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Prediction Markets Turn Everything into a Wager—Even War
It’s about war but not really. It’s high tech and low cunning. It’s about making money or losing money. It’s about secrecy and anonymity. It’s a profound combination of greed and moral turpitude. It seems like a deeply depressing commentary on our times.
Key points- Prediction-market platforms allow users to bet on global political events
- Potential insider trading enabled by these platforms is a concern
- Wealthsimple was recently approved to conduct prediction-style trading in Canada
I’m talking about so-called “prediction markets” that invite bets on global political events— wars, elections, coups, uprisings, sanctions, even assassinations. What was once largely illegal and even taboo has come roaring into the open. Prediction markets beckon “crypto natives,” a cohort trained to turn any idea into a tradable asset. Masking identities behind pseudonymous wallets, these platforms often operate beyond any real accountability or enforceable regulation.
Two firms—Polymarket and Kalshi—dominate the market. When it comes to geopolitical wagering, Polymarket is the industry leader. It was created by Shayne Coplan in 2020 under COVID-19 lockdown. Amidst the swirl of misinformation and disinformation about the pandemic, the twenty-one-year-old computer science dropout became interested in prediction markets after reading a paper on the topic by economist Robin Hanson. Coplan came to believe prediction markets could far outperform polls and punditry. A system where people had money on the line would, he thought, force more honest forecasts.
Working from his apartment in New York City, and occasionally coding from the privacy of his bathroom, Coplan set out to become America’s next big tech bro. His creation, he claimed, would scale individual bets into a mass, collective signal about what was likely to happen in the world—and generate big money to boot.
Polymarket’s first success came during the US presidential election in 2020, when betting on the site swung in favour of Joe Biden’s victory weeks before the vote. Venture capital soon came calling, smelling something in the air. Users also smelled something they liked—low-cost bets, fast confirmations and settlements, and clear levels of pricing for their wagers. And, no doubt, the excitement of seeming to be seers.
But the real surge forward for Polymarket came during the US 2024 presidential election. Altogether, it is estimated that trading in Polymarket’s US presidential markets exceeded $3 billion (US). By October 2025, Coplan became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.
Polymarket operates worldwide, with almost 750,000 users this past month (Coplan aims to expand the number to a billion people). But, for Coplan, Polymarket isn’t just a betting platform; it’s a vision of higher-level wisdom. “It’s the most accurate thing we have as mankind right now,” he told Anderson Cooper on CBS News, “until someone else creates some sort of super crystal ball.”
Pointing to the $3.6 million (US) riding on whether Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro would be out of power by the end of the year, Cooper suggested that prediction markets might be addictive. Coplan dismissed the concern by saying: “If you are into geopolitics, this creates an incentive for you to dig into what’s going on in Venezuela and try to get an edge.”
Cooper interviewed one of Polymarket’s big investors—or whales—who goes by the online moniker, “Domer.” Domer is really into Polymarket, to the tune of $400 million. But he doesn’t think of himself as a gambler. Instead, he describes himself as “taking very, very well-researched views on things.” After noticing that Donald Trump picked Mike Pence as his vice president in his first term, that both Trump and Pence have one-syllable names, and that Trump is very into marketing, and therefore would pick Vance (also one syllable), he placed an early $4,000 bet on J. D. Vance being selected as Trump’s running mate. He won a cool $250,000.
Early success for Polymarket led to early scrutiny. In 2022, Polymarket reached a settlement with the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission who said it was running outside of CFTC compliance rules. Polymarket paid a penalty of $1.4 million and agreed to block US access to its platform. Just a week after the 2024 election, the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Coplan’s apartment, as part of an investigation into whether US users were still placing bets, despite the injunction.
After Trump took office, the investigation was closed. Prediction markets have become a Trump family business, supplanting earlier efforts in casinos. One of the Dons, Donald Trump Jr., emerged as a major investor in Polymarket through his venture capital firm 1789 Capital. Don Jr. joined the company’s advisory board. Coplan told Cooper, “We’re in this admin. This admin is very pro-innovation, and pro-crypto, and pro-Polymarket, which is amazing.”
Having survived its regulatory problems, and now with a more accommodating administration, Polymarket is making its return to legitimacy in the massive US market—just as questions pile up about the ethics and practice of betting on the wars in Ukraine and Iran. The term “death market” is in circulation.
Prediction markets carry a powerful lure, built on the belief that successful forecasting requires nothing more than a few hours on a browser. And that, in turn, aligns with a broader cultural posture: distrust of centralized authority, a dismissal of expert wisdom, a reflexive skepticism toward legacy media, and a preference for systems that feel participatory.
Prediction markets are cognitively engaging in a way traditional analysis often isn’t, turning passive consumption into something active. Better yet, conviction is expressed not through reason and argument but through capital: you don’t have to justify what you believe, just price it.
That logic is clear the moment you open the platform. There are an astounding number of betting topics to choose from under Polymarket’s “Geopolitics” theme—717 in total when I looked (the number is constantly changing, depending on the specified end date for trades). The top three were Iran war predictions (125), followed by the Middle East (121), followed by Ukraine (105).
The top grossing wager on Iran is a yes-or-no bet on US ground forces invading the country—$81 million has been put down on that one, with a 54 percent bet it will happen before April 30 and a 65 percent bet on it happening before December 31. Hefty money has been placed on the likelihood of the fall of the Iranian regime before 2027 (a cool $13 million) with yes wagers reaching 22 percent.
Nearly $3 million has gone into a prediction bucket on the idea of the US escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz, with bets split between April 15 and April 30. A related wager has the Strait of Hormuz returning to “normal” by the end of April—$2 million in that envelope, with the yes bet trending down to 17 percent.
Here’s something that now tracks with a known outcome. Betting on a ceasefire in the Iran war by April 7 garnered more than $173 million in trades by closing. (The ceasefire was, in fact, announced that same day.)
Turning to the topic of the Ukraine war, the number of predictive bets seemed surprising, given fading attention in Western circles. Maybe the attraction is the war’s volatility and unknowns, making it a perfect topic for any “deep researchers.” There are multiple options for betting on a Ukraine peace deal and even more for betting on the Russian capture of various Ukrainian front-line towns. There is even one on whether Ukraine would strike another tanker in the Black Sea (they have likely struck at least eleven).
One notorious example shows how these markets can be gamed. A front-line battle map displayed by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) was falsely manipulated to show a Russian advance into the city of Myrnohrad, just before a Polymarket bet on the city’s capture was to be finalized in November 2025. Some people made money on the bet, then the map was re-edited back to its original state. A total of $1.4 million poured into this one prediction (betting for and against). One big cash payout was on the order of $200,000, according to NPR.
The ISW, highly respected for its conflict reporting on Ukraine, put out a statement that it “strongly disapproves of such activities and strenuously objects to the use of our maps for such purposes.” No response from Polymarket.
One term for Polymarket is the democratization of finance—that is, platforms like it give ordinary people access to wealth-building tools reserved for elites. Ian Bremmer, writing in GZero, argues that prediction markets tend to attract a younger demographic who believe upward mobility is being denied to them by “the system.” He writes “a bet that might 10x overnight stops looking like a vice and starts looking like the only ticket out of the permanent underclass.”
For journalist Brennan Doherty, writing for Wealthsimple Magazine, that means “letting people do what they want with their money, even if they don’t always make the wisest decisions.” Fair enough. But what can we say about the harms of such war-prediction-market betting?
A New York Times investigation found a worrying spike in betting on a US strike on Iran on the day prior to the attack on February 28. At least 150 accounts placed hundreds of bets. The total value was $855,000. Many of the bettors made over $10,000 on their wagers. One anonymous punter profited by nearly half a million dollars. Could some, at least, of this activity represent insider trading?
One Democratic senator, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, thought so. The White House vehemently rejected the idea, saying “the only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision making is the best interest of the American people.”
Worryingly, insider trading could even come from officials within national security and intelligence agencies, betting using privileged access to hard-won secrets.
Polymarket’s market integrity update from March attempts to address concerns by banning trades based on stolen confidential information or illegally sourced tips, with penalties ranging from bans to referrals to law enforcement. But it is difficult to see how enforceable these so-called red lines are, given the opacity of information flows. The new rules may deter the most blatant abuses, but they are unlikely to fully stop networks of staff, consultants, and associates from trading on privileged knowledge. Corruption may be insidious. All hidden by the anonymity that attaches to online platform trading.
More fundamentally, the rules do little to address the broader ethical concerns raised by Thomas Hurka, a philosopher and University of Toronto emeritus professor, in his work on moral theory. Quite apart from encouragement to insider trading, there are squirmier issues at play, including the tolerance of what he has described as “vicious” practices—or acts that reward traits like cruelty, dishonesty, and domination—and the demonstration of callous indifference to the costs of war. Prediction markets are bound to have impacts on the morale of fighters, knowing that their lives are being traded online. (Facing backlash, Polymarket had to apologize and cancel a wager on whether a downed aircrew in Iran would be rescued.)
Even journalists have faced the ire of Polymarket bettors. In one recent case, an Israeli defence correspondent, Emanuel Fabian, was subjected to intimidation after he accurately reported the nature of a missile strike near Jerusalem. Gamblers who had wagered against a successful Iranian missile attack on Israel that day pressured him to change his account, since their bet hinged on whether or not the missile had been intercepted. Fabian received coordinated emails, hostile messages, and escalating harassment, including threats of physical violence against him and his family, alongside offers of financial incentives. One message read, “After you make us lose $900,000, we will invest no less than that to finish you.”
Geopolitical wagering on Polymarket is an outrage, any way you look at it. But what is outrage in the face of greed, the temptations of gambling, and specious wisdom of the self-interested?
Now a new entrant has come to Canada. Popular online-investment platform Wealthsimple was recently approved to conduct prediction-style trading in this country. Will we finally see domestic trading à la Polymarket? The answer is unclear. I asked the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) whether its approval of Wealthsimple meant that it could offer prediction wagers on geopolitical topics, similar to what takes place on Polymarket, CIRO’s public affairs officer responded that they couldn’t tell me, and they don’t disclose details of approvals.
It’s an example of how our regulatory system—which Globe and Mail financial reporter Meera Raman calls “fragmented”—is determinedly opaque. There are securities regulators with jurisdiction over which firms can operate under what rules in a particular province. Those provincial authorities, in turn, have a national umbrella organization called the Canadian Securities Administrators, which coordinates with CIRO. There is little public accountability in an industry devoted to self-regulation. When I sent an inquiry to the office of Evan Solomon, the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation about what would be allowed with Wealthsimple, the response made clear the feds had no stake and no policy interest in prediction markets.
Overlaying this is uneven enforcement. When it comes to Polymarket, for example, Ontarians are out of luck. Predictive wagering on Polymarket is banned in the province as of 2025. (This appears not to have stopped Polymarket from distributing flyers, with a QR code offering of a bit of betting cash, outside a recent Blue Jays game in Toronto.) In the rest of Canada, regulation is a grey zone. If you have a Bitcoin wallet and a VPN network, you can fly under the radar.
And there seems to be a lot of activity under that radar. There were 167 different “Canada predictions” waiting on the Polymarket platform when I checked. Some dealt with the Alberta separatist movement. One of the biggest volume of trades was on the broad question of “Will a province schedule a referendum to leave Canada?” with 66 percent voting yes; $213,000 dollars had gone into that one. Another question posed was “Will Alberta vote for independence in 2026?” Punters put it at a 13 percent chance—$34,100 had been plunked down on yes/no. Then there was a question about “Will Alberta join the US?” Little money down on that one ($1,900), and only a 5 percent chance behind a yes.
The real story isn’t just what people are betting on—it’s what the real limits will be. After their initial statement to me, CIRO issued a public statement that Canadian “investment dealer members” (to date, Wealthsimple plus one other) are barred from bets involving the “outcome of elections, political events, or other events of a political nature” such as party leader nominations or referendum results. These conditions, however, don’t address the broader range of geopolitical wagers offered by Polymarket. So, we don’t know, or at least are not told, what will be allowed.
A very different approach animates lawmakers south of the border, even in the clutches of the Trump administration. There are several proposed legislative matters before Congress designed to prohibit insider trading on certain categories of prediction markets by US federal officials and representatives. One piece of proposed legislation would specifically apply to the US president, vice president, and senior executive branch officials.
Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, now rumoured to be considering a run for the Democrats’ presidential nomination in 2028, has called for a ban on the use of prediction markets by officials of all branches of the federal government. He is also advocating for a special division within the Department of Justice to investigate such betting. He is clearly concerned about insider trading and stated that “Washington has become so accustomed to this amorality and immorality, and nobody says anything. Washington needs a good power washing.”
Emanuel explained his proposal this way, “I put this out there because everybody else is walking around sleepwalking.” That sounds true of our own federal government and the labyrinthine regulatory regime that has taken shape on its watch.
It’s high time our politicians, at all levels, wake up to this problem. It’s not simply, as a partner at law firm Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt in Calgary told the Globe and Mail, about creating “a safe space for Canadian residents to trade these types of contracts.” The question has to be: Why create the “safe space” for such gambling in the first place, given all the downsides?
Fans of Canada’s national sport: Are you a little tired of seeing all the repetitive and eye-poking sports-betting ads that adorn TV broadcasts of National Hockey League games? Just wait until geopolitical prediction trading gets its wings here and reduces the life-and-death matter of wars—not to mention national or provincial politics—to an indecent wager for those with money burning in their pockets.
Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. (Not you, insiders.) Don’t look in the mirror.
The post Prediction Markets Turn Everything into a Wager—Even War first appeared on The Walrus.
Unpublished Newswire
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