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w10-1 a day ago

Speculation and concern from a naive observer:

Is it polymarket presenting this ability to detect insiders? Or is someone trying to sell the service of detecting insiders to those wanting to know if bets are on equal footing? (or wanting to follow insiders? or wanting to hide your identity by making multiple accounts? Are there per-account fees, when polymarket might encourage people to make multiple accounts?)

Regardless, polymarket seems to be on balance corrupting, by monetizing and normalizing use of inside information, which violates agency principles. It's not clear that it really offers hedging or predictive benefits.

When trading firms do better (after data discovery and analysis), there's some evidence they're better than other firms, and you can trust them with some money. But when there's a public prediction market, the only benefit is to the insiders.

peterjliu a day ago | parent | next [-]

Post author here: To clarify, this is not a post from Polymarket.

This is talking about using Compound AI (product I'm working on) to query Polymarket data, including finding insiders, just as a fun example analysis you could do.

Often you need a well-calibrated probability of a future event to feed into some other analysis, and Polymarket is pretty great for that. An example is how much insurance (hedge) to buy for some disastrous event.

jwpapi a day ago | parent [-]

Why dont you just copy the trades?

0x3f 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If I'm an insider with 100% confidence, I'll take all offers at a certain price as long as I can afford it. Similar story for lower levels of confidence (but still inside info). There won't necessarily be any left for you to copy at a viable price.

jwpapi 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The examples didn’t look like they’ve completely emptied the orderbook

0x3f 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Because there's always some uncertainty and capital limits. But the uncertainty about the outcome is itself inside info, and that's compounded with your own uncertainty about the insider as a copy trader. So the insider will empty out certain price levels only, and your certainty is strictly less than theirs, meaning you have even fewer viable levels to buy.

chii 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Similar story for lower levels of confidence

therefore, the polymarket betting odds will reflect the truth - even if that info is a secret that nobody else but the insider knows. And if this is the case, then even an outsider could make use of the odds as a source of info which would ensure that market efficiency (which is about the flow of information) is high.

So what's wrong with insider trading again?

wqaatwt 14 hours ago | parent [-]

That someone with inside information will e.g. make 500% while those late to the party e.g. only get 10%? (of course your example is not very realistic to begin with)

nubg an hour ago | parent [-]

So is any kind of business illegal? Making investments?

genidoi a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Past performance is not an indicator of future performance.

kylecazar a day ago | parent [-]

Shouldn't it be if you suspect they are executed by an insider?

genidoi 21 hours ago | parent [-]

You can't be sure that they are an insider or lucky, just from onchain data.

bergen 15 hours ago | parent [-]

If they make single market predictions with high accuracy it is very very likely they are

genidoi 12 hours ago | parent [-]

No vigilant insider is making a series of "single market predictions with high accuracy" on the same account. They would make unlinkable bets on fresh accounts.

BoxFour 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> No vigilant insider is making a series of "single market predictions with high accuracy" on the same account.

There seem to be quite a few non-vigilant insiders. That's the very premise of the post we're discussing.

This is unsurprising to anyone who's seen the various ways people get busted for insider trading in equities.

meetingthrower 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Also insider trading is A-OK on prediction markets!

_alternator_ a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is largely the classical objection to prediction markets. But prediction markets do have value to outside of the markets because people want to know the future.

raincole 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think you might misunderstand the value preposition. Polymarket wants insider trading. That's the whole point. They'll eventually cave in to PR pressure and deviate from the original purpose, though.

a day ago | parent | prev [-]
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