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Polymarket refuses to pay bets that US would 'invade' Venezuela

302 points by petethomas

by nabla9

9 subcomments

US did not invade Venezuela by the definition of the bet.
>This market will resolve to "Yes" if the United States commences a military offensive intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela between November 3, 2025, and January 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to "No".
>For the purposes of this market, land de facto controlled by Venezuela or the United States as of September 6, 2025, 12:00 PM ET, will be considered the sovereign territory of that country.
>The resolution source for this market will be a consensus of credible sources.

by rmah

3 subcomments

Many people seem to be assuming some sort of bias on Polymarket's part. Without evidence, these seems unlikely as whichever side of the bet wins, Polymarket makes the same amount of $. That is, they have no stake in the outcome. The only time you can blame them is if they pay out to neither side and pocket all funds at stake. Which, as far as I can tell, no one is accusing them of.

by ekjhgkejhgk

2 subcomments

To add, that's not the same as "not paying out", it's settling in the opposite direction.

by mellosouls

0 subcomment

This may be a bit misleading.
Polymarket settles bets via a blockchain-based voting mechanism which, in theory, reduces to a simple YES/NO decision based on two inputs: the contract wording and whether the specified conditions were met by the relevant date.
While that sounds neutral in principle, in practice it’s vulnerable to interpretation of ambiguous wording and to classic vote-weight effects, where financially motivated participants can tilt outcomes away from the most reasonable reading in order to profit.
It’s actually a genuinely interesting system and an unresolved design problem - one that Polymarket doesn’t yet seem to have fully solved.

by terminalshort

8 subcomments

Seems like a good call. This was a quick in and out raid, not an invasion. To be an invasion there needs to be a sustained on the ground presence of the invading force. If this is an invasion, then the Bin Laden raid was also an invasion of Pakistan.

by 00N8

0 subcomment

There was a similar situation last summer over a prediction market on whether Iran's Fordow nuclear facility would be destroyed by a certain date. That one was resolved as "yes it got destroyed" after the air strike on the facility. A lot of people on the other side of that bet were complaining because it seemed like an arbitrary guess: All we can really tell from publicly available info is that it was hit. The actual effect may have been anywhere from superficial light damage to comprehensive destruction, with no way to be sure without access to the underground facility.
I didn't bet on that one, but I'd seen something about it on Twitter & gotten curious how they could come to a firm conclusion one way or the other. AFAICT the market didn't have a solid way to be sure & were just taking a White House press briefing that said it was probably destroyed at face value.

by llbbdd

2 subcomments

It seems like this would happen all the time on Polymarket unless the specific terms are laid out at the outset of the bet. Like, how many American soldiers is an invasion?

by ilaksh

0 subcomment

It's yet to be proven that the oil situation there is really going to change. It could turn out to be a classic "Mission Accomplished" where X weeks or months down the line we see an actual invasion.

by fenlaw

1 subcomments

I wonder how much “insider trading” is going on within Polymarket. I wouldn’t be surprised if major policy decisions have already been influenced in some way by it.

by FergusArgyll

1 subcomments

clickbait headline. Polymarket doesn't decide
https://docs.polymarket.com/polymarket-learn/markets/how-are...

by joezydeco

1 subcomments

Excellent.
I'll use that in my travel insurance claim because I've been stuck in the USVI all week and I'm confident my carrier will deny all claims because they will claim this is a declared/undeclared war, which is not covered. If this is a DEA extradition, I'm good.

by ChrisArchitect

0 subcomment

https://archive.ph/meJqK

by perryizgr8

0 subcomment

In any bet you need a judge who decides which way the conditions of the bet resolved. The judge is someone trusted by both parties to be impartial and fair. If a lot of people stop trusting polymarket to act fairly and impartially, that will simply mean fewer people participating in the bets.

by galkk

3 subcomments

Idk for certain, but it feels like very bad decision on polymarket’s side.
If they start engage in such technicalities, eventually it would mean that typical bet should be several screens long lawyerspeak/legalese, like EULA, otherwise it can be just rejected more or less arbitrary, based on wordplay, and that will scare off potential bettors.

by ChrisArchitect

1 subcomments

Related:
A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46508582

by DannyBee

0 subcomment

Lawyer here - i'm sure the TOS says they can do what they want, and most of the fight will be over the validity of that TOS/etc.
Ignoring that for a second, most of these comments miss the point - they are arguing over control of oil fields, etc.
The resolution terms are clear:
>This market will resolve to "Yes" if the United States commences a military offensive intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela between November 3, 2025, and January 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to "No".
They commenced a military operation.
It was (apparently) a helicopter evac. I guarantee you 100% at some point they intended to, and did control, the roof of a building or an area of land in order to perform the helicopter evac. I bet they even said so, over the radio. I bet if it's not classified (unclear), you could get the operators to testify to this.
Even if it had been a boat evac they would do the same for the boat landing/evac area.
There is a 0% chance the planned military operation did not involve deliberately controlling some area, for some length of time, for exfil.
The terms do not require they establish permanent control, or control for any significant length of time.

by chaostheory

0 subcomment

If this ends up with a lawsuit, maybe we can figure out who, in the WH or associated with the WH, is gambling on Polymarket.

by hnburnsy

5 subcomments

150 aircraft is not an invasion?

by charlieyu1

0 subcomment

Not so great to bet on 97% chance Jesus not returning before 2027 now

by inetknght

3 subcomments

Good. Shame on anyone who makes bets on human lives.

by max_

0 subcomment

Look up "The Oracle Problem"

by thinkingemote

0 subcomment

In 1983 the US (actually) invaded Grenada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Gren...

by kwar13

0 subcomment

Polymarket uses UMA as the resolution mechanism. It's not quite Polymarket, but UMA. See Zelenskyy's suit last year.

by LorenDB

2 subcomments

Can we stop calling these platforms "prediction markets" and start calling them "gambling apps"?

by creatonez

1 subcomments

Wait... didn't they advertise some utterly perfect blockchain oracle that could resolve disputes in the most objective way possible? Is Polymarket overriding that, or is that system what is inevitably failing (due to it being impossible to solve the oracle problem, despite blockchain advocates' claims to the contrary)?

by throwaway2037

0 subcomment

Some related background: Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are a way to buy and sell "credit event" insurance (bankruptcy, late payments, etc.). In practice, the insurance pricing part doesn't work very well, but it provides a good, if small, marketplace for speculators on both sides to bet on the likelihood of (1) credit events and (2) recovery (what % of debt can be salvaged after a credit event). Interestingly, this near real-time information has a bi-directional feedback loop versus the equity price (if listed). Last I knew, all of these contracts are OTC (over the counter) but follow an industry standard template called an ISDA agreement. (These are actively used in the largest securities markets in the world: North America, Europe, and Japan.)
On the surface, it sounds pretty simple -- as an institutional investor, you can buy and sell insurance for credit events on corporations and nations. In practice, there are simple credit events, and there are complex credit events (example: how are minority vs majority state owned enterprises handled during credit events... complex!) About the second type: There has been near continuous lawsuits and arguments over the last 20 years about what exactly is covered by the standard ISDA agreement. How recovery is determined (how the CDS settles is actually separate from the actual recovery because the actual one can take years) has also been the subject of heavy debate. Also, there have been less-than-ethical market participants who have tried to manipulate various events to trigger or delay them... or affect recovery rates. All of these have been subject to lawsuits and/or regulator investigations. I'm not an expert in this product, but the results of all of this legal activity has served to further clarify what exactly is covered by these ISDA agreements. (I think there have been minor adjustments to them over the years.)
Mind you: These arguments are happening between highly sophisticated parties and governed by excellent legal systems and well-respected regulators (US/EU/JP).
For this case of Polymarket's behaviour, I'm not surprised that this "bet" ran into trouble. After all, if your entity is governed by the laws of Panama, well then, all bets are off. I have nothing against Panama, but there is probably a good reason that large numbers of offshore commercial contracts are not subject to Panamanian law (like they are for New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, etc.) -- trust is low and their contract law and accompanying legal system probably pales into comparison to the world's best. The solution seems to be for a competitor to emerge that willingly submits to a serious regulator and legal jurisdiction. Personally, I don't see this happening any time soon. Just like crypto exchanges before, I wondered why the world's largest investment banks did not start one of their own. In hindsight, the answer is obvious: Legal and reputational risk, not limited to AML/KYC. I am wondering the same right now about "predictions markets".
Hot take: Can we stop using this slimy term "predictions markets" and just call it "gambling for geopolitical events"? That feels more honest to me.

by stevenwoo

1 subcomments

Okay blocked by paywall but other sites say Polymarket won’t pay because it says operation to kidnap Maduro is not the same as invading.

by drnick1

0 subcomment

Heads I win, tails you lose.

by mindcrash

7 subcomments

Some Venezulean sources claim US troops on a helicopter initially tried to capture a beach to turn it into a beachhead and forward operating site but had to return to the battle group without successful deployment (or any deployment at all) after it came under Venezulean fire:
https://xcancel.com/lolams768/status/2007845728333484207#m
With this in mind, the abduction of Maduro apparently was a desperate "Plan B", and it looks like everything the Trump admin is saying now is being pulled right out of thin air because this op clearly wasn't executed as planned at all.
Make of that what you will.

by QuesnayJr

3 subcomments

I don't know how Polymarket works. Were people betting against Polymarket, or was Polymarket just making book and someone else is on the other side of the bets.

by oceanplexian

3 subcomments

Anyone who's done sports betting would already know this wouldn't pay out.
I ended up losing a $500 bet in Las Vegas on a Soccer game because the game went into extra time. Even though the team I bet on won, the fine print didn't cover it and they took all my money. The betting companies are ruthless and will screw you in every way possible.