Scott Alexander

Who will rank highest on Google search volume this year?

A trader called Alpha Raccoon got 22 of 23 of these polymarket questions right, and had a history of implausibly good performance on Google-related questions.

They basically have to be a Google insider, but since all of this is done through crypto, nobody has a good way to figure out who.

They made $1 million.

NPR.

Will Maduro be captured?

Just before the secret operation that captured Maduro, someone placed him a serious $32,000 wager placed on Yes.

Was this insider trading by someone in the administration or military?

Nobody knows, since the profits go to an anonymous crypto wallet.

But the article mentions that the crypto wallet appeared to be cashing out through regulated KYC-compliant US exchanges, which suggests they're not very worried about their identity getting discovered.

Maybe someone just got lucky after all.

Alan M. Cole.

How long will Carolyn Leavitt speak at the White House briefing?

Carolyn Leavitt is Trump's press secretary.

On January 7, she held an ordinary press briefing.

Kalshi had its usual market about how long the briefing would last, divided into bins of greater than versus less than 65 minutes.

At the 64-minute, 24-second mark, Leavitt ended the conference in what appeared to be a sudden manner, and the less-than-65-minutes bin shot from 2% to 100%.

A viral tweet convinced many people that Levitt must have been insider trading, but Cole counter-argued that Levitt could only have won about $4,000 from the market, which probably isn't enough to risk one's job as White House press secretary.

Sometimes people just end press conferences at weird times.

Cole concluded, quote, Now, some opinions and generalizations, as someone who looks at prediction markets plenty, I'll probably write something about my own experience with them at some point.