Nobel Peace Prize 2025: María Corina Machado

~10 hours or so before the announcement bets on her skyrocketed on Polymarket

https://x.com/polymarket/status/1976434242386317640

Someone without any history whatsoever put 70k on her 5 hours before the announcement

https://x.com/polywhalewatch/status/1976499384373121488

Trump was never above 5-10% and out of nowhere she was the winner (see the 1 day market view) https://polymarket.com/event/nobel-peace-prize-winner-2025?t...

This isn't illegal but feels like it should be illegal. You don't see corporate officers trade their stocks right before a big announcement, because there are laws on it.

Other than the fact that polymarket is legally not a stock market, what really is the difference between insider trading on a stock market vs insider trading on polymarket? Does anyone have a good argument for why one should be illegal while the other is legal?

The argument goes, the purpose of prediction markets is not to be fair, it's to provide information. Allowing insider trading benefits that purpose. And I think that's fair - this is not a place to invest your retirement savings, it's essentially gambling.

I kind of feel like abusing the information asymmetry when doing insider trading in a betting market should be illegal regardless if the purpose is to provide information or not, or if it's considered gambling or not. Just like doing so with stocks is illegal today.

Why? This net saves people money, because it makes markets reflect reality faster.

Other than a vague sense of "fairness", can you articulate why insider trading should be illegal?