An account trading under the username “Magamyman” made more than $553,000 placing bets on the prediction market Polymarket that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would be out of power just before an Israeli strike killed him on Saturday.

…Under U.S. commodity trading laws, making trades based on death and war are illegal, since those kinds of bets create a financial reward for violence, human suffering and geopolitical instability.

  • captainlezbian
    2·
    2 days ago

    It’s remarkable to me how normalized gambling has become in the past decade. It used to be something for special occasions like vacations or church events (catholic lenten fish fries completely lost the plot and basically became carnivals where I grew up). Fantasy sports leagues had become a big thing before then, but in the past decade or so it’s like the dam just completely collapsed and problem gambling has become normalized