Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Truth Machines Go to War

Have US ground troops entered Iran?

Last weekend, Bloomberg Weekend had a great story by Christopher Beam about how linguists are annoyed at Kalshi. Kalshi is a prediction market where you can bet on sports and various other events, including “mentions markets,” where a contract pays $1 if Jerome Powell says a certain word at a press conference or whatever, and $0 if he doesn’t. But what are the boundaries of a word? Are singular and plural nouns the same word? Past and present tense verbs? Participles? Etc., all these boring disputes. Kalshi has some rules to resolve these questions, ...