Polymarket bettors threatened a journalist over an Iran missile report
Critics have been warning that prediction markets tied to wars could incentivize insider trading, which lawmakers in the US and abroad have moved to regulate.
Prediction markets platform Polymarket says it has now banned and reported users who pressured an Israeli journalist with death threats to amend a news article about an Iranian missile strike that was the subject of a $17 million prediction market.
The Times of Israel military correspondent Emanuel Fabian wrote in a report on Monday that he began receiving messages to change his report about an Iranian missile that struck outside the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh on March 10.
“As far as I now understand, the emails I received were intended to confirm whether or not a missile had hit Israel on March 10 in order to resolve a prediction on Polymarket,” he wrote.