The fires spreading across Los Angeles County have led to so many questions from well-meaning people who are just trying to find information.
Will the fire reach Malibu? Or Santa Monica? Will officials contain the blaze in the coming days? How many acres will burn in total?
These are very real, existential questions for Angelenos and their loved ones. The type of questions you ask when your home, livelihood and safety are at stake.
Unless you’re Polymarket. In which case these aren’t just worrying thoughts. They’re an opportunity to entice users to gamble.
Yep. The event-based trading platform that exploded in popularity during the 2024 election is now letting users bet on just how bad the wildfires in California will get, gamifying the pain and suffering of living, breathing human beings.
This is what rock bottom is supposed to look like. Sadly, it feels like things will continue to get worse before any type of regulation arrives to make it better.
Lest you think any form of public shaming will lead platform to take down these disgusting markets, the company has instead dug in.
In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, a Polymarket spokesman said: “These markets address the same questions being discussed across cable news and X. We’ve proven that prediction markets can be an invaluable alternative information source for those seeking real-time quantitative data.”
It echoes a similar statement provided to Katie Notopoulos of Business Insider:
“Polymarket charges no fees — and generates no revenue — from these markets and provides them as a service to those looking for unbiased and up-to-date information during fast-moving events.”
As if waiving its usual transaction fees makes this any less abhorrent.
What Polymarket has proven with these statements is that just because you are able to string enough wo