The theory would be that the people without information pay for knowledge. Or to hedge against certain events.

Similarly to how people would pay premium over inusrance

that is what they sold you... that is not the theory.

I've never seen an ad from either Kalshi or Polymarket that says "don't play if you aren't an insider."

The game only works if they also have a lot of people losing money.

Most gamblers prescribe to the cost sunk fallacy and keep 'one more time'ing it to bankruptcy.

Math wins over your feels every time.

If you follow your math, such gambling losers don't really have that much money to bet on an ongoing basis. The ones who support the losing side on prediction markets are the ones who usually do fine, but sometimes are taken by surprise.

Problem gamblers routinely take out loans, mortgage major assets, max out credit cards, and steal from their employers to fund their habits.

Statcon 101: Gambling addicts take loans to gamble, those loans are sold to your pension fund. Who is the loser?

Out of curiosity, are you aware of the existence of Las Vegas, Nevada?

>Prediction Markets require insider trading to function.

And yet there are folks like me who have been on them for years before kalshi/polymarket making a very good side income from them without having insider knowledge.

Prediction markets as a whole are very very inefficient. That's not to say that insider trading doesn't exist but you can't claim that they require insider trading to function.

> making a very good side income

If you had a reliable edge, your income would be exponential. Why isn’t it?

The markets I participate in tend to be illiquid, but as prediction markets get more popular things are getting better on that front.

Do you need a reliable edge or just a slightly better than average edge?

potentially, each time.

> But traders weren’t just active on Polymarket: there were similar surges of oil futures trading activity just hours before Trump announced updates to the conflict that would lower oil prices.

Prediction markets are all the buzz, but banning them isn’t fixing the problem. This has happened forever. Let’s not forget there was an unusual amount of put option buying right before 9/11: https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jnlbus/v79y2006i4p1703-1726.ht...