I go on Polymarket and find things that would make me happy or optimistic about society and tech, and then bet a couple of dollars (of some shitcoin) against them.
Last month I was up about ten bucks because OpenAI wasn't open, the ceasefire wasn't a ceasefire, and the climate metrics got worse. You can't hedge away all the existential despair, but you can take the sting out of it.
> go on Polymarket and find things that would make me happy or optimistic about society and tech, and then bet a couple of dollars (of some shitcoin) against them.
Classic win win bet. Your bet wins -> you make money (win). Your bet loses -> something good happened for society (win).
People use crypto on Polymarket because it doesn't comply with gambling regulations, so in theory isn't allowed to have US customers. Using crypto as an intermediary lets Polymarket pretend not to know where the money is coming from. Though I think a more robust regulator would call them out on the large volume of betting on US politics on their platform...
Calling them out is one thing, but do you think the US could realistically stop them?
I don't know much about Polymarkets governance structure, if it's a decentralized smart contract, the US is DOA. Even if it's not... the Pirate Bay wasn't, the US really tried to stop them, and they basically didn't get anywhere.
Looking it up, it seems like the CEO actually got raided by the FBI last year: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-raids-polymarket-ceos-h... So maybe the wheels of justice are just grinding a bit slowly. The terms of use want to have Panamanian law apply https://polymarket.com/tos but that doesn't provide much protection when the company is physically operating in the US.
Bitcoin is higher than ever. People can't wait until it gets high enough that they can sell it for dollars, and use those dollars to buy things and make investments in things that are valuable.
That's just speculation though. I saw a cynical comment on reddit yesterday that unfortunately made a lot of sense. Many people now are just so certain that the future of work is not going to include many humans, so they're throwing everything into stocks and crypto, which is why they remain so high even in the face of so much political uncertainty. It's not that people are investing because they have hope. People are just betting everything as a last ditch survival attempt before the robots take over.
Of course this is hyperbolic - market forces are never that simple. But I think there might be some truth to it.
The question was about people using crypto to buy things. The person above me was implying that because it's going up in value, people are using it that way. I replied to say that it's (mostly) just speculation. Which is a kind of use, but not the one being implied.
Gold (and land, jewels, antiques etc.) are bought and held during times of uncertainty because people believe they will retain their value through virtually anything. Stocks don't work that way. In times of uncertainty, gold should increase in value, stocks should decrease.
Crypto is high because people keep believing some sucker in the future will buy it from them even higher. So far, they've been right all along. You really think crypto is ever going to pay some kind of dividend?
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I go on Polymarket and find things that would make me happy or optimistic about society and tech, and then bet a couple of dollars (of some shitcoin) against them.
e.g. OpenAI releasing an open weights model before September is trading at 81% at time of writing - https://polymarket.com/event/will-openai-release-an-open-sou...
Last month I was up about ten bucks because OpenAI wasn't open, the ceasefire wasn't a ceasefire, and the climate metrics got worse. You can't hedge away all the existential despair, but you can take the sting out of it.