and then people vote based on the combination of factoids they've been exposed to. In principle the perverse incentive of voting wrong to earn money will make you lose money on the UMA itself (unless there's a coordinated effort, which has already happened, but IME it's rather rare).

Other markets are indisputable bar black swan events, like, "how many Oscars will X win", if it's 6 it's 6 and no source will say 5 or 7. That makes opening disputes 100% a money-losing option.

In all seriousness, I love G.E.B. how do you use it to judge a given used book store?

If you're an elected lawmaker, and there's a bill on the floor which gives your district $500,000 in hospital funding but there's $10,000,000,000 in volume just on the 'no' side of the bet, how's that going to influence your decision making?

Cool! Since you know who the involved persons are (as you agreed with it being an "open and shut case"), why don't you let the rest of us know, too? And while you're at it, tell the police as well. I'm sure it will help their investigation!

A sane system would just throw him in jail until his illegal betting market implements KYC.

Subpoena Meta for all of the IPs of the account. Subpoena the ISPs for data who was using the IP. Bring in the likely people who were sending the message for questioning.

The question is whether they deem this case important enough, this is a journalist so there is a higher chance but I don't think this specific journalist carry a lot of weight locally

> Prediction Markets you don't have to participate, so no harm done.

Harm: https://www.npr.org/2025/11/13/nx-s1-5605561/college-athlete...

Harm: https://militarnyi.com/en/news/in-november-an-isw-analyst-ma...

Harm: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/05/prediction-markets-merkley-b...

What if there's a prediction market on your life? Would you say you're still "not participating, so no harm done" ?

Did you read the article? It is about a journalist getting death threats from members of a prediction market.

If you’re in that telegram channel, though, I imagine the threats on your life are a lot more credible than the ones discussed in TFA.

Kalshi is worse in a sense that it also accepts fiat payments.

Just because you might agree with the actions and behaviour of your current government enough, that you don't mind them being able to have a hand in your currency, doesn't mean that can't change.

E.g. a Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks?

But yes, something used to work around bad governments, will also be used against good governments. Every legit tool can be also abused.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/10/pr...

The main reason for this is because the interceptors are very scarce and costly.

And polymarket isn’t even the wisdom of crowds lol. At its greatest possible adoption it’s still the wisdom of internet-connected (mostly) white men with time and money to spend on gambling.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nigh...

[0] Edit: Originally wrote "currently", but then I remembered the current White House, whose various crimes are being studiously ignored by the Republican congress.

Regarding meme stocks: I do not see how this should work compared to the "real market", as on the real market you have clear signals when it is useful to enter a position (e.g. institutional attention), but on the meme "stock" market lacking those features it is much much harder to make any money - unfortunately, a lot of young people are trying their fortuna

Answer this and I think you'll discover that "no different" is actually quite different.

Regarding the stock market: nobody sane uses the stock market as an indicator for the future. People predict the stock market, not the other way around.

Prediction markets on terrorist attacks and wars are one step back from that, but similar negative side effects are possible. And, regardless of what people are betting on, the corruption incentive appears where it did not previously, resulting in things like this.

(I don't think there's literally an Iranian missile operator opening Polymarket, taking out a position for "missile lands on Israel", and then pressing the launch button, but ultimately that's what uncensored markets with uncensored movement of money would enable)

2. The reason it is illegal it is beyond obvious: basic economics and game theory explain you how dangerous it is tying real world events with financial incentives.

What is the reader assumed to do about an article that does not bring any proof?

The video of the missile exploding is also easy to fake, but it's an important element behind the reporting.

And how could it be otherwise? You aren't the customer. Ads, or worse, billionaire political patronage, is what pays the bills for media companies. Their authority - the blind trust people have in them - is what makes them valuable for their actual customers. They're not doing science, the last thing they want is to make it easy to check their work (although, maybe I'm too charitable to scientists too here, if they make it easier to check their work it's often the bare minimum, but I digress).

One of the original points of WikiLeaks was to make a kind of journalism where claims were easy to check from the sources. But you can see how controversial that was.

2. The author mentions X replies, those are public, where are they?

I'm gonna stand by my opinion: you deliver information, you provide all the evidence that is sensible to share. That's what journalism, especially investigative journalism does, and OSint can go a long way in helping.

Are you gonna tell me residents in Tel Aviv will be able to hedge their chances of surviving tomorrow?

Nor there's evidence that providing information about the fact that US will strike Venezuela does it either.

What value any of that has? None, especially considering the perverse incentives on the other side of acting on the outcome probability for financial gain which has already happened. US executive insiders have definitely bet on US attacking Venezuela on Polymarket.

You see this as "information discovery", I see it as the fact that I can lobby for dangerous events to happen just for financial gain.

Future markets have some value in some scenarios where you can hedge the outcome.

E.g. a farmer hedging crop prices can de risk his operations.

There is a hedging and the hedge works as insurance.

What's exactly the value of betting on elections or military strikes? What's being hedged?

How can you not see the financial incentives?

We have a long history of regulating both futures, derivatives and betting for very specific reasons.

But now we've relabeled it all as information gathering and price discovery.

How can you not see how the financial incentives here are speedrunning terrible events to happen?

I'm gonna rephrase it like that: would you like for a contract to exist on whether you'll be sent to hospital tomorrow in a crash accident?

Are you gonna tell me: "well, it's information discovery and it's valuable that I can wake up knowing the odds have increased!" while ignoring that there are now people out there financially motivated to make this happen?

Imagine the conversation went like this:

A: "Maybe we shouldn't sacrifice 500 virgins to the Aztec God to predict the harvest next hear?"

B "Why not? Killing virgins to predict the harvest are well calibrated (ie accurate).."

But even so, you're missing my point: even compulsive gamblers don't as a general rule resort to criminal extortion to cover their losses. The interpretation here isn't about the psychology of the criminals, that's sort of speciously true.

It's that the fact that "regular bettors" become "criminals", and are doing so at scale, is a proxy measurement for the amount of leverage in the system.

Because "only bribes and threats" are crimes for which people go to jail, and most "rich people" in the west, even in our authoritarian corruption hellhole timeline, are unwilling to engage in that nonsense because the benefits don't outweigh the risks.

Do I get to demand you cite evidence here, too? Has a wealthy person ever been caught in criminal extortion trying to goose a losing position that they could cover? I don't think that's ever happened, honestly.

I mean, yeah, it's my opinion. My gut says that the "bro" markets are all overleveraged right now, there aren't any easy winning positions at the moment (even AI stock valuations seem to have topped), and now the loans are coming due. Something's going to pop, and we're all looking for proxy measurements. This is one.

I cannot fathom what could be fun about that.

>But we're in an era of less and less responsible government oversight

The era doesn't matter. The incentives are so bad, eventually you'd get a horrible result even with oversight. These markets are prone to this and shouldn't exist.

Like, you pay him a little (<= $20 ?) and he'll announce your game of NBA-2K26 on twitch. He does have a good radio voice. A good way to make a little in the off hours.

So, he got a gig to announce the opening of loot boxes at some show. I think it was Fortnite loot boxes. I guess it gives you the total value of the loot box spree you opened. So, 2 people buy a bunch of loot boxes, then open them up, then whoever has the higher value wins and takes both of the people's total haul.

Sounds like a strange thing to have to announce, but sure the guy says you pay and I'll say.

No, it was gambling for the watchers on polymarket [0]. People were betting on who would have the higher value. 'Like a lot of people' he said.

That's High Card. "A lot of" people were betting on games of High Card, essentially.

You know, shuffle a deck, draw 2 cards, whoever has the higher value one wins. Repeat.

It is the most Degenerate form of gambling out there. There is no skill, no human factor, no nothing. Just pure random numbers.

My lord, what a plague we have unleashed. We'll be dealing with this for decades.

[0] no idea if polymarket and the like do things this quickly, but he said they were gambling somehow with another site off of Twitch and then waved his phone, implying you can access it that easily.

We're already seeing athletes try to fulfill specific bets since it's way easier to rig a play than to rig a whole game. The problem with prediction markets is that people who bet on something small and influenceable have an actual chance to change the outcome of that thing in their favor.

If you just want fun, you don't need to be gambling real money.

What about calling it "gambling" rather then "prediction market"? And then applying the gambling regulation on what is gambling.

People betting on stuff is not exactly a novel idea, the novel thing is how they are avoiding the regulations.

A small market is not at all efficient - it's unlikely to incorporate available information to attain accuracy.

A large market invites manipulation of the event itself - it's auto-corrupting. If ball players make $1M/year and there are easy opportunities to throw a game and make $30M anonymously, then you can expect that the game you're seeing isn't legit.

Arguably (go watch the show 'Billions') this is a big part of how the stock market works as well - insider information is rampant and overwhelming in profitability, and if you believe POSIWID ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha... ) ... you're probably not doing a whole lot of trading as a personal investor based on publicly available information.

The more anonymous the winner is relative to the action taken, the more that bad behavior is incentivized. Back when this was dreamed up, the idea was crypto. But now we have prediction markets that encourage insiders to bet. And an administration that chooses to not prosecute corruption: https://www.wsgr.com/print/v2/content/49042620/Executive-Ord...

The result is a market that incentivizes manipulating wars for private gambling profit. With no need for anonymity, because the investigators have been fired. :-(

You went from a situation where the intent was for coaches to develop young men, teach them about hard work, overcoming obstacles, getting an education and become a part of an alumni base for the rest of your life.

And now it's leaving at the slightest difficulty, constant money dangling to encourage transfers because even if the guy doesn't play for you at least he's not playing for your opponent, followed by a million voices online just telling kids to follow the money. There's no telling how much gambling is playing a part.

It's taken one of the best institutions in our country for developing youth and corrupted it while people go out of their way to not report on the stories of people being hurt by the process.

I am curious - how do you even begin to police such a thing like polymarket? Wouldn't it take enormous resources to do it? Is it even worth it at that scale? They let you bet on anything and everything, right?

I had fun betting $5 here and there

Maybe this is the solution - don't let people bet more than $5. That is small enough for everyone to have some fun and not worth it for insider trading, threatening journalists etc?