I was just scammed by Polymarket | Hacker News Reader

I was just scammed by Polymarket

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https://xcancel.com/willo2_Poly/status/2061640812132516321

FTFA:

> I supported Polymarket for years because I believed they represented crypto values. > > In fact, their platform is simply another bucketshop where if you bet too much, you're going to get cleaned.

Please, tell me more about these “crypto values”. Are they values like, “no regulations,” “rug pulls,” “funding ransomware”?

Huh. Crypto values always have been that code is law. In the case of this prediction market, the resolution is not strictly controlled by code. It is not a decentralized system and it does not espouse crypto values.

It sounds like they were scammed, and I feel bad for them. But they probably don’t realize how funny this comment is.

> I supported Polymarket for years because I believed they represented crypto values.

Despite having a lot of scammers and bad actors, crypto does have an underlying ethos that attracts a lot of people. And that ethos is one of removing intermediaries, robust cryptographic security, open and unrestricted participation for all, and letting people have as much financial freedom as possible.

A lot of us still fight to push those values forward.

I mean, the main ethos of crypto is 'antisocial' (code is law, no intermediary, circumventing laws), which first drew people like younger me and other people 'on the spectrum' with socializing issues, as well as a lot of scammers and grifters.

Code being law is the ultimate social justice. This is not antisocial; it is maximally social at a deeper level. In much of the world, code not being law is what opens the door to the most corruption, also in this example. Had the prediction market actually have been engineered to be driven by code, the bet would have resolved on its own. It should teach us to strive toward an actual decentralized rule-based market.

I use to love "code is law" when i was an engineering student. Then i worked in the real world, and discovered how dumb i was. Code is code, it's flawed, it's bugged, it's old and very hard to update to account for new reality, it cannot account for all edgecase in projects with much easier rules than "law", and ultimately, an unaccountable engineer with no real stakes in the result (except maybe employment, which until 2024 was _not_ a real stake) has the last word.

The shoddy "engineering" that you're used to in the business world is not actually proper engineering; it never was.

Consider cryptocurrencies and smart contracts -- they work perfectly fine with millions of transactions daily, all executed by perfectly correct code -- that's real engineering. Mature programming languages also are good examples of real engineering.

Of course everything needs updates to account for edge cases, but tackling these correctly only makes the engineering more sound, not less sound.

In the real world, the selective application of law commonly is more likely to take away rights than to grant rights.

As for those on 'the spectrum', as per today's news, it may be interesting to know that a cause of it could be copper deficiency during early brain development: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48377066

Polymarket is not decentralized or rule-driven, and it does not represent crypto values. The crypto community has a long way to go in actually making a prediction market that is rule-driven and not subject to the whims of corrupt staff.

> a multi billion dollar casino with rules that can change and you have no option to legally fight it

Why is there no way to legally fight this? Is polymarket too de-centralized? Or incorporated in a jurisdiction where that's not feasible? Or are "you can't sue us" ToS actually enforceable here?

Doesn't really track, polymarket can be sued just like anyone else. It might be prohibitively expensive for a small individual, but that's no different from wanting to sue Apple either.

The issue is that the prediction market is not decentralized, that the bet resolution is not actually controlled by code.

For the initial position, he has a case.

Then he kept playing a market that was already fully decided, when the only step left was to resolve the outcome. I believe the relevant adage here is "You can't cheat an honest man."

With that said, any trades after a market has concluded but before it is officially resolved should be voided. The market should close at the end of the time window (or the time of the resolving announcement, if that's the relevant trigger point).

It’s a terrible adage. There are thousands of ways to cheat honest people that place bets. For example, they definitely cheated everyone that only placed bets before June.

>any trades after a market has concluded but before it is officially resolved should be voided

Is that not how it is? I'm not really following the thread. So is polymarket paying out on the initial position, i.e., the one taken before the window closed, and not on the position after it was a foregone conclusion? Or was the whole position reversed?

OK, on rereading, it seems like the polymarket stance is that the confirmation was not available by the deadline. Fine. But the whole "resolved to no" doesn't make sense. Leaving aside the after-the-fact bet, this is just a terrible structure. The whole thing should unwound and everyone who participated should be reverted.

All gambling is a scam. If you are expecting fairness in gambling you are engaged in magical thinking.

zero sympathy.

how did we went from being all vocally aware that HFT is a scam that we will never get into, to falling to the lowest denominations of scams just because you can be the patso?

Not surprising if true. The industry is full of immoral douches who think they are above being regulated, so of course it's not surprising when they behave unethically.

caveat emptor

I don't like to be glib but this is literally playing stupid games.

As a non-US-resident (and full disclaimer - someone who believes gambling should be in the same regulation bracket as smoking), honestly it looks like the US have collectively lost their minds with Polymarket.

Why do you think that? 99% of Americans have probably never even heard of it.

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