Sure, but that's not really an argument to ban prediction markets, it's an argument to regulate what the public can or cannot bet on.

Most major online sportsbooks have taken bets on the US presidential election for well over a decade. I can't imagine anyone really arguing that it's okay for DraftKings to offer that market, but not okay for Polymarket to offer it.

I put it somewhere else in this thread, but there are actually two different questions that need to be answered separately. Are prediction markets just sportsbooks by another name and are there certain things that we should not allow people to gamble on.

The argument around prediction markets always seems to squish those two into one which I think does people who want regulation a disservice. I think to most people, the answer to first question (are prediction markets just sportsbooks by another name) is a pretty resounding yes. The second question has a lot more room for debate though. Even if people agree that there should be things we don't allow people to bet on, there's still plenty to argue over where we draw the line. The problem is that as long as we mush these two together, people will use the disagreement over the second question to prevent action from being taken on the first.

> Sure, but that's not really an argument to ban prediction markets, it's an argument to regulate what the public can or cannot bet on.

I wasn't making any argument above in either way. But the reality is that sports betting is not legal in much of the US. DraftKings is only legal in about half of US states.

Minnesota does not permit DraftKings to operate in their state. They don't permit any kind of online gambling whatsoever, and I don't think they think any differently about Polymarket... and Minnesota's regulators have answered that clearly in this case by enumerating it specifically.

And more generally speaking, laws apply to what someone is actually doing, not what they claim they are doing. If a law bans wagers on the outcome of a sporting event, it doesn't actually matter whether you call it something different. Someone can't sell crack cocaine and call it a "dietary supplement" and get away with it, because the law doesn't depend on the label the actor gave their own actions, it hinges on the definitions of the actions as defined under the law.

And as for the second question, in gambling there's always a risk of harm to the bettors themselves. I don't think most Americans have a problem with that, currently.

But, there's also risk to corrupting the subject of the bet itself. In a casino, this is easily mitigated by regulating the game, and the potential risk is only to the participants. In sports betting, this risks corrupting the games themselves. This is a slightly larger risk, and it risks corrupting sportsmanship for the athletes involved, but ultimately it is still a game.

But wagering on other events up to and including literal war literally poses a much larger human risk than simply spoiling a game.

You could take this "prediction market" laundering of words to an absurd conclusion: "A large binary option that someone will [insert any illegal action]" is just literally a payment for someone to do a crime using different words.

> Most major online sportsbooks have taken bets on the US presidential election for well over a decade. I can't imagine anyone really arguing that it's okay for DraftKings to offer that market, but not okay for Polymarket to offer it.

DraftKings is legal in about half of the US. It is not legal in Minnesota.