Feels wrong.
Because the conspiracy theorists wouldn't have gone to town if the market predicting Trump's win were shut down before the election?
Polymarket hit popular imagination in the summer of 2023 with the Titan submersible [1]. American political betting didn't hit papers until earlier this year. We're well within normal FBI timelines for executing a first search.
[1] https://polymarket.com/event/will-the-missing-submarine-be-f...
Another could be concern of doing anything visibly election related prior to the election, in case the winner didn’t like the action.
Of course, the exact meaning of "necessary" is the problem. We can probably all agree that letting a serial murderer kill more people in order to have more evidence against him would be an absolute abomination. But the situation is not that clear with white-collar crime, especially the sort of crime where the harm is not immediately obvious.
Maybe the fact that the FBI could wait that long before pouncing indicates that this sort of betting is, in fact, a victimless crime.
https://www.justice.gov/jm/jm-9-85000-protection-government-...
> " Any action likely to raise an issue or the perception of an issue under this provision requires consultation with the Public Integrity Section, and such action shall not be taken if the Public Integrity Section advises that further consultation is required with the Deputy Attorney General or Attorney General. "
Don't get stuck in a framing story.
I think in this case, polymarket allows betting on anything, competitors got betting on the election legalized (https://www.barrons.com/news/last-minute-legal-ruling-allows...), so they get the cash from polymarket's idea then get them banned/stopped long enough to take their market share.
VC's call it Regulatory Capture, politicians call it corruption.
> VC's call it Regulatory Capture
This isn't regulatory capture. You can disagree with the regulation, but the barrier to entry here is not that high. Kalshi is like 5 years old.
"Capture" is a thing, and it does not just mean "any regulation that I happen to disagree with".
You do need capital to stand up a regulated exchange, but, then, you also need capital to stand up an unregulated exchange. And the difference between those two numbers is not nearly big enough to come anywhere close to creating capture.
Instead, it means regulatory agencies become dominated by the interests of those they were originally charged to regulate.
I still speculate this raid to be Kalshi/Robinhood/whomever to be going after polymarket at a prime time- the concept of betting on events got huge and the industry of event-hedging directly (avoiding the stock market proxy) no longer needs to band together to get the idea out- now it's a matter of getting all the consumers to choose your particular product vs a competitors.
I'm confused what your point is? Is it when cops/prosecutors build cases that take time they are tacitly saying the crime is victimless? Do you think law enforcement should only target street level dealers/car thieves because to spend time building cases against drug distributors/chop shops renders the crime victimless?
I don't think you are at all correct about the relationship between Polymarket and other event trading venues. For one thing, Kalshi and polymarket are basically contemporaneous. For another, Polymarket plays at these games too (Polymarket has a former Commissioner of the CFTC on their board).
To the extent that Polymarket is playing in the legal grey zone, it's an active choice on their part, not a result of competitors' regulatory advantage or Polymarket's lack of access to regulatory leverage.
That is simply not how it works and for good reason. If it were, imagine the consequences. Most charges would never lead to a trial or a conviction because law enforcement would have acted on the very first sign of criminal action instead of investigating further or working their way up the chain. We'd only end up arresting low level foot soldiers and the higher ups would get away every single time.
As HL Mencken once said 'Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.'
IMO, the counters to my speculations would be that the raid was because they got too popular and the gov didn't want a million people starting up their own exchanges, or they reached a monetary tipping point the gov set to warrant a raid.