> No fortune 500 CEO is going to postpone a product launch so they can win $5,000 on polymarket
They would win a lot more than a trivial amount by taking adverse positions, no? Seems like you're making up your own hypothetical
They would win a lot more than a trivial amount by taking adverse positions, no? Seems like you're making up your own hypothetical
Think of it like kids betting pennies what subject the teacher will open with the next day. The teacher doesn't care about winning $0.89, but the kids do.
Nobody's making millions betting on things like the weather.
So what's the point of polymarket, then? If at best we get "negligible" "insiderism", how is it that we are supposed to be benefitting from this as a society the way OP and others insist that revealing insider preferences "would"
An example would be the latest presidential election, where professional pollsters at them at almost 50/50, but the prediction markets had trump by a landslide. He went on to win even the popular vote.
The benefit comes to people who don't even participate, and just take notes.
Trump didn't win by a landslide and he barely won the popular vote...
>The benefit comes to people who don't even participate, and just take notes.
Praying someone has an example besides the election, to which it seems to have made absolutely no difference at all
As for the election, a Republican winning the popular vote by a couple million can't be called a landslide in nominal terms, but it is in terms of normal results. The DNC currently completely controls California and New York. After those 2 states alone Trump was down 7 million votes in 2020. The rest of the states tend to be either very small or relatively competitive. To make up the popular vote amongst them requires a very large edge. Polymarket had Trump as a 2:1 favorite the day before the election, and he would indeed go on to win every single swing state. The corporate media and their associated pollsters had Harris ahead.
> As for the election, a Republican winning the popular vote by a couple million can't be called a landslide in nominal terms, but it is in terms of normal results. The DNC currently completely controls California and New York. After those 2 states alone Trump was down 7 million votes in 2020. The rest of the states tend to be either very small or relatively competitive. To make up the popular vote amongst them requires a very large edge. Polymarket had Trump as a 2:1 favorite the day before the election, and he would indeed go on to win every single swing state.
And the numbers were actually much more closer to what the national media outlets reported... so again, what is the value of the "information" on polymarket? All it reflected was that there were a couple of whales that were betting hard for Trump. The results did not remotely reflect the polymarket odds at all as you concede. I'm not sure how you think that doesn't end the conversation, but it seems to be more of a political point you are making that is divorced from the reality of the numbers reported.
> But providing accurate odds on a wide array of topics isn't yelling fire in a crowded theater and the results of the election did reflect the polymarket odds.
I didn't say they were. You are making the broad meaningless distinction of implying that the "information" provided by "prediction markets" has any value. If it does not have value, what is the point of having the markets?
>Perhaps I don't know what you mean by "make a difference."
If the availability of the information makes no difference societally, then what is the value of the information? I'm not sure if you are being so obtuse on purpose, or what. But you keep saying it provides information... so what? As I pointed out... white noise is information.
> and the results of the election did reflect the polymarket odds
No they did not. Trump did not win by twice as much and certainly did not in the popular vote.
Polymarket's accuracy (as defined by an event corresponding with the majority position) is 90% a month out from an event, and 94% 4 hours out from an event. I suspect a weighted analysis (e.g. a 90% event should happen 9 of 10 times, not 100%) would show even better results. That is dramatically higher than you get from things like pollsters, and it's all freely available to the public.
Then there is also the fact that the power of the people determining the outcome is inversely proportional to their care about betting markets.
Put this together and you get "The larger the size of the market, the less the people who can single handily swing it care about doing so".
If you are someone who can command hundreds of thousands of people to bet millions for or against you, you almost certainly lose more than you would gain by gaming it.
Mind you the market also naturally prices in this risk of the one person going rogue and taking them winnings for themselves. You will never find a market for "WarmWash will post nothing for 3 days straight on HN" because no one will take the other side of it.
I have a bot betting on a handful of what I consider (so far) markets that are impossible to cheat (bar UMA shenanigans): nobody has any control over the outcomes, previous knowledge is very limited. It makes some money, but looking at the depth, the volume, and my metrics, even being the fastest 100% of the time without worrying about bankroll, one of them would gimme roughly $1-2k a week.