Ryan Knudson

While useful for predicting the future, for some, they're also useful for making money.

I have been seeing ads for Kalshi on my social media feeds that advertise it as a side hustle, as a way to pay your rent.

Hey, man, what's the best side hustle?

Oh, Kalshi.

Easy.

Kalshi?

What's that?

Which I found very surprising because I'm like, isn't this ultimately a betting app?

But it looks like there are people trading with information that isn't public.

Like that person who made those Super Bowl bets.

And there are a lot of other examples.

Like, someone last year made a bunch of successful bets about things going on inside Google.

That account, named Alpha Raccoon, correctly guessed 22 out of the top 23 search terms of the year.

They also correctly bet on the exact date that a new Gemini AI model would be released.

In the course of just a few days, the person ended up making nearly a million dollars on these and similar bets.

Google didn't respond to a request for comment.

Some people are profiting off even more consequential events.

In June of last year, as tensions flared up between Israel and Iran, and the two countries started firing missiles at each other, someone on Polymarket started placing bets about what was going to happen next.

This account ended up making more than $150,000.

Last week, Israeli authorities said they arrested several people, including army reservists, in connection with these bets.