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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9908 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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Why isn't Polymarket a darknet site that runs on Monero? Why is it run by that kid with the afro? What does he add to it? Expertise in making CRUD slop? Did he make the decision to do this? All of it seems so poorly done and thought out. The economy is fake; people will literally do anything but meritocracy.

While polymarket’s current users are more likely than average to understand how to use a VPN and crypto, thats a… niche demographic, and I doubt poly market doesn’t want to grow to people who want to bet in American dollars on their work computer when they’re theoretically in a meeting.

The normie is a ball and chain around our feet.

Why isn't Polymarket a darknet site that runs on Monero?

Because it wants to be a successful business that could eventually make lots of money for the owners.

Why is it run by that kid with the afro? What does he add to it?

He is the founder, he created it. He is the world's youngest self-made billionaire so clearly he's added a lot.

Did he make the decision to do this?

It's possible he personally did, but he might not be that directly involved in most individual markets either. Even if he did personally sign on it, he has a bunch of lawyers and management types advising him as well so maybe he felt it would cause too much legal hassle (refer back to them wanting to be a successful business).

He is the world's youngest self-made billionaire so clearly he's added a lot.

Prediction Market valuation has a lot more to do with the regulated existing gambling industry being stuck in a bit of a quagmire due to state by state licensing and this being a solid potential runaround to get into states and age-groups that aren't otherwise available.

Sounds like he's made something quite valuable then, a workaround for a major industry that has been regulated to hell and back by big government.

Yeah but this is a bit of a deranged cycle.

'Offer new gambling product that isn't currently covered by legislative grounds, tax/who can bet in particular' -> 'Figure out how to bring the super popular bits from existing apex gambling products like Sportsbetting, Slots Machine and Casino into your new gambling product using the loophole' -> 'Gradually crank your new product from 90% 'new innovative loophole' to 10% 'new innovative loophole' as people enjoy the perfect ed apex gambling products' -> 'Eventually submit to new regulations, frequently involving sanding off the edges/uniqueness of the original thing that made your product at all different. Also get hit with similar levels of taxation since the govt is always gonna squeeze gambling, so you've once again reinvented the wheel'.

I've worked all across the gambling industry. This cycle plays out every 5-10 years consistently. DFS & Social Casino were the prior big USA entrants. Prediction Markets are the latest incarnation, and are honestly even worse since 'exchange betting' wasn't even a good end-result and has essentially been dying off in other geos for decades now. Polymarket and Kalshi will and are in the process of slowly killing their non-sports offerings since they're controversial, hard to price, hard to create rules for and tend to generate bad optics.

Yeah but the end state here is this also getting brutally regulated. It's how this industry works. It's just a shame that a lot of people are arguing in favor of prediction markets on vague 'I'm a rationalist and like the idea of superforecasters' grounds when they don't get that it's actually a machine for 18 year olds and Texans betting Football

How does the vig compare to Fanduel, etc? I'm guessing Polymarket sports betting takes a much smaller rake than the legal stuff labeled as gambling.

Yeah but the end state here is this also getting brutally regulated. It's how this industry works.

Yes most likely but in the meantime people are expecting tons of money from it.

Indeed,

For my part I continue to maintain that it is not only morally and logically incoherent, but economically irresponsible to treat prediction markets any differently from how we would treat betting on a horse race or a ball game.

I strongly dislike gambling. Especially sports betting. Im usually a libertarian/"let people enjoy things" kind of person but society is clearly barely able to handle online gambling, and it's fucking with young men especially. I hate it.

However, the prediction markets have found a good straddle, and I would like you to try and draw a line. How do you separate gambling from futures contracts/forwards? Where do we draw the line? It's really hard. Obviously from a "know it when you see it" perspective, "who will win the hockey game" does not provide the same economic benefit as "I would like to lock in the price of wheat 6 months from now".

But, in a world where we banned all sports/online gambling but Robin Hood allowed trading of fractional wheat forwards, and all the men aged 20-30 started being degens in the wheat futures market, what do we do?

It's worse than that, because it also allows insider trading on literally anything you can stand up a market for, and you can also use them to directly incentivize specific behaviors without individually bribing someone or having a causal link back to the act to the person who funded it. And people complained about stochastic terrorism!

Jim Bell spent years in jail for promoting this idea.

He is the founder, he created it. He is the world's youngest self-made billionaire so clearly he's added a lot.

Circular argument. Was it necessary to line his pockets? What good comes of it? I doubt it.

Because it wants to be a successful business that could eventually make lots of money for the owners.

Right. Instead of a good website that can run honest prediction markets. Great.

Circular argument. Was it necessary to line his pockets? What good comes of it? I doubt it.

Just because you don't see a value doesn't mean there isn't one. I don't care about going to concerts but I can understand that other people do and that's why the industry makes tons of money off of it. I don't like soccer, but I understand that lots of the world does and that's why they make tons of money.

Right. Instead of a good website that can run honest prediction markets. Great.

This might be shocking to learn but people generally like to have money. And most things in the world get done because people want money to trade with, not just to do "good honest work".

This might be shocking to learn but people generally like to have money. And most things in the world get done because people want money to trade with, not just to do "good honest work".

So greedy people who like to scam instead of doing quality work and letting money come along?

Just because you don't see a value doesn't mean there isn't one. I don't care about going to concerts but I can understand that other people do and that's why the industry makes tons of money off of it. I don't like soccer, but I understand that lots of the world does and that's why they make tons of money.

Circular argument. If anyone makes money, it's legitimate. What about Bernie Madoff? Geez.

If anyone makes money, by providing a service that clearly has both utility and high demand, it's legitimate

Bernie Madoff was not providing a service, Polymarket is

Gambling has no utility.

Unlike your theoretical darknet version, Polymarket actually has a reputation for reliably paying out. For all crypto's fancy talk of solving trust with escrow and game theory, we've still yet to find any actual solutions for allowing anonymous parties to handle huge amounts of other people's money that works better than the US legal system.

I mean it's mostly defi contracts and there's a plethora of massive shitfights on Polymarket about the UMA resolving things in unsatisfactory ways and/or people sniping directionally correct resolutions via hitting on asterisks in the market rule. Vast majority of the money being 'traded' on PMs right now is sports contracts which is more about 'Let's get Texans and Californians betting when their actual legalization is probably not happening 'than it is about any rationalist true price signals.

Silk Road, Alphabay, and some others had good reputations for paying out. I'm sure there's something up now like that that pays out reliably, although I wouldn't know.

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