If you have advance knowledge of an attack, there are much less conspicuous ways to profit off that.

Federal law does not categorically trump state law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_preemption

Whether pre-emption applies in this case depends on whether the courts accept Kalshi/Polymarket's claim that they operate a futures trading platform, not a gambling platform. If and only if that claim is accepted is there a pre-emption argument, and only then would the opinion of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission be relevant.

No. There's no "states must permit gambling" Federal law for state bans to conflict with currently; states are free to ban it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling_in_the_United_States

"While gambling is legal under U.S. federal law, there are significant restrictions pertaining to interstate and online gambling, as each state is free to regulate or prohibit the practice within its borders."

A lot of these companies have taken this approach. Break laws until someone finally notices AND does something about it. The runway to a slap on the wrist is often times more financially beneficial to companies - there is no incentive to stop if you run a billion dollar company and breaking the law gets you a $50M dollar fine you make back in a single month.

I thought SOX (Sarbanes–Oxley Act) was supposed to prevent a lot of this, but I guess companies just continue to find loopholes to exploit.

On the other hand, I've come around to the view that sports betting is a net unqualified bad -- and I didn't necessarily feel that way before the Kalshi/PM explosion.

Why are casinos operated by Native Americans legal but casinos operated by black people illegal?

I don't think "illegal gambling" is illegal for the reasons you want it to be illegal.

i would not premise an anti-prediction market argument on their accuracy being bad, you are building on shaky foundations. the better argument is the paternalist protecting stupid people from themselves imo.

is there any surprise then that Trumps are on the boards of both?

... Gambling is motivated by a desire to get something for nothing. This desire is spiritually destructive. It leads participants away from the Savior’s teachings of love and service and toward the selfishness of the adversary. It undermines the virtues of work and thrift and the desire to give honest effort in all we do.

Those who participate in gambling soon discover the deception in the idea that they can give little or nothing and receive something of value in return. They find that they give up large amounts of money, their own honor, and the respect of family members and friends. Deceived and addicted, they often gamble with funds they should use for other purposes, such as meeting the basic needs of their families. Gamblers sometimes become so enslaved and so desperate to pay gambling debts that they turn to stealing, giving up their own good name.

Given the way that the church has explicitly encouraged state legislators to shoot down recent laws it's not surprising to think they'd be pushing for this.

Everyone knows the state of Utah is largely run by the church.

Also speculators serve an important purpose: hedging strategies require speculators on the other side. It is not just a "certain clientele," there are people who run profitable businesses on speculation (it amounts to collecting insurance premiums from people who want hedges).

&&

policy makers, assistants, journalists, and the like are insider trading - and the president of the united states is intentionally market manipulating for profit

Bots Rule Everything Around Me BREAM dollar dollar bill yall.

like, of course the gambling halls drop big money on online marketing

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/pr...

That's way too narrow of the categories. Here are some more cases, and you tell me where can I hedge it? And don't tell me the answer is "go to Goldman Sachs and they create any kind of derivatives to hedge for you", that only works if you are a huge enterprise. I'm talking about SME, or even one person company with $1-5M ARR.

(By the way, I do trade on Polymarket / Kalshi, had a job interview with Kalshi many years ago but did not take their offer since I disagreed a lot with their product design. So all of this is my own opinion).

1. Suppose I run an ice cream shop in midtown Manhattan, and my foot traffic depends on how good the weather is. If it's sunny and dry, I expect a lot of traffic, vice versa, if it's thunderstorm, hurricane or snow, I would run the day without any revenue (and a lot of ice cream waste). What is the way for me to hedge weather risk that could seriously affect my business?

2. Suppose I'm a restaurant owner in Koreatown in LA, and during World Cup I run a restaurant expecting a lot of Korean coming to my area (and my restaurant). So I would ramp up my business, hiring a lot of staffs, sourcing a lot of ingredients from the vendors. Then the biggest risk (and anticipation) is that Korea would be knocked out very early, which unfortunately that precisely happened. So the foot traffic evaporated, and with that the revenue. How could I hedge that risk?

3. Suppose I'm a distributor / reseller who needs to import goods and products from other countries and resells it back to US for profit. Barring the import / export regulations, the biggest risk is tariffs: the orange man can (and did) impose 50% tariffs from China, and all the sudden I face a severe supply-demand imbalance with a lot of contract cancellation and such. How can I hedge such tariff risk from the orange man? (Obviously, the alternative is that I wish we could have elected a more competent leader, but at least 75 million American disagreed with me).

In addition to being utterly terrifying, this would fall afoul of the "cruel and unusual punishments" thing /s

(What a typo)