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Notes -
...same with a bank.
Incidentally, this is the exact reason Kalshi pays interest on money they hold for you, so you aren't losing out (much) by stashing cash there.
https://news.kalshi.com/p/interest-cash-open-positions
In this case, the 'chances' of the payout and the size of it are pretty hard to miss, though.
The incentives run both ways, actually.
If there's an outcome you really WANT to make happen because it pays out immensely for you, you can open up an extremely large position against it happening, in hopes that someone with the ability to influence the outcome will see the opportunity and act on it.
This is how 'assassination' markets would work, in practice, speaking of perverse incentives.
"I bet 1 million dollars on a 99% chance that [Victim] will be alive one month from now."
Potential assassin sees this, buys the other side of the bet, then goes and kills the target.
But of course, lets say [Victim] notices the bet, hires on more security (who are compensated with shares of the "Alive" side of the market, they only get paid if he lives), and bets heavily on his own survival.
Who wins the bet? Well, its the skill and motivation of the assassin vs. the skill and motivation of the security team, I guess. An extremely confident security team will buy more contracts heavily in favor of their guy's survival. Which means the prediction market should settle on something like an 'accurate' likelihood of the person being alive when the contract terminates.
But of course we probably DO want to ban these sorts of markets. Question is whether we also want to ban markets that are too close a proxy for them.
No, not the same as with a bank. The bank you see, is always going to owe you back what you paid in, even if getting what you are owed is a separate question.
All I knew of Kalshi prior to clicking your link was those obnoxious AI-generated commercials they've been spewing all over Monday Night Football wherein the Wright Flyer is portrayed as a WWI style bi-plane.
From the looks of it they're trying to style themselves as a online bank/payment app as a means of trying get around existing gambling regulations. The blog post you linked claims zero transaction fees, but the fee-schedule for 2025 posted on their main website would seem to contradict that claim. If the blog article is honest and they really are both paying interest and not charging fees that just begs the question "Where's the Vig?", What is Kalshi's revenue model? How are they paying for all those prime-time ad-slots? I'm not sure exactly what their game is, but something smells off.
Incentives running both ways is not a good reason to amplify and encourage them.
I'm just saying, in binary outcome markets... if your complaint is "This creates an incentive to do X!" it necessarily ALSO creates an incentive to do NOT X, since there's people on both sides of the bet who stand to win if the event does or doesn't occur.
This is why the concept of 'Futarchy' (if Prediction markets REALLY gain acceptance) would function.
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