David Yaffe-Bellany

But one thing I learned from playing around with these platforms a little bit is that it does feel like gambling.

These platforms are designed to kind of suck you in.

They've got bright colors, and you see numbers going up and down, and it's exciting.

And when you're just playing around with a few dollars of your company's money, that's totally fine.

But when you're potentially vulnerable to addiction and you're spending money that you need for other things on these platforms, there's a real risk.

And one thing we know about this type of betting is that it's especially popular among young people, especially young men.

It's kind of their vice of choice these days.

And so whatever the long-term consequences of this are, it's probably going to be felt by that demographic, young people.

Yeah, and the consequences of that are starting to become clear.

It's changing the stakes of reality for people, changing the way they relate to things that are happening in the world, even things that are really important and have human consequences.

I mean, we have seen prediction markets betting on the L.A.

wildfires, on how quickly they would be contained.

There was betting on the war in Gaza, whether that situation would be classified as a famine.

Hmm.

And all those things are devastating for the real people in those situations.

But now you have a class of internet speculator who's engaging with them as potentially profit-making opportunities.

A lot of people have that reaction, and it's totally a real concern.

I'll just turn it around and try to kind of capture what the companies would say to this.

Specifically on that example of the LA wildfire, people have a real interest in knowing when the fires would be contained.

They're making decisions that affect their lives based on that.