It depends on the market of course. In looking it up the only markets that have ever come even close to that sort of payout are things like presidential elections where the risks of insiderism or gaming are negligible, and there's extremely large public interest in it.
Nobody's making millions betting on things like the weather.
>where the risks of insiderism or gaming are negligible, and there's extremely large public interest in it.
So what's the point of polymarket, then? If at best we get "negligible" "insiderism", how is it that we are supposed to be benefitting from this as a society the way OP and others insist that revealing insider preferences "would"
Because it's the most effective tool we know of for surfacing the true odds of something (Which also includes the fact that insiders will place outsized bets to move the needle towards the truth.)
An example would be the latest presidential election, where professional pollsters at them at almost 50/50, but the prediction markets had trump by a landslide. He went on to win even the popular vote.
The benefit comes to people who don't even participate, and just take notes.
>An example would be the latest presidential election, where professional pollsters at them at almost 50/50, but the prediction markets had trump by a landslide. He went on to win even the popular vote.
Trump didn't win by a landslide and he barely won the popular vote...
>The benefit comes to people who don't even participate, and just take notes.
Praying someone has an example besides the election, to which it seems to have made absolutely no difference at all
It's not supposed to make a difference but to provide information to people, which it does a great job of. Go browse Polymarket and the odds they lay on most of everything are about as close as one can get as to the "real" odds of that thing. They're essentially like a superhuman pollster. I'm a big fan of them but have not placed a single bet. It's simply that if you want to see what's happening in the world, a browse of their front page is way more informative than browsing a e.g. news website, especially in modern times.
As for the election, a Republican winning the popular vote by a couple million can't be called a landslide in nominal terms, but it is in terms of normal results. The DNC currently completely controls California and New York. After those 2 states alone Trump was down 7 million votes in 2020. The rest of the states tend to be either very small or relatively competitive. To make up the popular vote amongst them requires a very large edge. Polymarket had Trump as a 2:1 favorite the day before the election, and he would indeed go on to win every single swing state. The corporate media and their associated pollsters had Harris ahead.
If the information does not make a difference, what is the point of the information? White noise is "information". Yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre is "information". What is the point?
> As for the election, a Republican winning the popular vote by a couple million can't be called a landslide in nominal terms, but it is in terms of normal results. The DNC currently completely controls California and New York. After those 2 states alone Trump was down 7 million votes in 2020. The rest of the states tend to be either very small or relatively competitive. To make up the popular vote amongst them requires a very large edge. Polymarket had Trump as a 2:1 favorite the day before the election, and he would indeed go on to win every single swing state.
And the numbers were actually much more closer to what the national media outlets reported... so again, what is the value of the "information" on polymarket? All it reflected was that there were a couple of whales that were betting hard for Trump. The results did not remotely reflect the polymarket odds at all as you concede. I'm not sure how you think that doesn't end the conversation, but it seems to be more of a political point you are making that is divorced from the reality of the numbers reported.
I'm not really sure what you're trying to say. Perhaps I don't know what you mean by "make a difference." But providing accurate odds on a wide array of topics isn't yelling fire in a crowded theater and the results of the election did reflect the polymarket odds.
But you already conceded the odds were not accurate.
> But providing accurate odds on a wide array of topics isn't yelling fire in a crowded theater and the results of the election did reflect the polymarket odds.
I didn't say they were. You are making the broad meaningless distinction of implying that the "information" provided by "prediction markets" has any value. If it does not have value, what is the point of having the markets?
>Perhaps I don't know what you mean by "make a difference."
If the availability of the information makes no difference societally, then what is the value of the information? I'm not sure if you are being so obtuse on purpose, or what. But you keep saying it provides information... so what? As I pointed out... white noise is information.
> and the results of the election did reflect the polymarket odds
No they did not. Trump did not win by twice as much and certainly did not in the popular vote.
Oh boy. You don't even know how prediction markets or even odds work, at all, yet are abnormally strongly opinionated on the topic, and just assume you know everything without bothering to even check once. Of course. Prediction markets are binary yes/no. When Polymarket prices Trump as a 2:1 favorite, that does not mean he's expected to win 66% of the vote, but that if you ran the election 3 times, he'd be expected to win twice.
Polymarket's accuracy (as defined by an event corresponding with the majority position) is 90% a month out from an event, and 94% 4 hours out from an event. I suspect a weighted analysis (e.g. a 90% event should happen 9 of 10 times, not 100%) would show even better results. That is dramatically higher than you get from things like pollsters, and it's all freely available to the public.
Correct, but there is a direct correlation between the size of the market, and the power of the people determining the outcome.
Then there is also the fact that the power of the people determining the outcome is inversely proportional to their care about betting markets.
Put this together and you get "The larger the size of the market, the less the people who can single handily swing it care about doing so".
If you are someone who can command hundreds of thousands of people to bet millions for or against you, you almost certainly lose more than you would gain by gaming it.
Mind you the market also naturally prices in this risk of the one person going rogue and taking them winnings for themselves. You will never find a market for "WarmWash will post nothing for 3 days straight on HN" because no one will take the other side of it.
When they're not thin they're popular (sports, awards), they favor insiders and/or various levels of manipulation (throwing dildos at a match), or both (military strikes, stock market, etc). They're full of natural or artificial drama, and people love to throw money at that.
I have a bot betting on a handful of what I consider (so far) markets that are impossible to cheat (bar UMA shenanigans): nobody has any control over the outcomes, previous knowledge is very limited. It makes some money, but looking at the depth, the volume, and my metrics, even being the fastest 100% of the time without worrying about bankroll, one of them would gimme roughly $1-2k a week.
