It's also an obvious and cynical regulatory dodge. Prediction markets make the bulk of their profit from sports betting.

obviously and definitely true in their current form. But it's maybe worth clarifying that before this last year or two, when Kalshi became an obvious regulatory dodge (including adding sports and really leaning into the gambling demographic), many were interested in prediction markets not just for that purpose: e.g. the rationalist community seems to have had a longstanding interest in the idea, manifold didn't have real money, and predictit (which is like a decade old) had academic origins.

As a tangent, it reminds me a bit of cryptocurrency: in the earliest days the interested parties have a mix of intellectual (can it be done? How can it be done?) and some idealistic (this technology will have utility, like reducing spam or libertarianism for crypto, or giving us a more accurate and precise understanding of the world for prediction markets) values. Of course, as both are directly financial, the third value is that one stands to get rich off of the technology. This third value might be adequately communally suppressed in the beginning, but the force of money gradually makes this third value the only one that matters, and both technologies become net-negatives on humanity.