I finally gave in to my curiosity and downloaded Kalshi last week to place a few bets on the World Cup.
I was blown away how easy it was. I placed a bet with real money within 5 minutes of downloading the app.
They allow instant deposits with credit card, and ID verification was real time.
I can’t imagine that the extreme accessibility and the typical dark patterns deployed by every popular app won’t eventually end badly.
(I was also shocked that when looking at my credit card bill online, next to the Kalshi deposit line item it showed a promo “would you like to split this payment over 12 month?” and seemingly was only available for that one transaction. So I could have deposited $1000 via CC into Kalshi and paid it back $83/mo over 12 months.)
A cash advance is taking physical cash out with your credit card at an ATM or bank teller. Making an online purchase (which depositing money into your Kalshi account is) is therefore not a cash advance.
There are many kinds of "cash advance". You can't buy lottery tickets on a credit card (or in jurisdictions where you can, it's a cash advance). Credit cards also treat things such as buying dollar coins online from the US Mint different from a normal transaction.
In Australia any sort of gambling payment on a credit card is treated as a cash advance. If you use PayPal on top of your credit card, the credit card company still manages to introspect it and apply a cash advance fee.
Not necessarily, I mean if you buy a in-game item or currency that wouldn't be a cash advance so with this they could just say you bought $20 worth of credits and since you're buying credits that could be considered a good.
This was my experience trying out "traditional betting" for the first time with Betfair last Worldcup, and some other platform I tried out before as well. Not sure what Kalshi/others are doing that is so different?
If you're going to gamble, it's probably for the best that your counterparty doesn't also control the platform. I'm not saying that justifies being able to gamble frictionlessly, but it is marginally less exploitative. Eg, back in the day bucket shops (which sold binary options, like prediction markets do) would increase the spread in proportion to their assessment of your skill such that you would lose even if you were more skilled. In a proper market the platform makes the same amount of money whoever wins.
So, not all that different, but marginally less exploitative. I've never looked at Polymarket but Kalshi and PredictIt slid steadily from things of at least plausible real economic value (a market where it was conceivable [if unlikely] someone would be hedging their insurance contract or something) into total nonsense with no non-gambling function like whether someone would tweet a certain word.
I think prediction markets could serve a similar to a futures markets and have a functional purpose in the economy. It could be useful to generate real time estimates of the probability of some events that no one can control and have real economic consequences, like a hurricane. But evidently that's not where the money is.
> I think prediction markets could serve a similar to a futures markets and have a functional purpose in the economy. It could be useful to generate real time estimates of the probability of some events that no one can control and have real economic consequences, like a hurricane.
Even though nobody can control them, some people can predict them better than others. (Meteorologists with good models and supercomputers, etc.) In general it's impossible to prevent the appearance of insider trading in prediction markets, and it's also impossible -- unless you massively restrict what people can bet on -- to prevent people from doing things for bets to resolve in their favor, which turns those "markets" into "bounties." (The same guys who theorized prediction markets were the ones who theorized assassination markets.)
They're fundamentally broken and the fact that they're allowed is a sign and symptom of a dysfunctional society.
> it's probably for the best that your counterparty doesn't also control the platform
But doesn't Polymarket et al own their own platforms, just like Betfair owns their platform? There is no P2P going on, even if some markets seem to advertise themselves as such so again, seems like the same just minus gambling regulations?
As far as I know it is "P2P", a continuous double sided auction like any proper exchange. If there's something fishy going on with the order book I do not personally know about it. (I don't think there is but I'm also not going to stick my neck out for them.)
Tl;Dr there's an order book with prices set by supply and demand. So you're at the whims of the market rather than the whims of someone who is your broker, exchange, clearinghouse, and taking the other side of your trade. I don't know much about Polymarket but iirc Kalshi is only your broker and exchange, so dealing with them is materially less risky in my mind.
It's a market in the same way that poker and blackjack are "markets" on which cards are most likely to appear. You don't need to redefine what gambling is.
The off-ramp of nearly all of my crypto endeavors has been very easy in my experience. Not always simple, because a lot of parts of moving money on various crypto chains is unintuitive and well in-need of improvement, but definitely easy once you know what to do.
The most annoying part, somewhat surprisingly, is always with regards to United States KYC restrictions. I've had a fair bit of annoyance trying to move crypto off of services that were once accessible to US customers and no longer are.
I personally cant wait to start seeing sob stories of how people are having thier account permanently locked after making big wins. Thats what happens when you bgive money to unregulated casinos every tine and is the exact reason there are so many gambling laws and restrictions.
I read a book this year about sports gambling in the US [1], and it points out how nasty and predatory it is. I think "prediction markets" have even less regulation? I would talk to my sports fan buddies at work and they would say "oh, just how sportsbooks in Vegas operate already", but this is on-demand, in your face, constantly nudging you to bet with dark patterns and "comps". I used to want sports gambling legal in the US, but the way it has gone is incredibly disgusting and is starting to make watching sports almost annoying. The crawl on the bottom is no longer scores, but moneylines...
[1] "Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling" (2026) by Danny Funt
It only really struck me in adulthood: the professional sports, particularly baseball and American football, are basically gambling delivery vehicles. They’re packed with nonstop betting opportunities for the duration of the events. Football games ceremonially start off with a coin toss, which is very much on the nose. The ‘fun game’ aspect of the sports are very difficult to find among all the bettable events.
A bit of a tangent, but many like the moneylines isn't because of gambling but because it tells you who's the favorite/underdog and by what margin. It's like in the equivalent of a chess game of knowing the player's ratings, which itself can directly lead to a nominal moneyline, but in most sports there's no formal predictive rating system.
There could easily be. There's no reason you couldn't publish some Elo-like thing on teams or players, if that was your interest - you don't need gambling to get a good idea of who the favorite is. But the interest is in gambling, so most people inclined to publish such a thing probably bet themselves/sell it as a product to gamblers.
But this is where stuff like prediction markets shine. In chess, for instance, the prediction market odds are going to be way closer to the outcome than might be expected because of the players' ratings. This is because skilled bettors are capable of considering things like exact matchups, history, short-term performance/form, and many other factors that a static rating can't really account for.
Incidentally this is also what makes chess games relatively profitable. Moderate-info bettors will do things like flip on their chess engine, look at the eval, and then bet on that. But a computer might say a position is a dead-draw when a stronger player can tell you 'white has big practical winning chances'.
You can build a model accounting for all the things you like, you don't have to limit yourself to Elo (its main selling point is that it's easy enough that players can easily calculate how many rating points they stand to lose/gain) or Glicko (almost as easy).
Even in the most optimistic case, betting market accuracy will be limited by the commission (if you have a better estimate than the market, but not sufficiently better that you'll make money on it, you don't bet), and I think even a not-terribly-smart model can get you there for chess games. We don't need betting markets for the prediction's sake.
It’s the kind of thing that would suck all enjoyment out of watching sports for me personally. I may well be in a minority though, possibly an old person thing too
Fellow old here too. I enjoy it because there's a lot of sports I follow intermittently. For instance I enjoy watching UFC on occasion, but often find by the time I catch another fight I often have no clue who the guys in the main event are!
I think I enjoy the odds because it adds a sort of unspoken storyline to a fight, because those fighters themselves also know who's the underdog and it adds a bit of a psychological edge to the contest.
It's a lot like watching a chess game where the same stuff unfolds where you expect the favorite to push. Will the underdog look to survive, try to come and prove he's not to be taken lightly, and so on. Good times.
Predictions markets are more regulated than sports betting, because the events being predicted are wider, so they will naturally touch on a whole lot more regulation.
For example, can someone place a bet on an event that X person will be shot? That question now touches on a whole range of laws regarding murder, life insurance, incitation to violence, free speech? That you just don't touch at all in sports betting.
I read your statement and my reaction is what you describe is less regulated than sports betting. For example, in sports betting there are laws by major leagues that players can not bet on games they are in. On prediction markets, if someone has insider knowledge, or can control whatever verification source is set for a bet, they can win (I believe there was an article posted earlier about some journalist reporting on a bomb that fell on an area and was pressured to change the wording to say it fell or was bombed). Additionally, as some of the prediction market wagers have weird grey areas, there are predictions that have additional sub text added after a market has been open/wages have been made which completely change the bet - that is just fast and loose and less regulation IMO
But ok, let’s follow your thought process. Couldn’t someone place a bet on a sporting event and then murder a key player? Wouldn’t all the same laws be triggered?
Laws against criminal activity aren’t regulations. Regulations are limitations and oversight requirements on business activities.
Yeah, and also inevitable that a product designed to so efficiently separate people from their money would be overrun by grifters and scammers from the influencer/creator world.
What does make this instance perhaps a bit surprising is that it's Polymarket themselves who are paying those grifters.
They're an incredibly well known US based company targeting US based consumers in a way that is patently illegal. It seems almost unbelievably dumb that they would do this even by the often grotty standards of gambling companies.
They must have realised this would be found out and that, when it was, an investigation and enforcement action would follow? I guess maybe some of the creators will find themselves in hot water as well?
I really don't understand what the long term play is here, other than to be litigated out of business.
The U.S. is quite far behind the rest of the world on sports betting, which means you don’t even need to imagine, we know from other countries that it doesn’t end well. The most worrying aspect is, the current U.S. government has no interest in the regulations that have helped minimise the problems in other countries.
The U.K’s highest earner for a few years running was the founder of a U.K. betting site, she had something like a 500 million salary and there is an entire town’s economy supported by her business.
I personally never met her but Bet365 is one of the most protected sites on the internet when it comes to antibot protections. When I started my company in 2025, I had two customers from UK, they were very much interested in odds for horse races from bet365, mostly realtime. Bet365 knew I was coming for them.
They call it 'onramping'. Moonpay is a big one, coinbase has one, onramper is another. Basically Applepay / credit card -> ETH or SOL or USDC, etc, then lose away!
Back in the good old days non-payment of gambling debt was a threat to your knee-caps. Today, you might get cut off from Klarna and have to extend your next auto loan to 256 months.
This was with their credit card. You're going to get demolished if you start bouncing gambling debt on a credit card.
I'm guessing that at some point, probably not very long from now, credit cards are going to cut down on this. They don't want to be held responsible for a bunch of debt from gamblers, when they've already paid the sites.
At some point, the fees won't be worth the combination of PR and actually losing money from bankruptcies / delinquencies.
Most of those gambling sites don't have merchant accounts and aren't able to accept credit card payments directly. Customers take out cash advances or buy cryptocurrency through various shady intermediaries, then transfer the assets.
Loan sharks that use threats still exist, non-bank personal lending funds use cold calling and connections with bankers and use non-staff third party callers to distance themselves from the consequences and reputation of threatening with violence.
So it's not like people need to go to shady lenders in the first place, they can be pipelined from normal credit card debt into less scrupulous debt collectors.
I think you missed the point entirely.
All of these "prediction market" gambling platforms are actively predatory to their users, with very little (if any) regulatory oversight.
Based on the ad they are running during World Cup of the guy in the dentist office, they just don't care how/where money is spent as they just print money.
The WSJ ran an earlier article stating that unless you have access to a lot of data, computing power, and statisticians, you're going to lose on those bets.
You don't need Colossus-level compute or a genius-level IQ to evaluate the question "Will the steam machine cost more than $700 at release", or "Will 2026 be the hottest year on record".
Sure but that level of confidence is what would also eventually wipe you out because gamblers are not necessarily known for proper risk management. You could win 10 bets in a row but then it would only take one bet that you had 100% conviction on for you to lose and you get wiped out
Not true, polymarket and kalshi have a lot of system bets, basically bets where the other side is the market, and further they take a cut from the money gambled.
There are other things as well, like they control which side wins, so they can leverage trade or even swing trade internally with a few bot accounts, not saying that they do but I don't see a ToC that says they can't.
Of course there is a house. You have a spread and probably a ton of other not so obvious fees. The house always wins by design, especially on polymarket.
> He compared the videos to fast-food commercials, where food can appear more appealing than it does in real life.
> “We’re depicting what actually happens,” he said.
The cope is real. They all know they are destroying lives by promoting gambling to young people and eventually some of them are going to overspend and get addicted. But yeah, it's just like an ad for a burger
The burger ad is also getting people addicted and destroying lives. But with burgers most people blame the victims. In my opinion it's all the same. Gambling, junk food, drugs, guns... Lots of money to be made, lots of lives destroyed.
I was baffled to see gambling completely take over advertising in CSGO years ago with no one batting an eye, Valve also had its share of responsibility with loot cases but they have such a great reputation it's difficult to call them out on that.
The alternative would be to ask both sides of the bets to record a video, and tell them to only post winning bids, but to pay out to both sides. Is that really better? Classic tactic by the bet picking gambler gurus and is impossible to confirm.
I guess Polymarket too will learn to be more subtle now.
All these gambling apps need regulation. And I fear they are buying politicians precisely so that doesn't happen.
If I were to have my way, I'd put a law in place that limits bets to $5 max and monthly bets to $150 per month. Letting them go higher encourages some of the worst aspects of society.
We will see crazy things like athletes being injured or murdered in order to win bets. We are already seeing crazy things like white house insiders placing bets on when wars will start.
One of the few ways to really solve this problem is reducing the possible amount of award so the individuals placing these bets don't feel like they have to take matters into their own hands to win.
We should just make gambling illegal online again, things were fine back when you couldn’t gamble online then, at least in the USA, the fucking supreme corpo guzzlers (formerly the Supreme Court) interpreted the laws according to their owners will and now we have gambling online.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly, and we've had to ask you many times not to. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Usually I agree with your calls on things being unsubstantive, but this one kinda seems fine? I don't think it's flame bait, just emotive language? And the substantive point being made is that online gambling should be illegal.
(apologies if arguing about mod decisions is frowned upon, I didn't see anything in the rules about it)
You haven’t said anything, or at least I haven’t seen it. There’s no inbox here and I don’t always read old comments. If you have pointed it out before I don’t care, I haven’t seen it. If you want to point something out, then maybe email me about it the just time you see it, otherwise I’m not trolling through my old threads that often so you’ll have to accept that this is the first I’ve seen you ask.
I’m respect your wishes but you can’t say you have told me anything if I didn’t see it here, sorry Dan but that’s only fair since there’s no way for me to see your message unless I randomly go back.
If you want to ensure people see these messages, then that’s a feature you’ll need to add. I’m fine with you using the email on my account for this purpose, too, but I’m not fine with getting a single message from you here and you expecting me to have seen anything else you’ve said in the past. As far as I’m concerned this is the first I’ve seen you ask me about this.
There’s no flame bait here just some swearing and rough language. I’ll cut back because you asked (once, I’ve not seen your responses other than this one), but I don’t think I’m out of line.
Also if people were downvoting my comments it’d be different but it’s just you for a frw recent ones down modding then, because before you get here they were up or even. Moderators should focus on those truly displaying bad behavior, I’m just swearing and saying relevant things.
I have a very long history of good comments here, arguing otherwise seems suspect, honestly.
I’ll back off like you say but I don’t agree at all. I’ve read the guidelines and tend to follow them.
Edit: I see like 3-4 questionable comments from me, two of who’ve are barely questionable. I get what you’re saying about the language but it’s really amazing you’ve targeted me here today, this us such low hanging fruit here, don’t you have better things to deal with? I’ll write better comments but I’m just really annoyed at your characterization of my behavior, it is very unfair in my eyes. I’ve done very good comments for ages and emotional language like this is rare for me. I expect better from mods here.
This comment was unnecessary and very distracting from a far more interesting discussion in the replies to the commenter you are attempting to condescend.
Exactly. Gambling in the real world involved friction. That plus a certain social stigma if you gambled outside of “mainstream” casinos.
And this helped weed out all but the most addicted gamblers. Now there is no friction, the platforms are free to create dark patterns to encourage problem gambling, and the vice has zero social cost.
The dark patterns aren't just in online gambling. Nowdays, a lot of brick-and-mortar casinos encourage, or even require, clients to create an account (often framed as a "members club" or "rewards card"), which is used to track the client's activity at the casino and target them with promotions tailored to their behavior. These can be used in some really troubling ways, e.g. by identifying clients who may have a gambling problem and targeting them with promotions to come back to the casino more often, to stay longer, and/or to start placing larger bets.
The worst dark pattern I saw for gambling was in Lithuania: in supermarkets, they sell scratch cards right next to the credit card terminal. If you are a recovering addict, you just can't avoid the trigger, at the worst moment.
The court ruling was a good one, and anticipated. The federal government can either allow all gambling, or ban it all. They can’t pick and choose states where it may be allowed.
Before online gambling went wild in the US, most brick and mortal gambling was one of three sources: (1) Nevada (Las Vegas, etc.), (2) Atlantic City, New Jersey, (3) Native American tribes. There were also some other odd locations, like river boat gambling on the Mississippi River or "cardrooms" in California. As a result, most Americans did not live close to a casino. Now, you can do it from your smartphone.
There wasn't some mass movement of people doing online gambling that led to the dam bursting and it getting legalized, though. Courts just made a different decision and opened it up one day and as far as I know there wasn't even mass lobbying about it?
>The Court announced a 7–2 judgment in favor of Murphy on May 14, 2018, reversing the Third Circuit.[25] Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, and Neil Gorsuch and in part by Justice Stephen Breyer.[26][27][28] The majority opinion agreed that §§ 3701(1) of PASPA commandeered power from the states to regulate their own gambling industries and thus was unconstitutional. It followed New York v. United States and reversed the Third Circuit decision.
Most states had lotteries before this though. At least those brought in tax money and were designed to be relatively fair. Online gambling can shut down your account and refuse to pay if you get too big of a payout, and their money isn't going towards public schools.
for a while i was using the sports gambling apps to make lots of little bets.
it was fun to put $0.50 on a game I normally wouldn't watch and tune in with a real rooting interest. i never bet more that $1 on a game because I knew that I would really dislike losing 'real money'.
the fact was that the stakes were completely irrelevant to me. the value came from definitively and publicly taking a side. if you're the fan of a team, you do this in every game. but with these little bets it's a way to sign-on for a little slice of being a fan in every game.
and that got me thinking that there's potentially a different type of gambling app that ignores the money and is more of a social/prediction-making platform. people love chasing worthless internet points (reddit upvotes, HN karma, etc), so why not build a platform that gives you points for betting?
you could let a chunk of the population scratch the itch they get to gamble without creating financial risk. they can still brag about their wins.
> and that got me thinking that there's potentially a different type of gambling app that ignores the money and is more of a social/prediction-making platform
We have that in the Netherlands and we do it massively for every World Cup and Euro. The app my friend groups are on, Scorito, has 1.5 million competitors for the current WC, in the country of 18 million, and that's not the only app.
Normally a group would make a small buy in, like €5, where the winner takes all, but this year the legal department at work forbade that, se that sort of gambling Is actual illegal.
I'd do something fairly similarly, but in a sort of emotional hedge. If in a fight I was really rooting for one guy, I'd put a relatively small amount of money on the other. Ok 'my guy' lost, but hey - dinner's free tonight! It's also quite remarkable how often arbitrage opportunities come up where you can put bets on both sides with a guaranteed win. You'd think they'd all get eaten up by bots, but that's not at all the case.
Give a player that is hesitant a good opportunity to place a pretty much guaranteed winning bet and try to get them to cross their threshold. Once crossed, it’s much harder not to cross it again for most people.
make this severely illegal with minimum two decades behind bars and what how they disappear… this is a very solvable problem which no one wants to solve
Also the operator is completely legal/compliant with it's jurisdictions laws as they allow us players (many now blacklist the us, but some not )
So they won't accept any foreign judgement .
That's why most countries rather target their infrastructure (psps/banking etc ..)
Even Eu countries had/have severe problems with Malta (due e.g Article 56A of the malta gaming act, which shields the operator from foreign judgements)
Make the websites unconnectable from the US. Make domestic ISPs not route the traffic to the site else jail time for the executives. Make VPNs not route traffic to the site else jail time for the executives and being null routed by domestic ISPs.
If you really want to crack down on it, then it could be done.
I think I’d probably go farther. Next time you’re in a corner store or gas station, pay attention to who is wasting their money on scratchers or other lotto tickets.
You shouldn’t be allowed to gamble unless you can prove it’s disposable income.
we prevent people from gambling on early stage startups and risky investments by limiting investment to "accredited investors". same thing should apply to gambling.
I believe some countries/casinos in Southeast Asia have policies that you either have to show a foreign passport, or put a deposit of $500-1000 down to enter the casino, that you get back when you leave, with the theory (easily exploitable, I'm sure) being that you can't leave the casino penniless.
That will make things worse unless you reign in crypto. If you regulate Kalshi, people will use the unregulated polymarket which is already illegal in the united states.
Most of their practice are illegal already. The problem is lack of enforcement.
We are not suing polymarket.
We are not suing the marketing company.
And we don't want online censorship.
IMO, the marketing company / media company should be sued. -- They are (relatively) easier target to sue. Many are US based and not going anywhere. With enough luck, this might give us a better internet with less SEO bullshit.
Just another hearty dividend thanks to corporate personhood and Citizen's United. Rarely has a single decision so thoroughly broken our system, but the regulatory capture is plain to see these days.
Citizens United gets a lot of flak, and it wasn't good, but it's far from the only factor here. We can at least go back to Buckley v. Valeo which gave us the idea that "money is speech". Corporations are a problem, but money is a bigger problem.
Yeah. It's so demoralizing, seeing all these people make fortunes while honest people scrape by. It feels like getting in on the grift is the only way to make it.
Would it matter if the bets were real and they picked the 0.00001% big winners to feature in the ad? Would that be less fraudulent in any meaningful sense, would it have a different impact on the world?
Is the real crime here that they were too lazy to lie with selective facts?
In the US, the FTC is very clear that faking or purchasing testimonials is illegal. Fabricating, purchasing, or misrepresenting customer experience is deceptive advertising and is a form of fraud. On the other hand, selecting and advertising specific real testimonials is fine. A customer described their actual experience that way, and presumably the consumers understand that advertisers will select especially positive individual testimonials for their advertisements. I can't believe I'm actually trying to explain this, but fake testimonials are illegal because the consumer has no way to know that they are made up. Real testimonials are not "lying with statistics", they're not statistics at all, and are legal because consumers can understand that it's not the median customer experience.
If picking real winners and real winnings to feature in the ad was just as good, they could do that. If not, then yes, it makes an impact on the world to mislead people with that marketing.
Somehow there's a difference between things that happened and didn't happen, and that's a good place to draw a line in the sand of what you're allowed to advertise and not.
Not GP, but here is how I know. Messi and Steve Carell did an ad for local chips brand, (market size < 10 million people). There is no way that brand could afford them. Searched online and found the same ad for Lay's. Turns out Pepsi owns a lot of local snack brands. They'll buy local brand and if it's popular they will keep the brand (instead of replacing it with global brand like Lay's). Ad is recorded for all brands at once, they just replace bag of Lay's with bag of whatever is the local chips they own.
I question your definitions. In what sense is it legally or morally useful to discriminate between lying with statistics and lying without them? It's an academically useful distinction, but why does it matter in practice? People are misled, the misleading is intentional, but if you hire a statistician to do it for you instead of an actor then you're A-Okay?
It's useful because honesty and dishonesty are strongly self-correlated. Someone who works hard to ensure their advertising is technically true will likely work hard towards technically satisfying other goals and rules we set for them; someone who's comfortable outright lying in their ads will likely also lie about other things.
I was listening to a podcast and heard an ad for supplements (I think it was collegian). The thing that struck me was the specificity of the health claims they were making in the ad.
There was no "promotes healthy whatever" it was like "this will make your skin younger and eliminate/prevent wrinkles and other signs of aging."
Then the quiet fast-talking guy said that none of their health claims have been reviewed by the FDA.
So that's where we are now. Everything is scams and nobody will do anything about it.
I agree with your point in general, but doesn't that disclaimer apply to any kind of supplement? As far as I know that sort of thing has been allowed for quite some time. For whatever reason the FDA allows for an almost completely unregulated vitamin/supplement industry.
They used to be vague and not make specific claims because that wasn't allowed. They'd say "Vitamin K helps promote healthy eyes." They can't say "our chewable will cure your glaucoma. (claimhasnotbeenreviewedbytheFDA)"
But apparently they can do that now, or at least they are doing it.
It's not up to the FDA, their hands are tied thanks to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah on behalf of the supplement lobby.
I remember in 2006 when online sports gambling was banned, and witnessed first hand some sleaze bags flee to Costa Rica where many of the actual operations were located. What I witnessed regarding addiction and exploitation put me off sports for a long time. Now here we are, with the tech industry and political capital behind it, this time engineered to engulf the entire population. It's repulsive.
Nobody is forcing anyone to place bets they can't back, isn't this a personal responsibility issue?
edit: to be clear, if companies are committing fraud in their marketing, that should be prosecuted or if regulations around misleading marketing are weak, that should be legislated of course.
Personal responsibility is an excuse for lazy regulation. These things are designed to be harmful, for the express purpose of squeezing money out of people, as efficiently as possible. We know that some people are psychologically and genetically more prone to addiction than others, and that people like that will be extremely likely to form addictions with gambling or drugs when we make those things easy to access.
What would you rather have? More regulated gambling and less addicts, or unregulated gambling and more addicts? Personally, I prefer the former.
> Nobody is forcing anyone to place bets they can't back, isn't this a personal responsibility issue?
Honestly, calling it "personal responsibility" when a powerful group is actively working to exploit that flaw seems a little weird. But even accepting that, we outlaw plenty of things because we think society isn't currently responsible enough to handle them.
You are promoting gambling to young people, easily manipulated.
That's why you see so many college boy on their marketing video.
It's completely fine when you're old enough to be responsible, and to know that gambling is a degenerate behavior that you can allow yourself sometimes to release the steam, but these companies don't make money from us.
They make money from the kids overspending because they are convinced they are going to get rich doing that. That's manipulation.
It would be like showing McDonald ads to starving African kids, of course they are going to make the wrong choice when offered food. They can't think rationally in that state.
Seems like a weird mistake to make. If they're going to bait new users, why not just use bets that did exist? Better yet, why not use users who did make a lot of money?
Seems to be a popular means for marketing gambling. There was a scandal of a bunch of twitch streamers doing the same thing for skin gambling websites.
I made an article a day back how Polymarket is not exactly fair when it comes to market resolution (https://omarabid.com/polymarket-bet/) They actually don’t decide on market outcomes, they outsource that to UMA which is as opaque as it can get.
Consider the probabilities in polymarket as the prob. of the polymarket market itself outcomes rather than reality.
This is like a food commercial where someone shows an extreme reaction to food that isn't the product they're selling, or acting like they're eating something that isn't food at all. There are laws regarding food advertising that require it to present the real food (though the presentation of it is usually way better).
I have news for you. That burger is the McDonald's commercial? It's most likely made out of plastic. That happy lottery winner? Probably a stock photo from one of the major visuals providers. And I am ready to bet my bankers don't have this hollywood white teeth looking of banks commercials. Since when is advertising real?
“The truth is most of what you see in food photographs is real. FTC laws state that whatever you’re selling with a photo must be real in the image. To use a familiar example, if you’re selling corn flakes the flakes must be real. But then it gets interesting. You can use white glue instead of milk in your bowl of flakes because you’re not selling the milk, only the corn flakes.”
I blanket consider any post by these "influencers" as paid for.
But my biggest fear is for my kids. I'm doing my best to teach them about the duplicity that exists in this world, and that's precisely why I'm against blanket social media bans for under-16s.
By the time kids turn 17, they've hit the rebel stage. And that's exactly when the freedom to access social media arrives. At that point, they won't listen to parents. They are going to get soo badly burnt.
This is why I advocate for controlled, early access to social media for children. As a parent, I can monitor what they follow and teach them to distinguish right from wrong.
But with these blanket bans, that's taken out of my hands entirely. They grow up sheltered in a picture-perfect world...and then, boom.
I was blown away how easy it was. I placed a bet with real money within 5 minutes of downloading the app.
They allow instant deposits with credit card, and ID verification was real time.
I can’t imagine that the extreme accessibility and the typical dark patterns deployed by every popular app won’t eventually end badly.
(I was also shocked that when looking at my credit card bill online, next to the Kalshi deposit line item it showed a promo “would you like to split this payment over 12 month?” and seemingly was only available for that one transaction. So I could have deposited $1000 via CC into Kalshi and paid it back $83/mo over 12 months.)
This industry is wild.
https://www.gamblinginsider.com/news/114277/massachusetts-ig...
https://sportsbettingalliance.org/take-action/ohio_igaming/
https://sportsbettingalliance.org/take-action/texas/
https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Legislation/Details/h...
https://gosunward.org/articles/cash-advance-on-a-credit-card...
So, not all that different, but marginally less exploitative. I've never looked at Polymarket but Kalshi and PredictIt slid steadily from things of at least plausible real economic value (a market where it was conceivable [if unlikely] someone would be hedging their insurance contract or something) into total nonsense with no non-gambling function like whether someone would tweet a certain word.
I think prediction markets could serve a similar to a futures markets and have a functional purpose in the economy. It could be useful to generate real time estimates of the probability of some events that no one can control and have real economic consequences, like a hurricane. But evidently that's not where the money is.
Even though nobody can control them, some people can predict them better than others. (Meteorologists with good models and supercomputers, etc.) In general it's impossible to prevent the appearance of insider trading in prediction markets, and it's also impossible -- unless you massively restrict what people can bet on -- to prevent people from doing things for bets to resolve in their favor, which turns those "markets" into "bounties." (The same guys who theorized prediction markets were the ones who theorized assassination markets.)
They're fundamentally broken and the fact that they're allowed is a sign and symptom of a dysfunctional society.
But doesn't Polymarket et al own their own platforms, just like Betfair owns their platform? There is no P2P going on, even if some markets seem to advertise themselves as such so again, seems like the same just minus gambling regulations?
https://docs.polymarket.com/concepts/prices-orderbook
https://help.kalshi.com/en/articles/13823828-the-orderbook
Tl;Dr there's an order book with prices set by supply and demand. So you're at the whims of the market rather than the whims of someone who is your broker, exchange, clearinghouse, and taking the other side of your trade. I don't know much about Polymarket but iirc Kalshi is only your broker and exchange, so dealing with them is materially less risky in my mind.
The most annoying part, somewhat surprisingly, is always with regards to United States KYC restrictions. I've had a fair bit of annoyance trying to move crypto off of services that were once accessible to US customers and no longer are.
[1] "Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling" (2026) by Danny Funt
Incidentally this is also what makes chess games relatively profitable. Moderate-info bettors will do things like flip on their chess engine, look at the eval, and then bet on that. But a computer might say a position is a dead-draw when a stronger player can tell you 'white has big practical winning chances'.
Even in the most optimistic case, betting market accuracy will be limited by the commission (if you have a better estimate than the market, but not sufficiently better that you'll make money on it, you don't bet), and I think even a not-terribly-smart model can get you there for chess games. We don't need betting markets for the prediction's sake.
I think I enjoy the odds because it adds a sort of unspoken storyline to a fight, because those fighters themselves also know who's the underdog and it adds a bit of a psychological edge to the contest.
It's a lot like watching a chess game where the same stuff unfolds where you expect the favorite to push. Will the underdog look to survive, try to come and prove he's not to be taken lightly, and so on. Good times.
For example, can someone place a bet on an event that X person will be shot? That question now touches on a whole range of laws regarding murder, life insurance, incitation to violence, free speech? That you just don't touch at all in sports betting.
But ok, let’s follow your thought process. Couldn’t someone place a bet on a sporting event and then murder a key player? Wouldn’t all the same laws be triggered?
Laws against criminal activity aren’t regulations. Regulations are limitations and oversight requirements on business activities.
Probably not, no. I would be very surprised if the sports betting shops didn't have some sort of "force majeure" clauses.
What does make this instance perhaps a bit surprising is that it's Polymarket themselves who are paying those grifters.
They're an incredibly well known US based company targeting US based consumers in a way that is patently illegal. It seems almost unbelievably dumb that they would do this even by the often grotty standards of gambling companies.
They must have realised this would be found out and that, when it was, an investigation and enforcement action would follow? I guess maybe some of the creators will find themselves in hot water as well?
I really don't understand what the long term play is here, other than to be litigated out of business.
The U.K’s highest earner for a few years running was the founder of a U.K. betting site, she had something like a 500 million salary and there is an entire town’s economy supported by her business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bet365
They accept Visa, Mastercard and Discover via Apple Pay for a 2% deposit fee.
But I also see it says they don’t accept credit card in their help docs. I’m not sure what that’s about.
I'm guessing that at some point, probably not very long from now, credit cards are going to cut down on this. They don't want to be held responsible for a bunch of debt from gamblers, when they've already paid the sites.
At some point, the fees won't be worth the combination of PR and actually losing money from bankruptcies / delinquencies.
So it's not like people need to go to shady lenders in the first place, they can be pipelined from normal credit card debt into less scrupulous debt collectors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMntLU1bNE0
There are other things as well, like they control which side wins, so they can leverage trade or even swing trade internally with a few bot accounts, not saying that they do but I don't see a ToC that says they can't.
Seems like it's just a game of whack-a-mole, nothing is really being done to stop scammers from making new accounts and continuing their scams.
> “We’re depicting what actually happens,” he said.
The cope is real. They all know they are destroying lives by promoting gambling to young people and eventually some of them are going to overspend and get addicted. But yeah, it's just like an ad for a burger
I guess Polymarket too will learn to be more subtle now.
If I were to have my way, I'd put a law in place that limits bets to $5 max and monthly bets to $150 per month. Letting them go higher encourages some of the worst aspects of society.
We will see crazy things like athletes being injured or murdered in order to win bets. We are already seeing crazy things like white house insiders placing bets on when wars will start.
One of the few ways to really solve this problem is reducing the possible amount of award so the individuals placing these bets don't feel like they have to take matters into their own hands to win.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
(p.s. Just to pre-empt the usual: no, this is not a defense of Big Gambling, just an attempted defense of HN thread quality.)
(apologies if arguing about mod decisions is frowned upon, I didn't see anything in the rules about it)
I’m respect your wishes but you can’t say you have told me anything if I didn’t see it here, sorry Dan but that’s only fair since there’s no way for me to see your message unless I randomly go back.
If you want to ensure people see these messages, then that’s a feature you’ll need to add. I’m fine with you using the email on my account for this purpose, too, but I’m not fine with getting a single message from you here and you expecting me to have seen anything else you’ve said in the past. As far as I’m concerned this is the first I’ve seen you ask me about this.
Also if people were downvoting my comments it’d be different but it’s just you for a frw recent ones down modding then, because before you get here they were up or even. Moderators should focus on those truly displaying bad behavior, I’m just swearing and saying relevant things.
I have a very long history of good comments here, arguing otherwise seems suspect, honestly.
I’ll back off like you say but I don’t agree at all. I’ve read the guidelines and tend to follow them.
Edit: I see like 3-4 questionable comments from me, two of who’ve are barely questionable. I get what you’re saying about the language but it’s really amazing you’ve targeted me here today, this us such low hanging fruit here, don’t you have better things to deal with? I’ll write better comments but I’m just really annoyed at your characterization of my behavior, it is very unfair in my eyes. I’ve done very good comments for ages and emotional language like this is rare for me. I expect better from mods here.
Wait until your account is shadow banned and you post in the void for weeks/months before noticing
And this helped weed out all but the most addicted gamblers. Now there is no friction, the platforms are free to create dark patterns to encourage problem gambling, and the vice has zero social cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiate_...
Note that it was not a close decision:
> Opinion of the Court
>The Court announced a 7–2 judgment in favor of Murphy on May 14, 2018, reversing the Third Circuit.[25] Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, and Neil Gorsuch and in part by Justice Stephen Breyer.[26][27][28] The majority opinion agreed that §§ 3701(1) of PASPA commandeered power from the states to regulate their own gambling industries and thus was unconstitutional. It followed New York v. United States and reversed the Third Circuit decision.
Prohibition had some unintended consequences.
Frankly, being able to buy drugs and alcohol online is probably a mistake, too.
It was almost certainly easier for most people to buy drugs than gamble illegally when both were illegal.
it was fun to put $0.50 on a game I normally wouldn't watch and tune in with a real rooting interest. i never bet more that $1 on a game because I knew that I would really dislike losing 'real money'.
the fact was that the stakes were completely irrelevant to me. the value came from definitively and publicly taking a side. if you're the fan of a team, you do this in every game. but with these little bets it's a way to sign-on for a little slice of being a fan in every game.
and that got me thinking that there's potentially a different type of gambling app that ignores the money and is more of a social/prediction-making platform. people love chasing worthless internet points (reddit upvotes, HN karma, etc), so why not build a platform that gives you points for betting?
you could let a chunk of the population scratch the itch they get to gamble without creating financial risk. they can still brag about their wins.
We have that in the Netherlands and we do it massively for every World Cup and Euro. The app my friend groups are on, Scorito, has 1.5 million competitors for the current WC, in the country of 18 million, and that's not the only app.
Normally a group would make a small buy in, like €5, where the winner takes all, but this year the legal department at work forbade that, se that sort of gambling Is actual illegal.
Give a player that is hesitant a good opportunity to place a pretty much guaranteed winning bet and try to get them to cross their threshold. Once crossed, it’s much harder not to cross it again for most people.
Also the operator is completely legal/compliant with it's jurisdictions laws as they allow us players (many now blacklist the us, but some not )
So they won't accept any foreign judgement . That's why most countries rather target their infrastructure (psps/banking etc ..)
Even Eu countries had/have severe problems with Malta (due e.g Article 56A of the malta gaming act, which shields the operator from foreign judgements)
If you really want to crack down on it, then it could be done.
I think I’d probably go farther. Next time you’re in a corner store or gas station, pay attention to who is wasting their money on scratchers or other lotto tickets.
You shouldn’t be allowed to gamble unless you can prove it’s disposable income.
It was regulated.
We are not suing polymarket. We are not suing the marketing company. And we don't want online censorship.
IMO, the marketing company / media company should be sued. -- They are (relatively) easier target to sue. Many are US based and not going anywhere. With enough luck, this might give us a better internet with less SEO bullshit.
Is the real crime here that they were too lazy to lie with selective facts?
If picking real winners and real winnings to feature in the ad was just as good, they could do that. If not, then yes, it makes an impact on the world to mislead people with that marketing.
Somehow there's a difference between things that happened and didn't happen, and that's a good place to draw a line in the sand of what you're allowed to advertise and not.
Doesn’t this make every ad fraud? It’s an actor pretending to enjoy drinking Coca Cola, every ad is the same.
First result with a summary of 16 CFR Part 465: Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials: https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2024/09/...
Is this even a question? Yes, it would be less fraudulent.
"Celebrity X won" was not.
I am not a fan of gambling, nor gambling advertisements, but this was outright fraud, and a violation of FTC rules (https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorse...) on disclosure.
There was no "promotes healthy whatever" it was like "this will make your skin younger and eliminate/prevent wrinkles and other signs of aging."
Then the quiet fast-talking guy said that none of their health claims have been reviewed by the FDA.
So that's where we are now. Everything is scams and nobody will do anything about it.
But apparently they can do that now, or at least they are doing it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_...
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/12/31/6738513...
edit: to be clear, if companies are committing fraud in their marketing, that should be prosecuted or if regulations around misleading marketing are weak, that should be legislated of course.
What would you rather have? More regulated gambling and less addicts, or unregulated gambling and more addicts? Personally, I prefer the former.
Honestly, calling it "personal responsibility" when a powerful group is actively working to exploit that flaw seems a little weird. But even accepting that, we outlaw plenty of things because we think society isn't currently responsible enough to handle them.
That's why you see so many college boy on their marketing video.
It's completely fine when you're old enough to be responsible, and to know that gambling is a degenerate behavior that you can allow yourself sometimes to release the steam, but these companies don't make money from us.
They make money from the kids overspending because they are convinced they are going to get rich doing that. That's manipulation.
It would be like showing McDonald ads to starving African kids, of course they are going to make the wrong choice when offered food. They can't think rationally in that state.
Yes online gambling and sports management actions are their personal responsibility. And we should blame them for harm they knowingly cause.
God I cant believe I wrote that
Consider the probabilities in polymarket as the prob. of the polymarket market itself outcomes rather than reality.
Do you think in a food commercial the people eating the product are showing their genuine emotion? It's all acting.
McDonald’s Canada famously gave a candid behind the scenes of dressing a burger:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Pbh1UAWLOgU&ra=m
But my biggest fear is for my kids. I'm doing my best to teach them about the duplicity that exists in this world, and that's precisely why I'm against blanket social media bans for under-16s.
By the time kids turn 17, they've hit the rebel stage. And that's exactly when the freedom to access social media arrives. At that point, they won't listen to parents. They are going to get soo badly burnt.
This is why I advocate for controlled, early access to social media for children. As a parent, I can monitor what they follow and teach them to distinguish right from wrong.
But with these blanket bans, that's taken out of my hands entirely. They grow up sheltered in a picture-perfect world...and then, boom.