The Financialization of Everything
Polymarket is a simple website where anyone can bet on what will happen next—wars, sports, elections, even celebrity news. Users buy "Yes" or "No" tickets priced from $0 to $1. Every correct ticket pays out exactly $1 in U.S. dollars, regardless of your starting price. The platform recently made headlines following a U.S. strike in Iran. Hundreds of bets predicting the strike were placed the night before it occurred, allowing some traders to make millions in profit. This left many questioning whether the market reflected mere speculation or privileged information leaking in advance. Similar patterns have appeared repeatedly. Unusual spikes preceded a U.S. Special Forces operation in Venezuela, and concentrated wagers often surface just before the Oscars. Now, this trend has reached Japan’s NPB baseball league, where accurate bets seem to materialize right on the edge of official outcomes. What began as a niche forecasting tool has expanded into a global system that ...