December 9, 2025 • 37 mins
Garrison explains how news networks have partnered with gambling sites to forecast the future and turn everyone’s phone into a casino of human suffering.
Sources:
https://news.kalshi.com/p/kalshi-cnn-prediction-market-partnership
https://www.businessinsider.com/kalshi-cnbc-deal-cnn-data-integration-partnership-2025-12
https://x.com/Kalshi/status/1996233186251075862?s=20
https://illinoislawreview.org/wp-content/ilr-content/articles/2008/3/Cherry.pdf
https://www.axios.com/2025/11/20/time-galactic-prediction-market
https://dune.com/datadashboards/prediction-markets
https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesTestimony/behnamstatement051024
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/02/business/appeals-court-allows-kalshi-election-betting/index.html
https://www.datawallet.com/crypto/polymarket-restricted-countries
https://dune.com/rchen8/polymarket
https://blog.uma.xyz/articles/unpacking-polymarkets-meteoric-rise-in-numbers
https://www.forbes.com/sites/boazsobrado/2025/12/04/alleged-insider-nets-1-million-on-polymarket-in-24-hours/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcPwUiMPj6w
https://news.kalshi.com/p/zohran-mamdani-cites-kalshi-election-odds
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/polls/tennessee-us-house-7-special-election-polls-2025.html
https://www.natesilver.net/p/sbsq-26-do-prediction-markets-make
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/16/nate-silver-polymarket
https://www.legalsportsreport.com/sports-betting-states/
https://x.com/Polymarket/status/1996978855538823522?s=20
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Call Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Last week, two major news networks, CNN and CNBC partnered
with the so called prediction market Calshi, an online political
betting platform, to use Calshi's real time betting data in
TV news segments, online news content, and as Calshi announced
on X the Everything app quote to integrate prediction Markets
(00:30):
into CNN's global newsroom, with Kalshi threatening quote, a new
era of media is here. This is it could happen here.
I'm Garrison Davis. Regular CNN viewers may have noticed this
integration has already been happening for some time. This past
(00:51):
election cycle, news anchors used betting odds in place of
an addition to polling data to weigh the likelihood of
candidates when elections. CNN's chief data analyst, Harry Enton Nate
Silver Protege, who used to work for five thirty eight
trailblazed the use of political gambling data in news stories
earlier this year. How she praised Entin by name in
(01:14):
their announcement of the CNN partnership.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Entin is an expert at translating what data and polling
are saying on any given issue, and through this integration,
he can tap into real time prediction markets data to
better inform and fact check his reporting unquote. Here's an
example of this reporting in a CNN segment from October
twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
If you go back six months ago, you go back
to April k bauldwhen what were we looking at, Well,
we were looking at the Democrats with a very clear
shot of taking control of the US House of Representatives.
According to the Calshi prediction market odds, we saw him.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
In an eighty three percent chance.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
But those odds have gone plummeting down now we're talking
about just a sixty three percent chance, while the gopiece
chances up like rocket up like gold, up from seventeen
percent to now a thirty seven percent chance. So will
look like a pretty clear Demo likely Democratic win in
the House come next year has become much closer to
toss up at this point, although still slightly leaning Democratic.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Harry Enton never clarifies how these quote unquote odds are
formed or what they really are. To a viewer who
just tuned in or maybe isn't paying that much attention,
it would be very unclear that these numbers are actually
from a gambling website. They're just big percentages displayed on
(02:35):
screen the way you would see polling data or legitimate
information used in a newsroom. This short section using the
Caushi prediction market odds was then followed by three minutes
of analysis using selective mid term voting data from twenty
seventeen to twenty eighteen to support the movement in these
(02:57):
gambling odds. The gambling odds themselves with a load bearing
piece of information in this piece. Calshi's main competitor, another
so called prediction market called poly Market, partnered with x
the Everything app and Yahoo Finance earlier this year to
integrate their prediction data into online news content. Time Magazine
(03:20):
and Sports Illustrated have also both launched deals with the
prediction market platform Galactic. So what exactly are these prediction
markets and how do they function? On poly Market and Calshi,
users can bet yes or no on the outcome of
a question relating to world events, which is called a market.
(03:41):
As more money is wagered on either side, the odds
of the outcome change. Currently, top questions include various predictions
for Time Person of the Year, will the US strike
Venezuela before the end of the year, the release of
the Epstein files, and who will be the next president.
Calshi has tried chances at six percent. Here's Polymarket CEO
(04:04):
Shane Copelan explaining on sixty minutes.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
You make money if you're right, you lose money if
you're wrong, and as a result, it creates this information
that's really isful for people.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
These companies would like you to believe that the ratio
of people betting yes or no on a certain outcome
of world events is somehow useful or reliable information for
the general public to forecast the future, whether that's through
betting on the likelihood of an upcoming recession, the winner
(04:34):
of a sports game, which days of the week Israel
will bomb Gaza, or what movie will win Best Picture.
Almost fifty million dollars is currently being wagered over a
potential Russia Ukraine ceasefire in twenty twenty five. Production markets
currently have three billion dollars in weekly trading volume. I
(04:56):
do need to note these companies argue that hedging out
homes of world events legally is not gambling, because that
would be illegal. Payments through unauthorized gambling sites are illegal
under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of two thousand
and six, which suppressed the early prediction markets of the
two thousands, but CALSHI is regulated as a platform for
(05:19):
trading financial derivatives rather than securities trading or straight up
legalized gambling, and this determines what entity they have to
register with and what regulations they're subject to. CALSHI launched
in twenty twenty one with a federal license from the
Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and after a year's long battle,
(05:40):
in October twenty twenty four, a federal appeals court ruled
in favor of CALSHI, allowing online prediction market betting on
US elections, rejecting claims by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
that the practice was illegal gambling and their concerns that
prediction market betting could undermine a lie election integrity. Former
(06:02):
CFDC chairman Rostam benham My statement in May of twenty
twenty four, reading quote contracts involving political events ultimately commoditize
and degrade the integrity of the uniquely American experience of
participating in the democratic electoral process. Allowing these contracts would
push the CFTC, a financial market regulator, into a position
(06:23):
far beyond its Congressional mandate and expertise quote. A week
before his dad took office in January twenty twenty five,
Donald Trump Junior became a strategic advisor at Calshi. Polymarket
launched in twenty twenty without registering with the Commodity Futures
(06:44):
Trading Commission, and was fined one point four million dollars
by the CFTC in twenty twenty two for operating as
an unregulated exchange and was henceforth prohibited from allowing bets
from US based users. Though the Polymarket CEA EO sees
it a little different.
Speaker 5 (07:02):
It was at one point four million dollars fine, and
also it was a settlement and you could not have
customers in the United States.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Yeah, we had to go in geoblock trading in the
US and move certain operations offshore. And it wasn't hey
you're banned from trading the US. It's like until you're licensed.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
I mean it was breaking the law.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I mean people say, bring the law. It's like which law,
you know? So if anything it's incompatible.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
It's incompatible with the law. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
With the regulatory matrix that existed the past two years,
Polymarket has found to be facilitating illegal gambling and subsequently
banned in the countries of Switzerland, France, the UK, Poland, Singapore, Belgium,
Romania and Australia. Most of these bands just required geoblocking users,
(07:45):
which can be easily circumvented through the use of a VPN,
and since the financial transactions on poly market are all
done through cryptocurrency, it's not clear that poly market is
taking any steps to enforce these banksands beyond geo blocking.
In the midst of facing regulatory hurdles and bands from
across the globe, Polymarket still exploded in popularity last year,
(08:11):
attracting investment from Peter Thiel's venture capital firm and hundreds
of thousands of new users, primarily driven by betting on
the US presidential election, speculation on whether Biden would drop
out of the race and who Trump would pick as
vice president, all despite the platform technically being banned in
the United States after the first presidential debate in July
(08:34):
twenty twenty four, around the attempted assassination of Trump and
the RNC, Polymarket gained sixty thousand new accounts. The year prior,
polymarket averaged two thousand, three hundred new accounts, per month.
August twenty twenty four saw seventy thousand new accounts, September
ninety thousand, October three hundred thousand, the month after Trump's
(08:57):
second inauguration four hundred thousand. Currently, polymarket has over sixty
thousand daily active traders and hundreds of thousands of monthly
traders since October twenty twenty four. To give another example
of their recent growth, in April twenty twenty three, Polymarket's
monthly volume was about three million dollars. A year later,
(09:21):
it was thirty nine million. In November twenty twenty four,
it was two point five billion. Last month, it was
three point seven billion. In summer twenty twenty five, cash
(09:46):
Pttel's FBI and the CFTC under Trump dropped investigations into
whether polymarket was illegally allowing US users to place bets
using VPNs. Shortly thereafter, Donald Trump Junior's venture capital firm
invested in the platform, and Trump Junior himself joined Polymarket's
(10:07):
advisory board. Curiously, a few days after Trump Junior joined
poly Market, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced it was
going to allow poly market to operate in the United
States after acquiring another company that held a US license.
This past October, Trump's own truth Social announced it was
(10:28):
partnering with Crypto dot Com to launch truth predict quote,
a revolutionary prediction market backed by President Trump for enhanced
decision making unquote. When Barry Weiss's sixty Minutes did a
puff piece on Polymarket with its CEO last week, Anderson
(10:49):
Cooper inquired about the risk of insider trading, poly Market's CEO,
Shane Kaplan, seemed to think that a little bit of
insider trading my be good actually.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
But predictive markets do rely on someone having some inside information.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yeah, I think that people going and having an edge
to the market is a good thing. Obviously, you need
to curate them, and you need to be really clear
and stringent on where the line is drawn and like
sort of ethics, and we spend a lot of time
on that. But it's sort of an inevitability that this
will happen and there's a lot of benefits from it
and people will adapt.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
The CEO did not elaborate on what polymarkets practice of
curating insider trading looks like and where their quote unquote
stringent line is drawn, because in reality it doesn't seem
this line exists. They essentially encourage insider trading through these
vague statements and lack of clear enforcement. From the point
(11:49):
of view of these platforms, insider trading makes their prediction
markets more accurate, so it's a net positive, and if
it fucks over some users on the other side of
a bet, that's just the cost of business. Last week,
an alleged insider trader won over a million dollars for
bets on Google's twenty twenty five year in search rankings,
(12:11):
listing twenty two out of twenty three in the correct order.
This user has made a series of early bets related
to Google the past year, like the exact release date
of Google's Gemini three point zero, which they won one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars on. But because this poly
market user isn't trading stock, there's no clear regulatory mechanism
(12:36):
to stop this behavior, and polymarket can't reverse these trades
because they run through the blockchain, not that they would
even necessarily want to. Professional gambler, political data analyst and
poly Market advisor Nate Silver was also asked about insider
trading on the China Talk podcast two months ago.
Speaker 6 (12:56):
Are you worried about insider trading with this, with all
this political betting. I mean there's an aspect of like, look,
these are all crypto, you know, you get on these
markets with crypto and like like there were markets like
which way is Suzanne Collins going to vote? And you
know the sort of the like you know, like the
(13:18):
tail outcomes for like a legislative assistant in her office?
Are you know you can make ten times your salary?
And like a minute, right, what's your what's your think
think on this?
Speaker 3 (13:30):
For sure?
Speaker 7 (13:32):
I mean, look, I think there are a couple of
qualifications though, Like, first of all, I think people on
the inside often earn't as well as some formed as
they think, and or there are some downsides having an
inside view and not an outside of you. You might
drinp the kool aid, so to speak, right, you might
be in a bubble.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
Yeah, look, I mean I mean there are ones where
it's like you can literally I mean there's been a
lots of group chats people talking about like very very
sketchy trades and one way bets that are being made
in the stock market of like what's going to happen.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
With a trade deal?
Speaker 6 (14:04):
I mean you can literally be the person who decides
right and be vetting on the side if weird.
Speaker 7 (14:11):
If there are incentives to make money in a world
of eight billion people, many of them are very competitive,
and all of whom and not all of them, most
of them access to the internet, right, people are going
to find a way a way to do it.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Right, Let's pause here for a sec. What do you
think Nick goes on to list as a comparison to
political insider trading as like an unfortunate but somewhat inevitable
consequence of our evolving system of finance.
Speaker 7 (14:39):
Like in the crypto space, we've seen like an increasing
the number of like crypto kidnappings. Right, Well, I mean
that's one of the consequences if people are worth vast
amounts of wealth that isn't very secure. It's just it's
just gonna gonna happen until you up security or have
better solutions or whatever else. And so like, you know,
I don't think there's necessarily anymore or less insider creating
(14:59):
on polymarket then there might be for in sports betting side,
we've seen a lot of sports betting scandals or for
regular equities, you know, I believe the literature says that
like members of Congress achieve abnormal returns from their stock portfolios,
I'd have to double I'm sure there's some debate about that.
I after like to double check that.
Speaker 8 (15:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
It's fine, bros. It's just like cryptocurrency kidnapping. It's fine. Actually,
So Naate goes on to say that prediction market insider
trading isn't that different from congressmen doing insider trading on
the stock market, or like rigged sports betting, but he
really neglects to emphasize that those things are also bad
(15:43):
and should be aggressively clamped down on. That shouldn't be allowed,
and prediction markets intentionally skirt regulation. They currently have far
less legal protections for users against unfair practices, and with
crypto they can be pretty anonymized, enabling bad actors. And
now news companies are legitimizing turning everyone's phone into a
(16:06):
corrupt casino for world events, whether that's Israel starving Palestine
or how many tweets Elon Musk is going to publish
this week. The day before CAW she announced their partnership
agreement with CNN and NCNBC. CBS aired a sixty minutes
puff piece on Polymarket anchored by Anderson Cooper.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
When we met with Copeland last month, more than three
point six million dollars had been wagered on whether or
not Venezuela's president, Nicholas Muduro would be out of power
by the end of the year. Polymarket users didn't think,
so they gave it only a twenty three percent chance.
And if you buy no on that, and you're buying
it at seventy eight cents and at the end of
(16:51):
the year he's still in power, yeah, you get a
dollar per share, so you've made a profit of twenty
to share. I can't see why this would be I mean,
I don't want to is a term addictive, but it
would be compelling.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
I mean maybe it is a TICNII well, certainly compelling.
This is how I see it.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
If you are into geopolitics, this creates an incentive for
you to dig in to what's going on in Venezuela
and try and get an edge.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Anderson Cooper, who both works for the newly Calshi partner
at CNN as well as CBS's Sixty Minutes, is so
hesitant to call this clearly addictive practice addictive quote unquote compelling.
Here's how Polymarket CEO Shane Copelan explained the platform earlier
(17:36):
in this piece.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
It's a site where you can basically bet on current events,
some sort of question about the future, like an election,
and as a result, when a ton of people are betting,
you get the betting odds, which basically tell you how
likely each outcome.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Is and how accurate is it.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
It's the most accurate thing we have as mankind right now,
until someone else creates some sort of super crystal ball.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Anderson Cooper responds with narration that the CEO quote may
be prone to hyperbole, but he's definitely onto something unquote.
In explaining how poly Market users attempt to seek truth
and gain an edge, copeland told the story of how
in twenty twenty four, an anonymous French user made over
(18:22):
eighty million dollars on poly Market by betting on Trump
winning the presidential election, and to bolster his bets, he
contracted YouGov to conduct private polls in swing states.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
People thought he'd just liked Trump, and he had actually
commissioned a ton of private polls. He did something called
neighbor polling, which is you ask people who they think
their neighbors are likely to vote for four scenarios for
an election where there's a stigma to saying you're going
to vote for somebody, and people feel some sort of
social awkwardness. And what he noticed was there was huge
discrepancy in the neighbor polling versus the normal polling, and
(18:54):
the neighbor polling favored Trump enormously.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
He thought Trump was undervalued.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
If this guy was not able to make eighty million,
but rather able to make eighty thousand dollars, he would
have never gone through the hassle. But when you get
markets that are big enough, you create this incentive for
people to go above and beyond to try and find truth.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
What the CEO is arguing here is that the sheer
scale of money being wagered creates incentive to quote unquote
find truth. In media discussions of prediction markets, there's this
specter of objectivity around the gambled odds, which obviously the
CEO of poly Market has a personal incentive to encourage.
(19:33):
But Anderson Cooper here doesn't challenge this notion of capital
t truth. Even though Donald Trump was way ahead in
prediction market odds back during the twenty twenty election, which
had his chances of winning that election far higher than
what pure polling models showed. Kalshi claims that prediction markets
(19:55):
can help journalists quote unquote fact check, but doesn't explain
how fact can be determined from speculative gambling markets. Where
is the fact in gambling? Well, we will find out
after these ads. To quote from poly market advisor Nate
(20:26):
Silver's blog The Silver Bulletin quote, It's basically good when
people are more exposed to probabilities and they become more normalized.
But of course I also analyze poles and build probabilistic
models myself. In that capacity, I strongly disagree with the
notion that prediction markets can serve as a good substitute
(20:47):
for poles. These sorts of claims are sometimes advanced by
the prediction market companies themselves, including poly Market. To be fair,
one minor pet peeve is that both reporters and readers
often confuse probabilities for poll results unquote. As Nate goes
on to explain, if Trump is up fifty five to
(21:09):
forty five over Kamala Harris on a prediction market, that's
not saying that Trump is expected to win by ten points.
It means that ten percent more users on the website
favor Trump winning, which is pretty close to a toss up.
This confusion is a huge problem, which is bolstered in
(21:30):
both how prediction market companies market their platform, but also
how journalists use gambling data in news stories. If you
see a social media post, an advertisement, or a random
news segment showing percentages tied to pictures of two politicians
in a race without context, those betting numbers could be
interpreted in a number of ways and influence someone's perception
(21:54):
of an election and maybe even their choice on who
to vote for, or even whether to vote at all.
In an October speech, Zora Mumdani reference to Calshi billboards
predicting a Cuomo victory in the Democratic primary.
Speaker 9 (22:09):
When I walked the length of Manhattan just a few
days before the election, hundreds of New Yorkers marched alongside me.
And when we strolled into Times Square under a billboard
with betting odds that showed Cuomo's chances of winning at
nearly eighty percent, we knew that the so called experts
(22:30):
were set to get it wrong yet again. Andrew Cuomo
was supposed to be inevitable. When you see the Calshi
odds that have our chances of victory in the nineties.
Know this. You are reading the same things that Andrew
Cuomo read when he went to sleep each night in June,
(22:55):
believing that his victory was promised. We cannot allow complace
see to infiltrate this movement.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Cal She excitedly shared the latter half of that clip,
proclaiming breaking zoron Mamdani references his Calci odds on stage,
Calshi is mainstream unquote despite this clip demonstrating how prediction
markets often suffer from inaccurate bias. Last week, Discount Steve Kornaki,
(23:27):
former five poin thirty eight analyst and now CNN's data
expert Harry Enton shared this segment about the Tennessee District
seven special election on x the Everything app with the
caption odds are Dems will come within ten points of
a win, if not outright win.
Speaker 10 (23:45):
I would say, if you had to look at the
congressional map any district that Donald Trump won by twenty
two points, you would say, you know, you've got like
nearly a one hundred percent chance of winning if you're
running for Congress there.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
But what are the prediction markets saying right.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Now, Yeah, what are we talking about in terms of
diction market huts. Look, the Democrat has a fifteen percent
chance of winning in that race. Okay, a fifteen percent chance,
which ain't nothing in a district that Donald Trump won
by twenty two points. But here, I think is the
key nugget on this side of the of the ledger,
and that is a GOP win by under ten points.
There's a sixty eight percent chance of that. So there
(24:19):
is a more than two thirds chance that the Republican candidate, Yes,
they win, but they win by a significantly lower margin
than Donald Trump. We're talking about double digits, smaller. We're
talking about a huge, huge shift to the left. We're
talking about When you add these two together, we're talking
about a more than eighty percent chance that there is
(24:39):
a clear double digit shift to the left, and a
fifteen percent chance the Democrat actually wins in a district
that Donald Trump won by twenty two points. That just
shows you how bad the environment is for Republicans right now,
that the Democrat has any sort of a chance in
this talk to me about with a special lak.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
He's just authoritatively rattling off complete speculation on a Democrat victor.
As big screens display percentages in huge text with source
Calci in tiny text the bottom of the screen. Ordinary
polling showed that this was a close race that leaned
Red by two to eight points, and the Republican did
(25:17):
end up winning by nine points. To quote the broken
clock Nate silver quote. Without having polls to look at,
the prediction markets would probably kind of suck at making
election forecasts. Translating poles into probabilities is considerably more complicated
when there are many correlated races at once, such as
(25:39):
in the battle for the electoral College or control of Congress.
Prediction markets had a strong twenty twenty four in this regard.
They leaned toward Trump when our model had it at
fifty to fifty. I don't think this was because of
any special modeling insight per se, but because they incorporated
some sort of prior intuition that Trump would overperform his polls. Again,
(26:05):
so give the markets credit for that. These sorts of
soft quote unquote intangible intuitions can be valuable, though you'd
need a lot of data to determine whether they add
or subtract value in the long run unquote, As Nate
himself acknowledges someone like Andrew Cuomo had much higher betting
(26:26):
odds throughout the entire New York mayoral race than a
purely statistical model would show. A contention I have with Nate.
One of many is though I call prediction market numbers
gambling odds, they are not actual probabilities. These odds aren't
(26:46):
based on objective mathematical principles like flipping a coin, the
three door problem, or even something like blackjack. These odds
are created whole cloth through guessing, sometimes educated or day
informed guessing, but still primarily through people's intuition, which is
susceptible to group impulses. Many random world events lack a
(27:10):
reliable basis of continuous controlled data that's needed to form
a probability like that which is applied to legalized sports betting.
This is quite evident in the betting odds around the
last Papal conclave, which had very little relevant data to
use for informed predictions. There was no existing probability to
(27:31):
support the election of an American pope, a first time occurrence.
With prediction markets, people can still do research to make
an informed bet, but it's not really the case that
ex candidate is mathematically expected to win an election. Eighty
out of one hundred instances, a hive mind of users
have formed that statistical division. Through the power of money,
(27:55):
eighty percent of users are betting that a certain result
is likely to occur. So the problem isn't just that,
like Nate says, people are confusing probabilities for polls. It's
that they're confusing prediction market betting odds for mathematical probabilities.
It's this difference that allows betting on sports outcomes via
(28:17):
Calshian polymarket, even in states that ban typical sports betting,
because you're not actually betting on fixed odds, you're betting
against other investors. And now news companies are not just
manufacturing consent and normalizing political gambling, but are actively encouraging
(28:38):
the use of these platforms and endorsing the predictive capacity
of these gambling markets. Anderson Cooper calls it the quote
unquote wisdom of crowds. But we already have methods for
learning group consensus, like polling, which may have problems, but
frankly far fewer problems than gambling on world events. Beyond
(29:01):
the moral qualms of betting money on human suffering, prediction
markets are susceptible to not just personal bias, but group
bias based on the current ratio of odds. This in
group consensus can be influenced by short lived trending topics,
and these platforms cater to a hyper online point of view.
(29:22):
Prediction market users provide a very non representational sample variety
pulling from a very specific type of guy who regularly
uses these platforms. To quote from Calsh's CNN Partnership announcement, quote,
cal she has become the definitive source for staying informed
about the future and is used by reporters, politicians, pundits,
(29:44):
Wall Street and Main Street get recently called the New
York City mayoral election eight minutes after polls closed, hours
before the media. It's because of this accuracy that calci's
data will serve as a powerful complement to CNN's reporting.
Lists can more easily surface credible information to their audiences
about the real time probabilities of future cultural and political
(30:06):
events unquote. In practice, this reporting mixes gambling data and
actually reputable or credible pulls in a confusing way, like
this recent scene end segment, which cites Calshi odds on
whether Trump will send tariff stimulus checks as well as
(30:27):
CBS you gov polling data on if tariff's lower prices
back to back In the same segment, do.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
They think that the tariffs, that these rebay checks are
actually coming? And at this point now no, I mean
chance Trump tariff the tariff stimulus checks are sent to
Americans by August of twenty twenty six. It's a twenty
five percent chance. That's one in four, So that's not nothing.
But the American people right now are craving, craving some relief,
(30:57):
and at this point it doesn't look like it is coming.
Although I will note John Berman, this twenty five percent,
it is greater than this six percent who say that
terrors decrease prices, or that five percent back in March,
which are just you never see one, two, three, four,
five percent. So look, twenty five percent eight nothing.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
But at this point it's love.
Speaker 10 (31:17):
Yeah, it's interesting the prediction, Marcus think they only one
in four chance that will actually happen.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
There is this really what the future of political forecasting
is going to be? Maybe, maybe not, but there are
four horsemen of this political gambling apocalypse. Nate Silver via
his gamification of election predictions based on his time as
a professional gambler sports betting, especially since the Supreme Court
(31:43):
struck down a federal law banning sports betting outside of
Nevada in twenty eighteen, resulting in almost forty states subsequently
legalizing some form of sports betting, which has facilitated the
cassibility of gambling to grow dramatically across the country in
the past ten years through the spread of online sports
betting apps. The third horseman is Trump, for the Trump
administration through their removal of regulatory hurdles facing prediction markets.
(32:09):
And finally that CNN guy Harry Enton, a Nate Silver
protege who trailblazed the use of political gambling data in
news stories the past year. These four horsemen, Nate Silver,
sports betting, Trump, and Harry Enton have created the cultural
and political conditions for political gambling to spread. Like wildfire, which,
(32:31):
hey is also something you can bet on. During the
LA Fires prediction market, users could bet on how many
acres would burn. So what is the endgame of this,
this gambling apocalypse that seems to be inching its way
closer and closer To answer that? Here's a clip from
Calshi co founder and CEO Derek Manser.
Speaker 8 (32:53):
The long term vision is to financialize everything and create
a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion. We
are living in a where like we have an abundance
of information, but there's a lot of noise, and like
we don't really understand what's really from what's not. And
prediction markets are an antidote to that. They do very
very good job at distilling information and surfacing truth to people.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
And you're seeing the sort.
Speaker 8 (33:13):
Of massive shift where like people are using them whenever
they think about questions about the future, you know, whenever
they're debating about anything. And I think that trajectory is
going to keep going. That's a new consumer habit that
I don't think is going to be undone.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
This is the demon child of crypto and sports betting,
This financialization of everything to form a tradable asset out
of any difference in opinion, creating new addictive consumer habits.
These companies want to apply the logic of smartphone sports
betting to everything, where everyone gets to be their own
(33:48):
little Nate Silver while carrying around their own digital casino
in their pocket, getting addicted to gambling on speculation of
world suffering, and CNN is complicit in this. CNN and
others have decided to partner with platforms that enable the
people who decide when to drop bombs around the world
to win millions of dollars by betting money on the
(34:10):
choices they themselves are making at the expense of the
rest of the world. And these companies think this is
a good thing because the betting odds can serve as
a potential heads up that something is likely to happen.
Simple consumer protections for users, which currently are non existent,
are just not enough. Congress needs to be far more
(34:33):
involved in regulating online betting, and in the case of
political events, it should just be completely banned. It is
detrimental to a healthy society. It incentivizes corruption, cruelty, and
erodes public trust. Gambling doesn't need to go away entirely,
when it should return to being time and location locked,
(34:53):
go to Las Vegas like a fucking adult. Currently, there
is no existing mechanism for individual states to regulate prediction markets.
Only the federal government can, and Trump's federal government certainly
seems like it's not going to considering the president's sun
(35:13):
works for both of the main platforms Kalshi and poly Market,
and while news companies are legitimizing this, these platforms are
now working as their own news aggregators, specifically Polymarket's social
media account, which is acting as a news aggregation account
because that drives traffic back to their website, where people
(35:35):
can bet on the news stories that poly market is sharing,
even if those news stories are speculative or completely made up.
On December fifth, Polymarket posted quote just in suspected J
six Pipe Bomber's legal council projected to argue he was
included in Trump's pardon of those involved in January sixth quote.
(35:57):
This claim subsequently spread all around the parroted by people
of a variety of political orientations. But if you read closely,
the original post says suspected J six Pipe Bomber's legal
council projected to argue he was included in Trump's pardon,
(36:17):
Polymarket is just spreading gambling information as if it is
news content. Quote unquote projected just means that polymarket users
are betting on this. But these projected posts are mixed
in with other posts just aggregating the day's news. So
unless you are paying super close attention, which rarely people
(36:39):
on the Internet are. This becomes a trojan horse of disinformation.
When news companies use the term projected on election night,
usually that indicates, with pretty clear mathematical certainty, that an
event is going to happen. When polymarket uses projected in
news tweets, it only indicates that Internet gamblers are swinging
(37:02):
around money in an effort to create truth, with once
legitimate news companies not just complicit but active participants in
this process that isn't for us today at it could
happen here, see you on the other side. It could
happen here is a production of cool Zone Media. For
(37:24):
more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonmedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for it could Happen here listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Call Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Last week, two major news networks, CNN and CNBC partnered
with the so called prediction market Calshi, an online political
betting platform, to use Calshi's real time betting data in
TV news segments, online news content, and as Calshi announced
on X the Everything app quote to integrate prediction Markets
(00:30):
into CNN's global newsroom, with Kalshi threatening quote, a new
era of media is here. This is it could happen here.
I'm Garrison Davis. Regular CNN viewers may have noticed this
integration has already been happening for some time. This past
(00:51):
election cycle, news anchors used betting odds in place of
an addition to polling data to weigh the likelihood of
candidates when elections. CNN's chief data analyst, Harry Enton Nate
Silver Protege, who used to work for five thirty eight
trailblazed the use of political gambling data in news stories
earlier this year. How she praised Entin by name in
(01:14):
their announcement of the CNN partnership.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Entin is an expert at translating what data and polling
are saying on any given issue, and through this integration,
he can tap into real time prediction markets data to
better inform and fact check his reporting unquote. Here's an
example of this reporting in a CNN segment from October
twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
If you go back six months ago, you go back
to April k bauldwhen what were we looking at, Well,
we were looking at the Democrats with a very clear
shot of taking control of the US House of Representatives.
According to the Calshi prediction market odds, we saw him.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
In an eighty three percent chance.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
But those odds have gone plummeting down now we're talking
about just a sixty three percent chance, while the gopiece
chances up like rocket up like gold, up from seventeen
percent to now a thirty seven percent chance. So will
look like a pretty clear Demo likely Democratic win in
the House come next year has become much closer to
toss up at this point, although still slightly leaning Democratic.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Harry Enton never clarifies how these quote unquote odds are
formed or what they really are. To a viewer who
just tuned in or maybe isn't paying that much attention,
it would be very unclear that these numbers are actually
from a gambling website. They're just big percentages displayed on
(02:35):
screen the way you would see polling data or legitimate
information used in a newsroom. This short section using the
Caushi prediction market odds was then followed by three minutes
of analysis using selective mid term voting data from twenty
seventeen to twenty eighteen to support the movement in these
(02:57):
gambling odds. The gambling odds themselves with a load bearing
piece of information in this piece. Calshi's main competitor, another
so called prediction market called poly Market, partnered with x
the Everything app and Yahoo Finance earlier this year to
integrate their prediction data into online news content. Time Magazine
(03:20):
and Sports Illustrated have also both launched deals with the
prediction market platform Galactic. So what exactly are these prediction
markets and how do they function? On poly Market and Calshi,
users can bet yes or no on the outcome of
a question relating to world events, which is called a market.
(03:41):
As more money is wagered on either side, the odds
of the outcome change. Currently, top questions include various predictions
for Time Person of the Year, will the US strike
Venezuela before the end of the year, the release of
the Epstein files, and who will be the next president.
Calshi has tried chances at six percent. Here's Polymarket CEO
(04:04):
Shane Copelan explaining on sixty minutes.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
You make money if you're right, you lose money if
you're wrong, and as a result, it creates this information
that's really isful for people.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
These companies would like you to believe that the ratio
of people betting yes or no on a certain outcome
of world events is somehow useful or reliable information for
the general public to forecast the future, whether that's through
betting on the likelihood of an upcoming recession, the winner
(04:34):
of a sports game, which days of the week Israel
will bomb Gaza, or what movie will win Best Picture.
Almost fifty million dollars is currently being wagered over a
potential Russia Ukraine ceasefire in twenty twenty five. Production markets
currently have three billion dollars in weekly trading volume. I
(04:56):
do need to note these companies argue that hedging out
homes of world events legally is not gambling, because that
would be illegal. Payments through unauthorized gambling sites are illegal
under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of two thousand
and six, which suppressed the early prediction markets of the
two thousands, but CALSHI is regulated as a platform for
(05:19):
trading financial derivatives rather than securities trading or straight up
legalized gambling, and this determines what entity they have to
register with and what regulations they're subject to. CALSHI launched
in twenty twenty one with a federal license from the
Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and after a year's long battle,
(05:40):
in October twenty twenty four, a federal appeals court ruled
in favor of CALSHI, allowing online prediction market betting on
US elections, rejecting claims by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
that the practice was illegal gambling and their concerns that
prediction market betting could undermine a lie election integrity. Former
(06:02):
CFDC chairman Rostam benham My statement in May of twenty
twenty four, reading quote contracts involving political events ultimately commoditize
and degrade the integrity of the uniquely American experience of
participating in the democratic electoral process. Allowing these contracts would
push the CFTC, a financial market regulator, into a position
(06:23):
far beyond its Congressional mandate and expertise quote. A week
before his dad took office in January twenty twenty five,
Donald Trump Junior became a strategic advisor at Calshi. Polymarket
launched in twenty twenty without registering with the Commodity Futures
(06:44):
Trading Commission, and was fined one point four million dollars
by the CFTC in twenty twenty two for operating as
an unregulated exchange and was henceforth prohibited from allowing bets
from US based users. Though the Polymarket CEA EO sees
it a little different.
Speaker 5 (07:02):
It was at one point four million dollars fine, and
also it was a settlement and you could not have
customers in the United States.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Yeah, we had to go in geoblock trading in the
US and move certain operations offshore. And it wasn't hey
you're banned from trading the US. It's like until you're licensed.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
I mean it was breaking the law.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I mean people say, bring the law. It's like which law,
you know? So if anything it's incompatible.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
It's incompatible with the law. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
With the regulatory matrix that existed the past two years,
Polymarket has found to be facilitating illegal gambling and subsequently
banned in the countries of Switzerland, France, the UK, Poland, Singapore, Belgium,
Romania and Australia. Most of these bands just required geoblocking users,
(07:45):
which can be easily circumvented through the use of a VPN,
and since the financial transactions on poly market are all
done through cryptocurrency, it's not clear that poly market is
taking any steps to enforce these banksands beyond geo blocking.
In the midst of facing regulatory hurdles and bands from
across the globe, Polymarket still exploded in popularity last year,
(08:11):
attracting investment from Peter Thiel's venture capital firm and hundreds
of thousands of new users, primarily driven by betting on
the US presidential election, speculation on whether Biden would drop
out of the race and who Trump would pick as
vice president, all despite the platform technically being banned in
the United States after the first presidential debate in July
(08:34):
twenty twenty four, around the attempted assassination of Trump and
the RNC, Polymarket gained sixty thousand new accounts. The year prior,
polymarket averaged two thousand, three hundred new accounts, per month.
August twenty twenty four saw seventy thousand new accounts, September
ninety thousand, October three hundred thousand, the month after Trump's
(08:57):
second inauguration four hundred thousand. Currently, polymarket has over sixty
thousand daily active traders and hundreds of thousands of monthly
traders since October twenty twenty four. To give another example
of their recent growth, in April twenty twenty three, Polymarket's
monthly volume was about three million dollars. A year later,
(09:21):
it was thirty nine million. In November twenty twenty four,
it was two point five billion. Last month, it was
three point seven billion. In summer twenty twenty five, cash
(09:46):
Pttel's FBI and the CFTC under Trump dropped investigations into
whether polymarket was illegally allowing US users to place bets
using VPNs. Shortly thereafter, Donald Trump Junior's venture capital firm
invested in the platform, and Trump Junior himself joined Polymarket's
(10:07):
advisory board. Curiously, a few days after Trump Junior joined
poly Market, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced it was
going to allow poly market to operate in the United
States after acquiring another company that held a US license.
This past October, Trump's own truth Social announced it was
(10:28):
partnering with Crypto dot Com to launch truth predict quote,
a revolutionary prediction market backed by President Trump for enhanced
decision making unquote. When Barry Weiss's sixty Minutes did a
puff piece on Polymarket with its CEO last week, Anderson
(10:49):
Cooper inquired about the risk of insider trading, poly Market's CEO,
Shane Kaplan, seemed to think that a little bit of
insider trading my be good actually.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
But predictive markets do rely on someone having some inside information.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yeah, I think that people going and having an edge
to the market is a good thing. Obviously, you need
to curate them, and you need to be really clear
and stringent on where the line is drawn and like
sort of ethics, and we spend a lot of time
on that. But it's sort of an inevitability that this
will happen and there's a lot of benefits from it
and people will adapt.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
The CEO did not elaborate on what polymarkets practice of
curating insider trading looks like and where their quote unquote
stringent line is drawn, because in reality it doesn't seem
this line exists. They essentially encourage insider trading through these
vague statements and lack of clear enforcement. From the point
(11:49):
of view of these platforms, insider trading makes their prediction
markets more accurate, so it's a net positive, and if
it fucks over some users on the other side of
a bet, that's just the cost of business. Last week,
an alleged insider trader won over a million dollars for
bets on Google's twenty twenty five year in search rankings,
(12:11):
listing twenty two out of twenty three in the correct order.
This user has made a series of early bets related
to Google the past year, like the exact release date
of Google's Gemini three point zero, which they won one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars on. But because this poly
market user isn't trading stock, there's no clear regulatory mechanism
(12:36):
to stop this behavior, and polymarket can't reverse these trades
because they run through the blockchain, not that they would
even necessarily want to. Professional gambler, political data analyst and
poly Market advisor Nate Silver was also asked about insider
trading on the China Talk podcast two months ago.
Speaker 6 (12:56):
Are you worried about insider trading with this, with all
this political betting. I mean there's an aspect of like, look,
these are all crypto, you know, you get on these
markets with crypto and like like there were markets like
which way is Suzanne Collins going to vote? And you
know the sort of the like you know, like the
(13:18):
tail outcomes for like a legislative assistant in her office?
Are you know you can make ten times your salary?
And like a minute, right, what's your what's your think
think on this?
Speaker 3 (13:30):
For sure?
Speaker 7 (13:32):
I mean, look, I think there are a couple of
qualifications though, Like, first of all, I think people on
the inside often earn't as well as some formed as
they think, and or there are some downsides having an
inside view and not an outside of you. You might
drinp the kool aid, so to speak, right, you might
be in a bubble.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
Yeah, look, I mean I mean there are ones where
it's like you can literally I mean there's been a
lots of group chats people talking about like very very
sketchy trades and one way bets that are being made
in the stock market of like what's going to happen.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
With a trade deal?
Speaker 6 (14:04):
I mean you can literally be the person who decides
right and be vetting on the side if weird.
Speaker 7 (14:11):
If there are incentives to make money in a world
of eight billion people, many of them are very competitive,
and all of whom and not all of them, most
of them access to the internet, right, people are going
to find a way a way to do it.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Right, Let's pause here for a sec. What do you
think Nick goes on to list as a comparison to
political insider trading as like an unfortunate but somewhat inevitable
consequence of our evolving system of finance.
Speaker 7 (14:39):
Like in the crypto space, we've seen like an increasing
the number of like crypto kidnappings. Right, Well, I mean
that's one of the consequences if people are worth vast
amounts of wealth that isn't very secure. It's just it's
just gonna gonna happen until you up security or have
better solutions or whatever else. And so like, you know,
I don't think there's necessarily anymore or less insider creating
(14:59):
on polymarket then there might be for in sports betting side,
we've seen a lot of sports betting scandals or for
regular equities, you know, I believe the literature says that
like members of Congress achieve abnormal returns from their stock portfolios,
I'd have to double I'm sure there's some debate about that.
I after like to double check that.
Speaker 8 (15:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
It's fine, bros. It's just like cryptocurrency kidnapping. It's fine. Actually,
So Naate goes on to say that prediction market insider
trading isn't that different from congressmen doing insider trading on
the stock market, or like rigged sports betting, but he
really neglects to emphasize that those things are also bad
(15:43):
and should be aggressively clamped down on. That shouldn't be allowed,
and prediction markets intentionally skirt regulation. They currently have far
less legal protections for users against unfair practices, and with
crypto they can be pretty anonymized, enabling bad actors. And
now news companies are legitimizing turning everyone's phone into a
(16:06):
corrupt casino for world events, whether that's Israel starving Palestine
or how many tweets Elon Musk is going to publish
this week. The day before CAW she announced their partnership
agreement with CNN and NCNBC. CBS aired a sixty minutes
puff piece on Polymarket anchored by Anderson Cooper.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
When we met with Copeland last month, more than three
point six million dollars had been wagered on whether or
not Venezuela's president, Nicholas Muduro would be out of power
by the end of the year. Polymarket users didn't think,
so they gave it only a twenty three percent chance.
And if you buy no on that, and you're buying
it at seventy eight cents and at the end of
(16:51):
the year he's still in power, yeah, you get a
dollar per share, so you've made a profit of twenty
to share. I can't see why this would be I mean,
I don't want to is a term addictive, but it
would be compelling.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
I mean maybe it is a TICNII well, certainly compelling.
This is how I see it.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
If you are into geopolitics, this creates an incentive for
you to dig in to what's going on in Venezuela
and try and get an edge.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Anderson Cooper, who both works for the newly Calshi partner
at CNN as well as CBS's Sixty Minutes, is so
hesitant to call this clearly addictive practice addictive quote unquote compelling.
Here's how Polymarket CEO Shane Copelan explained the platform earlier
(17:36):
in this piece.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
It's a site where you can basically bet on current events,
some sort of question about the future, like an election,
and as a result, when a ton of people are betting,
you get the betting odds, which basically tell you how
likely each outcome.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Is and how accurate is it.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
It's the most accurate thing we have as mankind right now,
until someone else creates some sort of super crystal ball.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Anderson Cooper responds with narration that the CEO quote may
be prone to hyperbole, but he's definitely onto something unquote.
In explaining how poly Market users attempt to seek truth
and gain an edge, copeland told the story of how
in twenty twenty four, an anonymous French user made over
(18:22):
eighty million dollars on poly Market by betting on Trump
winning the presidential election, and to bolster his bets, he
contracted YouGov to conduct private polls in swing states.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
People thought he'd just liked Trump, and he had actually
commissioned a ton of private polls. He did something called
neighbor polling, which is you ask people who they think
their neighbors are likely to vote for four scenarios for
an election where there's a stigma to saying you're going
to vote for somebody, and people feel some sort of
social awkwardness. And what he noticed was there was huge
discrepancy in the neighbor polling versus the normal polling, and
(18:54):
the neighbor polling favored Trump enormously.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
He thought Trump was undervalued.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
If this guy was not able to make eighty million,
but rather able to make eighty thousand dollars, he would
have never gone through the hassle. But when you get
markets that are big enough, you create this incentive for
people to go above and beyond to try and find truth.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
What the CEO is arguing here is that the sheer
scale of money being wagered creates incentive to quote unquote
find truth. In media discussions of prediction markets, there's this
specter of objectivity around the gambled odds, which obviously the
CEO of poly Market has a personal incentive to encourage.
(19:33):
But Anderson Cooper here doesn't challenge this notion of capital
t truth. Even though Donald Trump was way ahead in
prediction market odds back during the twenty twenty election, which
had his chances of winning that election far higher than
what pure polling models showed. Kalshi claims that prediction markets
(19:55):
can help journalists quote unquote fact check, but doesn't explain
how fact can be determined from speculative gambling markets. Where
is the fact in gambling? Well, we will find out
after these ads. To quote from poly market advisor Nate
(20:26):
Silver's blog The Silver Bulletin quote, It's basically good when
people are more exposed to probabilities and they become more normalized.
But of course I also analyze poles and build probabilistic
models myself. In that capacity, I strongly disagree with the
notion that prediction markets can serve as a good substitute
(20:47):
for poles. These sorts of claims are sometimes advanced by
the prediction market companies themselves, including poly Market. To be fair,
one minor pet peeve is that both reporters and readers
often confuse probabilities for poll results unquote. As Nate goes
on to explain, if Trump is up fifty five to
(21:09):
forty five over Kamala Harris on a prediction market, that's
not saying that Trump is expected to win by ten points.
It means that ten percent more users on the website
favor Trump winning, which is pretty close to a toss up.
This confusion is a huge problem, which is bolstered in
(21:30):
both how prediction market companies market their platform, but also
how journalists use gambling data in news stories. If you
see a social media post, an advertisement, or a random
news segment showing percentages tied to pictures of two politicians
in a race without context, those betting numbers could be
interpreted in a number of ways and influence someone's perception
(21:54):
of an election and maybe even their choice on who
to vote for, or even whether to vote at all.
In an October speech, Zora Mumdani reference to Calshi billboards
predicting a Cuomo victory in the Democratic primary.
Speaker 9 (22:09):
When I walked the length of Manhattan just a few
days before the election, hundreds of New Yorkers marched alongside me.
And when we strolled into Times Square under a billboard
with betting odds that showed Cuomo's chances of winning at
nearly eighty percent, we knew that the so called experts
(22:30):
were set to get it wrong yet again. Andrew Cuomo
was supposed to be inevitable. When you see the Calshi
odds that have our chances of victory in the nineties.
Know this. You are reading the same things that Andrew
Cuomo read when he went to sleep each night in June,
(22:55):
believing that his victory was promised. We cannot allow complace
see to infiltrate this movement.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Cal She excitedly shared the latter half of that clip,
proclaiming breaking zoron Mamdani references his Calci odds on stage,
Calshi is mainstream unquote despite this clip demonstrating how prediction
markets often suffer from inaccurate bias. Last week, Discount Steve Kornaki,
(23:27):
former five poin thirty eight analyst and now CNN's data
expert Harry Enton shared this segment about the Tennessee District
seven special election on x the Everything app with the
caption odds are Dems will come within ten points of
a win, if not outright win.
Speaker 10 (23:45):
I would say, if you had to look at the
congressional map any district that Donald Trump won by twenty
two points, you would say, you know, you've got like
nearly a one hundred percent chance of winning if you're
running for Congress there.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
But what are the prediction markets saying right.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Now, Yeah, what are we talking about in terms of
diction market huts. Look, the Democrat has a fifteen percent
chance of winning in that race. Okay, a fifteen percent chance,
which ain't nothing in a district that Donald Trump won
by twenty two points. But here, I think is the
key nugget on this side of the of the ledger,
and that is a GOP win by under ten points.
There's a sixty eight percent chance of that. So there
(24:19):
is a more than two thirds chance that the Republican candidate, Yes,
they win, but they win by a significantly lower margin
than Donald Trump. We're talking about double digits, smaller. We're
talking about a huge, huge shift to the left. We're
talking about When you add these two together, we're talking
about a more than eighty percent chance that there is
(24:39):
a clear double digit shift to the left, and a
fifteen percent chance the Democrat actually wins in a district
that Donald Trump won by twenty two points. That just
shows you how bad the environment is for Republicans right now,
that the Democrat has any sort of a chance in
this talk to me about with a special lak.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
He's just authoritatively rattling off complete speculation on a Democrat victor.
As big screens display percentages in huge text with source
Calci in tiny text the bottom of the screen. Ordinary
polling showed that this was a close race that leaned
Red by two to eight points, and the Republican did
(25:17):
end up winning by nine points. To quote the broken
clock Nate silver quote. Without having polls to look at,
the prediction markets would probably kind of suck at making
election forecasts. Translating poles into probabilities is considerably more complicated
when there are many correlated races at once, such as
(25:39):
in the battle for the electoral College or control of Congress.
Prediction markets had a strong twenty twenty four in this regard.
They leaned toward Trump when our model had it at
fifty to fifty. I don't think this was because of
any special modeling insight per se, but because they incorporated
some sort of prior intuition that Trump would overperform his polls. Again,
(26:05):
so give the markets credit for that. These sorts of
soft quote unquote intangible intuitions can be valuable, though you'd
need a lot of data to determine whether they add
or subtract value in the long run unquote, As Nate
himself acknowledges someone like Andrew Cuomo had much higher betting
(26:26):
odds throughout the entire New York mayoral race than a
purely statistical model would show. A contention I have with Nate.
One of many is though I call prediction market numbers
gambling odds, they are not actual probabilities. These odds aren't
(26:46):
based on objective mathematical principles like flipping a coin, the
three door problem, or even something like blackjack. These odds
are created whole cloth through guessing, sometimes educated or day
informed guessing, but still primarily through people's intuition, which is
susceptible to group impulses. Many random world events lack a
(27:10):
reliable basis of continuous controlled data that's needed to form
a probability like that which is applied to legalized sports betting.
This is quite evident in the betting odds around the
last Papal conclave, which had very little relevant data to
use for informed predictions. There was no existing probability to
(27:31):
support the election of an American pope, a first time occurrence.
With prediction markets, people can still do research to make
an informed bet, but it's not really the case that
ex candidate is mathematically expected to win an election. Eighty
out of one hundred instances, a hive mind of users
have formed that statistical division. Through the power of money,
(27:55):
eighty percent of users are betting that a certain result
is likely to occur. So the problem isn't just that,
like Nate says, people are confusing probabilities for polls. It's
that they're confusing prediction market betting odds for mathematical probabilities.
It's this difference that allows betting on sports outcomes via
(28:17):
Calshian polymarket, even in states that ban typical sports betting,
because you're not actually betting on fixed odds, you're betting
against other investors. And now news companies are not just
manufacturing consent and normalizing political gambling, but are actively encouraging
(28:38):
the use of these platforms and endorsing the predictive capacity
of these gambling markets. Anderson Cooper calls it the quote
unquote wisdom of crowds. But we already have methods for
learning group consensus, like polling, which may have problems, but
frankly far fewer problems than gambling on world events. Beyond
(29:01):
the moral qualms of betting money on human suffering, prediction
markets are susceptible to not just personal bias, but group
bias based on the current ratio of odds. This in
group consensus can be influenced by short lived trending topics,
and these platforms cater to a hyper online point of view.
(29:22):
Prediction market users provide a very non representational sample variety
pulling from a very specific type of guy who regularly
uses these platforms. To quote from Calsh's CNN Partnership announcement, quote,
cal she has become the definitive source for staying informed
about the future and is used by reporters, politicians, pundits,
(29:44):
Wall Street and Main Street get recently called the New
York City mayoral election eight minutes after polls closed, hours
before the media. It's because of this accuracy that calci's
data will serve as a powerful complement to CNN's reporting.
Lists can more easily surface credible information to their audiences
about the real time probabilities of future cultural and political
(30:06):
events unquote. In practice, this reporting mixes gambling data and
actually reputable or credible pulls in a confusing way, like
this recent scene end segment, which cites Calshi odds on
whether Trump will send tariff stimulus checks as well as
(30:27):
CBS you gov polling data on if tariff's lower prices
back to back In the same segment, do.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
They think that the tariffs, that these rebay checks are
actually coming? And at this point now no, I mean
chance Trump tariff the tariff stimulus checks are sent to
Americans by August of twenty twenty six. It's a twenty
five percent chance. That's one in four, So that's not nothing.
But the American people right now are craving, craving some relief,
(30:57):
and at this point it doesn't look like it is coming.
Although I will note John Berman, this twenty five percent,
it is greater than this six percent who say that
terrors decrease prices, or that five percent back in March,
which are just you never see one, two, three, four,
five percent. So look, twenty five percent eight nothing.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
But at this point it's love.
Speaker 10 (31:17):
Yeah, it's interesting the prediction, Marcus think they only one
in four chance that will actually happen.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
There is this really what the future of political forecasting
is going to be? Maybe, maybe not, but there are
four horsemen of this political gambling apocalypse. Nate Silver via
his gamification of election predictions based on his time as
a professional gambler sports betting, especially since the Supreme Court
(31:43):
struck down a federal law banning sports betting outside of
Nevada in twenty eighteen, resulting in almost forty states subsequently
legalizing some form of sports betting, which has facilitated the
cassibility of gambling to grow dramatically across the country in
the past ten years through the spread of online sports
betting apps. The third horseman is Trump, for the Trump
administration through their removal of regulatory hurdles facing prediction markets.
(32:09):
And finally that CNN guy Harry Enton, a Nate Silver
protege who trailblazed the use of political gambling data in
news stories the past year. These four horsemen, Nate Silver,
sports betting, Trump, and Harry Enton have created the cultural
and political conditions for political gambling to spread. Like wildfire, which,
(32:31):
hey is also something you can bet on. During the
LA Fires prediction market, users could bet on how many
acres would burn. So what is the endgame of this,
this gambling apocalypse that seems to be inching its way
closer and closer To answer that? Here's a clip from
Calshi co founder and CEO Derek Manser.
Speaker 8 (32:53):
The long term vision is to financialize everything and create
a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion. We
are living in a where like we have an abundance
of information, but there's a lot of noise, and like
we don't really understand what's really from what's not. And
prediction markets are an antidote to that. They do very
very good job at distilling information and surfacing truth to people.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
And you're seeing the sort.
Speaker 8 (33:13):
Of massive shift where like people are using them whenever
they think about questions about the future, you know, whenever
they're debating about anything. And I think that trajectory is
going to keep going. That's a new consumer habit that
I don't think is going to be undone.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
This is the demon child of crypto and sports betting,
This financialization of everything to form a tradable asset out
of any difference in opinion, creating new addictive consumer habits.
These companies want to apply the logic of smartphone sports
betting to everything, where everyone gets to be their own
(33:48):
little Nate Silver while carrying around their own digital casino
in their pocket, getting addicted to gambling on speculation of
world suffering, and CNN is complicit in this. CNN and
others have decided to partner with platforms that enable the
people who decide when to drop bombs around the world
to win millions of dollars by betting money on the
(34:10):
choices they themselves are making at the expense of the
rest of the world. And these companies think this is
a good thing because the betting odds can serve as
a potential heads up that something is likely to happen.
Simple consumer protections for users, which currently are non existent,
are just not enough. Congress needs to be far more
(34:33):
involved in regulating online betting, and in the case of
political events, it should just be completely banned. It is
detrimental to a healthy society. It incentivizes corruption, cruelty, and
erodes public trust. Gambling doesn't need to go away entirely,
when it should return to being time and location locked,
(34:53):
go to Las Vegas like a fucking adult. Currently, there
is no existing mechanism for individual states to regulate prediction markets.
Only the federal government can, and Trump's federal government certainly
seems like it's not going to considering the president's sun
(35:13):
works for both of the main platforms Kalshi and poly Market,
and while news companies are legitimizing this, these platforms are
now working as their own news aggregators, specifically Polymarket's social
media account, which is acting as a news aggregation account
because that drives traffic back to their website, where people
(35:35):
can bet on the news stories that poly market is sharing,
even if those news stories are speculative or completely made up.
On December fifth, Polymarket posted quote just in suspected J
six Pipe Bomber's legal council projected to argue he was
included in Trump's pardon of those involved in January sixth quote.
(35:57):
This claim subsequently spread all around the parroted by people
of a variety of political orientations. But if you read closely,
the original post says suspected J six Pipe Bomber's legal
council projected to argue he was included in Trump's pardon,
(36:17):
Polymarket is just spreading gambling information as if it is
news content. Quote unquote projected just means that polymarket users
are betting on this. But these projected posts are mixed
in with other posts just aggregating the day's news. So
unless you are paying super close attention, which rarely people
(36:39):
on the Internet are. This becomes a trojan horse of disinformation.
When news companies use the term projected on election night,
usually that indicates, with pretty clear mathematical certainty, that an
event is going to happen. When polymarket uses projected in
news tweets, it only indicates that Internet gamblers are swinging
(37:02):
around money in an effort to create truth, with once
legitimate news companies not just complicit but active participants in
this process that isn't for us today at it could
happen here, see you on the other side. It could
happen here is a production of cool Zone Media. For
(37:24):
more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonmedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for it could Happen here listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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