White House · Polymarket · Donald Trump · The Atlantic Technology
The ‘Hair-Dryer Incident’ Is Just the Start
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There are worse things you could do than drive to a Parisian airport and mess around with a temperature sensor on the airfield—for only a few minutes!
Key facts
- By artificially boosting the number on the sensor, this person won about $20,000
- Davies posted a screenshot to X to show that he’d removed about $250,000 from his Kalshi account, and he says he’s stopped using it entirely
- Weirder to me were the staged viral clips through which Polymarket and Kalshi looped themselves into the New York Knicks’ run to their first NBA Championship in more than 50 years
- Joshua Mitts, a professor at Columbia Law School, wasn’t sure that manipulation was the right word, because it has a specific definition for financial markets, but he still kept saying it
Summary
To make money, maybe. By artificially boosting the number on the sensor, this person won about $20,000. Over the past couple of years, plenty of concern has been expressed about how prediction markets may enable—and create the incentive for— insider trading. The issues with insider trading are clear: It’s illegal, for starters, and the platforms ban it, anyway. (Although insider trading also arguably serves the purpose of prediction markets, which is to channel the “wisdom of the crowd” to forecast the event most likely to happen.) People can also easily identify and avoid the markets most susceptible to it.