Bets on Maduro, Jesus Show Promise and Risks of Prediction Boom (1)

Even in the age of AI and cryptocurrencies, industries promoted breathlessly by hype merchants, the superlatives tossed around by the creators of the prediction-markets boom stand out. As the year drew to a close, one founder declared that the markets had become “the most accurate thing we have as mankind right now.” Another promised that they would, in the not-so-distant future, “financialize everything.”

And so the pitch goes, across Wall Street and Silicon Valley, day after day: Prediction markets represent nothing less than a rebuilding of capitalism from the inside out. What they possess, their promoters say, is an unprecedented ability to ...