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Coinbase CEO confirmed: insider trading is 100% necessary for prediction markets Brian Armstrong: "If you want truth about the world, insiders are the only path" Here's the truth we must accept: - Stock markets: insider kills "fair play" - Prediction markets: insider creates "truth signal" - They compete with...

881,873 views • 6 months ago •via X (Twitter)

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Debunking Coffeezilla’s prediction market claims In his recent video “prediction markets aren’t just gambling,” Coffeezilla made the three untrue or misleading claims below: 1) “The only way you get the news early, by the way, is if it’s insider trading.” 2) “All these prediction markets are doing is aggregating sentiment on the news.” 3) “The only way you can get something not in the news from these markets is if someone with non-news information trades, which is AKA inside information.” I want to start by saying that I’ve really enjoyed Coffeezilla’s content in the past, and I appreciate him blacking out my name in the tweet he screenshared. I also watched the full video and agreed with parts of it (and disagreed with other parts). That said, these three claims are egregiously incorrect, and I want to correct the record. I hope Coffeezilla reads this and reconsiders these points 1) “The only way you get the news early, by the way, is if it’s insider trading.” Merriam-Webster defines insider trading as “the illegal use of information available only to insiders in order to make a profit in financial trading.” This claim is wrong because it is clearly possible to get information early in entirely legal ways. For example, in CPI inflation markets, someone might notice prices rising on goods they regularly buy, or a sophisticated trader might aggregate pricing data across many products and form a forecast before the CPI release. Journalists may later report on inflation, but the information existed beforehand. Markets also react faster to sudden events, like a Trump Truth Social post or an earthquake, than journalists do. Traders are financially incentivized to react in seconds; journalists are not. Recent high-profile examples include Nobel Peace Prize, Spotify, and Time POTY markets, where traders had information before the news broke. In the Nobel case, there was disinformation claiming insider trading, but as far as most observers can tell, the information was obtained legally via web-scraping. Even if the Nobel Committee disliked it, legally obtained information is fair game. 2) “All these prediction markets are doing is aggregating sentiment on the news.” This is easy to debunk. Prediction markets do aggregate information, but not merely sentiment or headlines. That’s likely why CNN and CNBC partnered with Kalshi. News is filtered through editors, incentives, and bias. Taking headlines at face value is not a winning trading strategy. Savvy traders treat news as one input among many variables. If a headline says “Poll X shows Clinton up 10 points,” markets may adjust, but they don’t blindly price the headline. They factor in other variables. I’d argue markets are often smarter than the news. Domer❤️‍🔥 has even argued that Fed markets on Kalshi are more accurate than CME due to traders like himself making them more efficient, and I think he’s right. 3) “The only way you can get something not in the news from these markets is if someone with non-news information trades, which is AKA inside information.” Merriam-Webster defines insider information as “information not known to the public that one has obtained by virtue of being an insider.” You can obtain non-news information without being an insider. This overlaps with point one, but here’s a concrete example. For the recent TN-07 special election, I traveled to TN-07 and spoke with voters leaving early-voting sites and with everyday residents. I learned how little awareness there was that a special election was even happening, and how voters were thinking about the race. That information wasn’t in the news, but it informed how I traded. I’m not an insider. This was “alpha hunting” through firsthand observation. Almost every serious prediction market trader has similar stories. This is certainly not "insider trading." I’m genuinely curious to hear your thoughts, Coffeezilla, and hope for a good-faith dialogue. I hope you are doing well!

Benjamin Freeman

80,021 views • 6 months ago