I don’t understand how this isn’t an immediate open and shut case for the police, assuming certain facts are verified independently. At the point that you’re making death threats to strangers you should be removed from civil society.
Polymarket accounts are more-or-less just a crypto address.
Whatsapp accounts are somewhat easier to link to a real identity, but still not hard to at least obscure a bit.
The arm of the law struggles to reach across borders, and on the internet, it's quite plausible all those involved are in different jurisdictions.
A sane system would just throw him in jail until his illegal betting market implements KYC.
<facepalm>
A capricious system that interprets based on whim, politics and influence is a large part of how we got here.
People like this and their less than moral path in which they further their endeavors succeed specifically because of this environment.
Polymarket is basically a platform to monetize petty stuff while also being able to monetize bad stuff. There is soooo much pressure to monetize bad stuff that once you poke a hole it's an uncontrolled leak. Polymarket recognized this, used it to scale, and then wisely used that money to get the legitimization and buy in that they needed to make the system (capriciously) say "this is fine for now you can keep going".
They basically pulled a "actually Mr. Banker, I owe you so much money that it's your problem" but for insider information. The other metaphor you could use if people with a steady supply of prescription opioids don't turn to street drugs.
If CISOs can have personal liability for data breaches, CEOs can have personal liability for intentionally creating an illegal platform.
Instead we reward these people with billions for degrading the fabric of society.
Besides that I'm all for strict personal liability for the execs and the investors of the companies they invest in. That's of course the exact opposite of the way it works right now but that actually institutionalized externalization, one of the key issues with why the world is the mess that it is.
Corporations are fine, limited liability corporations are not, I'm becoming more and more convinced that they are in fact the root of all evil because they allow the erection of financial 'diodes' that allow you to partition your stash from your liabilities and the two should always be linked. They are a very effective mechanism to allow people to screw over society and claim it's all perfectly legal.
Where’s this, now?
Do you seriously think fraudulent Xbox live transactions are on the same level of the heinous insider trading going on in betting markets?
Or do you just think C-suite should be legally immune from accountability overall?
Polymarket's decentralized and anonymous nature was an intentional choice by its creator precisely because it enables illegal, anonymous transactions.
It's the responsibility of the lawmakers to make them illegal or force them to do kyc.
If you fantasize about China or Russia way of doing things you should move there.
Anybody can send anonymous threats, that has nothing to do with any betting company, unless they are sent through that platform.
Edit: Personally I think betting on war is immoral and should be condemned by all sane people, but saying that everything needs 100% safety and 100% no harm is very naive.
If they have built a thing they can't maintain that isn't bully for them and we should feel sorry that their best efforts aren't working well enough - it's proof that that thing (or at least the way they built that thing) isn't feasible.
That seems to be assuming a world where CEOs actually face meaningful consequences and that feels like a good start.
I think discouraging investment is the opposite of what leads to a prosperous society. We'll just have a bunch of rich landlord sitting on piles of cash, afraid to give it to anyone because the risk of any jail time at all is probably too high for most.
And that doesn't even account for non-institutional investors. Can you imagine putting people in jail because of the meme stock they bought on Robin Hood?
why do all NBA players seem so tall?
The type of person at the top of a hierarchical system is always a direct reflection of its play rules. In late-stage internet capitalism you win by being the most unhinged and un-emphatic. Today's young adults grew up on twitter, 4chan, video game gambling and with influencers telling them that the only thing that matters is material wealth and status. This culture has moved more and more into the mainstream in the last decade.
This isn't a thing.
Capitalism is just capitalism.
The effects and consequences of capitalism under feudalism or the age of slavery is, for example, fundamentally different from capitalism under a freer modern democracy. A slave or serf did not have the opportunities of capitalism, which changes how the system behaves and its effects.
The term "capitalism" becomes kind of meaningless, because it just describes a broad set of mechanisms. In the case of the question in this thread it is much more descriptive to include the context of which it exists within.
Are you confusing capitalism with class society in general? Yes, class society exists since the neolithic revolution. Those economic systems had barely anything in common with capitalism though. Even medieval feudalism is very different.
And yes, late stage capitalism is a term. It was coined by Lenin in his book about Imperialism. You might not agree with the term but that doesn't mean it is not real.
I think it is very obvious that 20th and 21st century monopoly capitalism is qualitatively different to 18th and 19th century free market capitalism.
> Capitalism is just capitalism.
If you want to just debate the validity of the specific term “late stage capitalism” then sure go ahead, but that’s not all you did in your prior comment. Capitalism comes in many forms and variations.
That being said, late stage capitalism is such a common term now that to say “it isn’t a thing“ feels more like something you feel should be the case than anything else. The fact that everyone in this conversation is able to understand the phrase without anyone needing to explain it is pretty indicative of that.
If CISOs can be held criminally liable for data breaches, the rest of C-suite can be held criminally liable for their own decisions as well.
In this case, the guy knowingly operates a betting market that illegally does not require KYC.
It's not illegal where he is. You can't go around arresting people in other countries just because they don't follow your country's law.
This is a hackneyed neoliberal fundamentalist myth.
If power is concentrated anywhere, it should only ever be in government - where it's answerable to the public electorally.
Governments become corrupt when they are weak, and turn to serving private interests rather than the public they represent.
Corruption in general is far more prolific and fruitful where government is weak (the neoliberal ideal) - which is one of the reasons corrupt private actors look to weaken government - for instance by undermining public trust in it or lobbying for its parasitization by private entities. Or by stuffing their acolytes minds with foolish neoliberal fundamentalist myths.
"If power is concentrated anywhere..." The libertarian ideal is that it is not concentrated anywhere, because power corrupts. Maybe neoliberals want power concentrated in some entity that isn't government, and that's what you are arguing against? I guess I better do a little research on this new (to me at least) word
loads of banks all over the world now demands to know what you plan to spend the money on just to withdraw a bit cash. Some will even deny you saying "well.. you shouldnt buy a new car anyway". all the KYC shit. how about just no?
A world in which these people bet on heinous things while insider trading/influencing those very things.
Privacy in gambling or insider trading is not a constitutional right.
"Lack of regulation clarity on your part does not constitute a crime on mine". Why is that not a valid defence?
“In most jurisdictions, death threats are a serious type of criminal offence” [1].
It would make more sense to campaign for better background checks on WhatsApp. A case can be made that a chat system with discoverable identities should have better safeguards. If the incentive to make a threat is financial gain rather than a pure desire to kill, restricting the means in which a threat can even be made (or identifying the participants) would help silence the noise and give actionable insights to law enforcment.
I’m generally opposed to KYC and similar measures, but if a platform is already collecting massive amounts of user data, it should at least use that data to help protect the people who become vulnerable because of it.
There is a fundamental architectural problem here with no easy band-aid fix, and the companies involved are desperate to deny it because their founders have personal fortunes riding on it.
The lunacy of the mysticism of money.
There's nothing sane about KYC, it's a fundamental assault on the right to financial privacy. And the people with power can always bypass it; only the little people suffer.
2 points - 1) “credible” is carrying a lot of water in that statement, and 2) your implication is that any activity which could eventually or conceivably involve a lunatic making a death threat is not compatible with any level of privacy.
The second is incredibly disturbing - people have made death threats over E2E encrypted chat channels, therefore we must remove any privacy built in to such a model?
Because no ethical person would accumulate a billion dollars. An ethical person would share the wealth they're creating with those around them instead of hording that wealth.
What can you do with 100 million that you couldn't do with 10?
Those investors don't want to give /you/ money, they want to give the billionaire money.
Polymarket US is starting to roll out in the US and other countries where Polymarket cannot operate, but that's a separate company and they do abide by KYC laws similar to Kalshi.
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.
You're also assuming Ethereum-clone chains work the same way as Bitcoin. They do not. An Ethereum wallet has a single long-term identity.
I assume the author would have noted in his blog post if the Hebrew used in making the threats came across as non-native or non-fluent.
Machine translation is really good these days, but I still think there are some "tells" for a truly vernacular and local command of a language.
So it's common and hard to prosecute because the person threatening is most likely in another country.
Just a pedantic, nit pick: you said "should be removed from civil society" but I think you just mean "removed from society" as in prosecuted and imprisoned.
"Civil society" has a specific meaning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society
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!
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