There are roughly 2,500 individual companies listed in the US alone with a market cap that exceeds 1 billion dollars. Tesla's market cap is 1.4 trillion - about 1,000 times the size of all prediction markets put together.
In other words, to the extent this incentive is of societal concern, it is not because of prediction markets - that is the tail wagging the dog.
Edit: to be clear I think these markets are a scourge as they currently operate, but not for this reason.
(1) https://predik.io/en/blog/open-interest-mercados-prediccion-...
Notice also that the murder (or tampering with sensors etc.) is the thing you don't want happening in your jurisdiction, so that's the thing you have to prohibit anyway, because even if you ban short selling or prediction markets in your jurisdiction, having them in any other jurisdiction in the world would allow anyone to just place their bet there and you're right back to needing to deter that by punishing the murder rather than the bet.
> Later, a single user would make over $550,000 after betting that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would topple, just moments before his assassination by Israeli forces.
It is entirely possible that there was causality in the forward direction if the bettor had inside information about the assassination operation beforehand.
I knew my previous employer was getting acquired before the markets did -- I had inside information -- but I had no way to make the deal go through.
Revealing inside information through prediction markets is mostly fine. You may think people shouldn't need a financial incentive to do so but clearly they do, and clearly other people are willing to put up with that money for it.
Probably automatable, and simply counting on automated systems and panic selling. Might be possible just with the AI package these days (not even requiring a traditional media article).
This is a ridiculously over-broad claim.
First of all, prediction markets shift incentives in a pernicious way; they don't magically erase or override all pre-existing incentive structures.
And secondly, professional athletes of all stripes appear to be receiving a lot more threats of violence from gamblers (including "prediction market traders") than they were a few years ago.
'Decapitated bodies, death threats, that's our daily life': Tennis players, helpless targets of angry gamblers [ https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/12/08/decapita... ]
https://www.wtatennis.com/news/4288181/wta-and-itf-release-a...
When the vice industry kept gamblers mainly confined to their own community, it was ugly enough (see the “people with pipes” debt collection trope you refer to). I don’t care too much about how people get their jollies. But I don’t see much good in letting vice behaviors and motivations slop out onto the wider world uninvited.
To your question, then: I’d draw the moral line at “don’t base forecasting gambles on any indicator produced by someone who didn’t agree to be used that way.” If I—as the entity or constituency who incurs the cost to produce an indicator—want to hire the prediction market to run bets on it at arms’ length from me, fine. If not, no.
The burden should be on the gambling interests to prove they’re contributing value to a specific domain, not on everyone else in every domain to prove gambling’s specific negative externalities.
Quite likely it has already happened.
There's been an enormous amount of betting on various military strikes by the Trump administration, much of which looks like insider trading.
Almost certainly there have been insiders with money on the line who were financially motivated to launch lethal attacks, which they might have otherwise paused or delayed.
It's much more effective to make the decision first and the bet second.
Your decision maker is now going to make decisions differently than they would if they hadn’t made the bet, due to the financial incentive. It hopefully won’t be blatant, but they’re going to be more committed to the original decision.
What did I say that contradicts this?
> Why almost certainly?
Because I haven't seen any clear reporting with evidence documented down to the level of individual decision-making.
I'm pointing out that the version where the market causes the decision is the much less effective way to do things. So I don't think it's so certain to have happened.
When the decision comes first it's still a problem but it's a very different problem.
I should make this explicit, I guess: If you make the decisions before betting, you don't really care what the market says beforehand, you'll make plenty of money either way.
> the version where the market influences the decision is the much less effective way to do things.
Okay, so two possible scenarios: "market influences decision" and "decision influences market."
1. Polymarket offers a contract called something like: "Will the US launch any lethal boat strikes in the Caribbean on April 30, 2026?" A commander of a drone unit for the US military bets $500 on "yes". At 11:51pm on April 30, he's trying to decide whether or not to issue an order to fire on a boat, or to wait 15 minutes for better visual identification of the target. As a result of his bet on Polymarket, he's strongly incentivized to issue the order right now.
2. It's 11:51pm on April 30. A commander of a drone unit for the US military is reviewing images of a potential target boat. He idly opens a browser tab to Polymarket. Lo and behold, he sees that the odds of "Will the US launch any lethal boat strikes in the Caribbean on April 30, 2026?" are at only 0.3%. He's strongly incentivized to issue an order to strike right now and to quickly buy that Polymarket contract before news of the strike breaks.
Does it matter which of these two scenarios might actually be taking place? I don't think so.
Also there's plenty of things that are unlikely because they're specific, not because they're irrational. Things happening in specific date ranges are an easy one.
It's going to happen.
It'll happy by proxy too. When they figure 90% of Tesla's or SpaceX's valuation is tied to Elon, suddenly he becomes your mark.