Betting on success

Politico reports:

Federal authorities have arrested an American soldier who allegedly used confidential information to place a series of wagers on the capture of then-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro through the prediction market platform Polymarket.

Basically he bet on the prediction market Maduro would be removed from office by a certain date. One of them was a few hours before the mission he was on to capture him.

I was not surprised that Trump said he didn’t have a problem with it, so long as the solider was betting on the mission succeeding, not failing!

Prediction markets are meant to get “inside” information out by moving the market price. But in this case the placement of the bets could have compromised the mission. If you’re a world leader and see the price for your removal suddenly spike at 2 am, well I’d be swapping locations pretty quickly.