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freejazz | on: Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence
> No fortune 500 CEO is going to postpone a product launch so they can win $5,000 on polymarket

They would win a lot more than a trivial amount by taking adverse positions, no? Seems like you're making up your own hypothetical

entropicdrifter | parent | next
Yeah, they unironically just attacked a strawman and sat of their laurels
WarmWash | parent
They can take any position they want and do whatever they want, the point is that these oddball markets are very thin so there just isn't much money there to harvest. You can only bet $50M at your chosen risk if you can find enough people to take the other side, and these markets simply don't have many participants betting much money.

Think of it like kids betting pennies what subject the teacher will open with the next day. The teacher doesn't care about winning $0.89, but the kids do.

solenoid0937 | root | parent | next
I don't think the markets are thin, there are some bets that have made people many millions.
somenameforme | root | parent | next
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.

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WarmWash | root | parent
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.

freejazz | root | parent
It seems like it's a huge assumption on your part that the bets you are describing are in the "0.89" range and not something significantly higher, even disregarding what others pointed out about this having already provably occurred.