Weirdos Making Bank Betting On When America Will Kill People
What level of dystopia is this?
Sure, unknown numbers of people are dead and damage to Iran and several of its Gulf neighbors already numbers in the billions of dollars. And okay, American jets are being blasted out of the sky by our own allies. And sure, the president seems more interested in yammering incessantly about his stupid $400 billion ballroom than the death and destruction he is unnecessarily causing. And sure, America is rapidly depleting its stockpiles of weapons, thus hurting security and military readiness.
But on the plus side, some people appear to have made piles of money betting on when America’s latest episode of Middle East Follies would kick off. So there’s that.
The action occurred on prediction betting markets. If you are unfamiliar with those, they are gambling sites. Some of their supporters will call them futures brokerages because it sounds more professional, but they are gambling sites. Only in addition to sports, you can bet on just about any dumb thing your degenerate gambling brain can conjure. How many tweets will Elon Musk send this month? Which party will win the elections for Nepal’s House of Representatives? When will the next pandemic hit? Fun stuff like that.
About the only restriction is that the sites are not supposed to offer markets tied to people’s deaths. So you can’t bet on, say, the date by which Trump’s withered heart will finally collapse from decades of abuse. Otherwise, just about anything is fair game.
Still, you might think that betting on war raises some moral and ethical issues. You think that because you hate fun.
Over the weekend, while the bombs were dropping, observers noticed some suspiciously well-timed bets on when a war with Iran would kick off.
How suspicious? Here’s Gizmodo:
Software company Bubblemaps said in an X post on Saturday that it had identified six crypto wallets on Polymarket that made a total of $1.2 million by betting that the U.S. would strike Iran before February 28. All of the wallets were funded within the last day and had made the bets just hours before the strikes.
NPR reported that an account called “Magamyman” on Polymarket made over $553,000 with a bet that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would soon be out of power, just before America launched the airstrike that killed him. Bloomberg reports that researchers found multiple Polymarket accounts “whose trading showed signs consistent with suspected advance knowledge of the attacks.”
And because of legal issues, you’re not supposed to be able to place bets on Polymarket from inside the United States. Which is why God created VPNs.
Imagine it. You’re a member of the Trump administration, so you’re already a pathetic specimen of moral bankruptcy. You know that the president on Friday afternoon gave the “go” order to start the attack. You hop on Polymarket or Kalshi, the other big prediction market, and put a shitload of your savings on “The US will bomb Iran by February 28” at 10 to 1 odds.
Shoot, maybe you’re a high-level enough official to have been the advisor whispering into Trump’s decaying ear that he should absolutely, positively bomb Iran. And then he does it based on your recommendation. Sure, your recommendation also led to people dying, but you can now afford that speedboat you’ve had your eye on, so it’s a wash.
There is precedent here. In January, someone doubled down on a standing bet about Nicolas Maduro losing power just hours before the United States launched the attack on Venezuela that accomplished that goal. The bettor made $400,000. In February, Israel arrested members of its own military for using insider information to bet on future operations aimed at overthrowing the Iranian regime, among others.
There was immediate outcry from at least one Democrat about this weekend’s betting:
“It’s insane this is legal,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) wrote in a post on X. “I’m introducing legislation ASAP to ban this.” Murphy alleged that people around President Trump were “profiting off war and death.” Asked for comment, White House spokesman Davis Ingle said, “the only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people.”
Yeah, sure. And we’ve got a nuclear bomb in Tehran to sell you.
Your Wonkette isn’t even opposed to gambling. We’ve lost money in Vegas ourselves. We’ve put down the occasional stupid parlay for the hell of it. As we often say of billionaires whining about taxes, you can’t take it with you.
But this new era of being able to easily place bet after bet on the FanDuel app on your phone just cheapens the experience. It’s too easy to suck your bank account dry because you don’t see the pile of cash you stuffed into your pockets to take to Mickey and lay points on the Rose Bowl diminishing.
No, when one bets, one should be afraid that some giant mook is going to beat him up if his horse doesn’t come in and he owes his bookie money. That’s proper gambling.
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If you post a Note on Substack you have the option of adding "Prediction market", click on "more" and it is there.
This seems bad for operational secrecy if people are tipping off betting markets before a military operation takes place.