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Polymarket's Rush to Grow Left a Door Wide Open for Fraudsters

25 pointsby 7h agowsj.com
20 comments
6h agoHN ↗

Thanks. These paragraphs are pretty damning:

"At one point, the processor rejected as fraudulent more than 80% of the deposits it was handling, a rate that far exceeded industry standards of roughly 1%. Polymarket employees quickly raised their concerns with Chief Executive Shayne Coplan, according to people familiar with the events.

The compliance team, those people recalled, was floored by Coplan’s response: Just keep growing and pay a fine if regulators ever find out."

At what point are you a casino and at what point are you just a utility for money laundering, insider betting, scams & fraud?

5h agoHN ↗

    > Just keep growing and pay a fine if regulators ever find out.

it's unfortunate that they weren't able to get a lawyer with experience to comment on whether or not he is right.

would certainly be interesting to know if he does risk assessment under the table.

5h agoHN ↗

I wish we, as a society, would label companies which cause more harm than good as such.

4h agoHN ↗

Well "Consumer Reports" already has its niche in product comparisons. As the name implies consumers are supposed to get the most out of their ratings.

How about "Producer Reports" where companies are evaluated on whether they actually produce anything of value first and foremost as a benchmark.

Completely separate from the financial data which is already well-covered elsewhere. Investors are already supposed to get the most out of the money angle.

But for any one product most people are neither consumers of the product nor investors in the company.

These are the vast majority who would benefit from better information on whether a company is worth having around, for everyone in general who is not an avid consumer nor investor.

That would probably be more helpful for "innocent bystanders" who want to better avoid being assimilated by forces they have no interest in but could end up quite costly anyway.

4h agoHN ↗

A large swath of American society today sees a movie like Scarface as an inspirational biopic, not a modern Shakespearean tragedy.

Lots of especially younger people see unbridled ambition and rule-breaking as a virtue. Everything is about making money and if you're not the one getting it, or worse, you're the person being victimized, you're dumb and weak.

4h agoHN ↗

I dont know if I would blame young people as much. Those are values of the generation before them. Literally represented by over 40 years old like Vance, Musk and well, the whole conservative establishement.

Young people are more open in expressing it (like with Tate), but underlying ideas are not new.

2h agoHN ↗

isn't that what society rewards though? everyone is supposed to be an entrepreneur and have a side hustle

5h agoHN ↗

I do wonder why, like clockwork, there’s an article against prediction markets. I do wonder if the problem with them is that it creates an incentive to share the truth, or for very smart people to predict it, and for others to use the predictions as a valuable reference point. It would be interesting to track what is shared and how often to see if there are some patterns

5h agoHN ↗

Keep drinking that sweet sweet polymarket kool aid

5h agoHN ↗

It’s a good thing writing about money laundering and gambling addiction, no? Smart people are only smart until they aren’t.

5h agoHN ↗

I do wonder if the problem with them is that it creates an incentive to share the truth, or for very smart people to predict it....

You missed the obvious one: it creates a path for people with insider knowledge to monetize it at the expense of employers, institutions, etc.

The guy using his access to classified information to make a few hundred thousand bucks in a day is not interested in "sharing the truth" for the benefit of society.

4h agoHN ↗

monetize it at the expense of

Right, and I'd also like to preempt any apologetics trying to cloak it as socially-beneficial "information discovery."

Many of these betting/insider-trading scenarios are structured so that the information only becomes revealed at the same moment it becomes worthless. (In some cases, that's just a return to its default state.) Like the value of knowing the winning numbers from an expired lotto draw.

4h agoHN ↗

They dont share the truth. People betting there are not "smart" they are gamblers and suckers. And theit guesses are not a valuable prediction points.

5h agoHN ↗

Polymarket has fraudsters operating on it?! Good heavens, this is entirely unexpected!!

4h agoHN ↗

A bit lazy take, don't you think?

4h agoHN ↗

the onchain version of polymarket seems better in this regard, but they should really address the UMA oracle gang and have some kind of appointment process for separate oracle systems

so both polymarket onchain and polymarket us have major issues, but separate issues

3h agoHN ↗

The fraudster betting website has fraudsters. What a surprise

3h agoHN ↗

There is no easy way, as a society, to "label" certain wealth as obtained with illicit or unethical activities.

It would be... interesting? (and dangerous?) to be able to meet someone at a party, and have a notification such as "this dude earned a billion dollar by scamming people".