Most prediction market users aren't trading–they're gambling
Prediction markets surged 700% recently, but structurally they favor informed actors.
83% of participants are net negative because sentiment-driven trades lack edge. Academic studies show LLMs outperform human forecasters in financial domains. Autonomous systems that score events, monitor volatility, and execute based on evidence—not intuition—represent the likely optimization layer these markets have been missing
Yes, they transfer money from poorly informed people to well-informed people. That's the point. That's how they reward well-informed people for the service of making good predictions so everyone can be slightly better informed.
The fact that outcomes are lopsided are evidence that it's not gambling. In pure gambling, everyone gets the same expectation of gains. In a test of any particular skill, you expect a Pareto distribution of outcomes.
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
It's only gambling if you occasionally win,the real skill is to maintain the compulsion of pouring money into an endless red hole....