> I'm trying to understand what the criticism is here, because the example seems to support the point that these are meant to be a way of learning the future, not oppose it. I thought the whole point was that yes, people with inside knowledge will bet large sums of money on things they expect to happen, and that's what makes the prediction useful. The market is meant to incentivize people who know things to act on them in a way that makes them known.

Except the paragraph you quoted nullify this benefit

> The suspiciously well-timed bets that one Polymarket user placed right before the capture of Nicolás Maduro

So we learnt nothing. For the entire duration the stock is online, its pretty much 50/50 then suddenly 1 day before, the ticker spikes to yes.