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Polymarket removes prediction market on when the downed F-15 pilots would be rescued.
Yesterday, a two-seater USAF F-15E was shot down over Iran. One of the crew members was successfully rescued. The other is still unaccounted for. This was big news in the United States, and probably across the whole world.
Polymarket, being Polymarket, put up a prediction market on when the pilots would be rescued. United States service members are a sacred class in our society, and so this market got a lot of heat, including from congresspeople.
Polymarket responded by immediately removing the market, citing “integrity standards”.
Of course, the market doesn’t violate Polymarket’s integrity standards. No specific policy or clause is cited. Anyone browsing the “geopolitics” section on Polymarket knows that war markets are allowed. They even provide a helpful note on Middle East conflict markets to let you know what their position is:
It goes without saying that removing the pilot rescue market flies in the face of the principles stated above. Maybe Polymarket never believed in them, and markets on foreign wars involving Eastern Europeans and Middle Easterners was a cynical way to get eyes on their website.
So if the stated rules are fake, then what is the real rule? I don’t think it is, “respect American servicemen,” exactly. I suspect that, “do not jeopardize American combat operations,” is a much better fit for what is and is not allowed in a de facto sense.
this is such bullshit. Kalshi did the same thing about Khomeini's death. Because he died instead of vacating, the trades were voided even though his death had the same outcome. Markets "work" because there are rules that everyone agrees on ahead of time. When these rules are changed arbitrarily when money is at stake then people lose confidence in markets. Also, there is not even anything disrespectful about this. A betting market does not imply people do not want him to be found. It's possible to be pessimistic about an outcome in the short-term, while still hoping for an ultimately positive outcome. They may as well just put a huge disclaimer on their site "we reserve the right to void any market for any reason we deem fit"
This is the arbitrary moral posturing that makes people hate and distrust "big tech "companies. But this is where money is at stake. These prediction a markets are huge, with billions in funding. They can afford to take a stand. Caving to moralistic pressure will mean users losing trust in them.
Khomeini one was more absurd IMO since it also raised a bunch of edgecases (like what if he's say injured badly by drone strike and doesn't die but relinquishes the position) and even puts into doubt stuff like if I'm betting into a market and somebody randomly gets taken by a traffic accident or heart attack.
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Agreed, this is absolute total bullshit, both the Khomeini market and this pilot rescue market. If you want to take a policy decision that no markets are allowed on people dying (which I'd agree is a sensible policy) then you do it by refusing such markets permission to be set up in the first place, not retroactively voiding them. This breaks people's chains of trades where they attempt to squeeze out edge from multiple correlated contracts and also leads to higher spreads and more inefficient markets because now both buyers and sellers have to price in the risk that the market will get voided when quoting prices.
I can understand why people dislike markets on people's deaths (theoretically it can be used to pay for contract killings in a totally decentralized way) and why we might not want to allow them, but what's the reason to remove the market on the missing pilot?
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Prediction markets are a casino in a top hat and a monocle, but with added opportunities for insider trading. Once they grew beyond an niche thing for eccentric techies, it was always going to turn out this way.
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This is literally every sports betting company. They can ban you if you win too much.
I actually think its such bullshit. If you want to provide bets and be a market maker, you should have to take the wins as well as the losses. Someone is beating your odds? Get better at providing odds or close up shop.
You're betting against other people though. The marketplace/exchange doesn't care how much you win.
Not polymarket sports betting
Draft kings sports betting
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Having worked at betting exchanges before you kinda don't want people who win too heavily for ecosystem maintenance. Generally that's gonna impact result knowers most of all, whether inside information or latency
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Minimum requirement all gambling companies should be required to adhere to.
It's funny since they could but they'd have to dramatically pare back the menu. So majority of people who complain about limits are picking off relatively niche markets which are only offered due to being able to limit counterparties
Ok, make them pare back the menu, they won't be making as much money then with their reduced offering which naturally gives them an incentive to get better at pricing their odds so they can access more markets. Accurate gambling odds provide benefits to third parties who can now use them to see what the probability of some future event is. It's the minimum societal good which we should expect from these companies in return fr the societal harm thry cause.
I agree the menu is bloated way beyond sanity by the arms race between the majors (though most of the liquidity still goes to the liquid markets funnily enough). Accurate gambling odds vis a vis the PM thing is a completely different thing since the big PMs are barely moving any money on their original political markets.
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Isn't that basically what the insurance companies are doing now whey Force Majeure? But yes, i agree that sites like Polymarket are at a pretty low level of respectability right now. Its like gambling in some underground mafia-owned casino.
Force majeure is pretty rare and reserved for exceptional circumstances, not that they don't want to pay on a policy. If that's the case, they'll usually find another reason not to pay.
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Unilateral declarations of Force Majeure (or Frustration, depending on exactly which class of rules governing the insurance contract you're talking about) can usually be challenged by the other party under arbitration or via litigation where the declaring party risks being under a very serious breach of contract if the case goes against them, hence insurers and others have strong reasons to not declare Force Majeure unless something really serious has happened to the point where they're reasonably convinced that an independent arbitration body would agree there actually was a Force Majeure. None of that exists for these prediction markets.
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