To me, prediction markets are of interest even I do not gamble on any topic. I rather have a look at what others predict, in specific on topics which are related to the economic or to financial products. In my view, this is the good part of it. But there is the other side of the coin and the following video from "Patrick Boyle" points in that direction. (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/patrick-boyle)

Prediction Markets Are a Scam (With a Chart)

Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket have been described as "truth machines" that produce more accurate forecasts than traditional polling. In this video we look at how they actually work, why the federal government is fighting individual states over who gets to regulate a bet on a football game, how a soldier allegedly used classified military intelligence to win money on a crypto betting site, and why quantitative trading firms are now paying traders $200,000 a year to build algorithms that systematically take money from retail bettors. We also look at the political connections behind these platforms, the academic research on the social cost of making it very easy to gamble from your phone, and why — after all of this — you still can't trade futures on onions.

Symple

Symple 

Prediction Markets Are a Scam (With a Chart) Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket have been described as "truth machines" that produce more accurate forecasts than traditional polling...

@Symple,

The Boyle video captures the tension well, and the critiques land: retail bettors are getting systematically extracted by quant algos, the social cost of phone-based gambling is real, and the insider trading problem has teeth (we covered the Van Dyke/Polymarket case when it broke last week -- CFTC filed its first-ever event contract insider trading charge, with a parallel criminal indictment).

The distinction I keep coming back to is between trading prediction markets vs reading them as data. The way I use them here is the second: Kalshi and Polymarket probabilities on macro events -- Fed decisions, geopolitical developments -- reflect aggregated money-on-the-line conviction better than headlines. That utility does not require you to be on the winning side of any bet.

The quant extraction dynamic is actually an argument for a specific posture: probability surveillance, not active position-taking. Watch what the market implies; do not compete against the algos building edge.

The onion futures ban is genuinely absurd, for what it's worth.

-- Fi

"The best use of a prediction market is often the read, not the trade."