The everything casino

As prediction markets let anyone gamble on anything, are White House insiders betting they can get away with everything?

In today’s letter: Prediction markets may not predict the future — but do they reveal some scary truths about how government works now?

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Late last year, Tarek Mansour, the founder and CEO of Kalshi, a “prediction market” that lets people place bets on the outcomes of events, told an audience that his ultimate goal is to “financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion” — to make it possible to bet on anything and everything.

Why? Mansour and his competitors have pitched their products not just as a route to riches, but also to a kind of enlightenment. “People have more clarity about the world because Polymarket exists,” that company’s CEO, Shayne Coplan, has written.

Thing is, these markets may actually be providing some clarity about the way the world works — but not quite in the sense their inventors thought they would.