The House Finally Loses

To Polymarket

I grew up in a country where it is practically impossible to walk down any high street in any major town or city without passing at least two or three betting shops.

You cannot watch a sports match, go on a plane, or scroll social media without being bombarded with gambling adverts.

It’s on our radios, it’s on our TVs, it’s on our phones, it’s on our streets, and it’s embedded deep within our government.

Gambling is so incentivised here that it’s literally tax-free.

Yet despite all this, I find myself HEAVILY restricted from every betting site that I can legally access.

screenshot from one of my betting accounts - max bet is HEAVILY capped and on football I’m banned entirely

And that’s why it’s always been extremely clear to me that Polymarket matters deeply, and why it will continue to scale exponentially.

Gamblers never prosper, but now the serious ones do?

Gambling is for fun. It’s you vs the house.

The house pretends to be your friend. it invites you in, plasters you with free drinks, and hands you free bets.

It’s all fun and games.

At least until you actually have an edge and start to win a little bit.

Then, before you know it, your account is frozen, your funds locked behind ever-increasing KYC requests, your bet size is limited, or the house refuses to honour the terms because of a “pricing error.”

But the slot machines, though, they’ll still let you use them.

often betting sites would intentionally make it as hard as possible to withdraw. They would wait for you to have a win and then request proof of identity documents notarised by a lawyer. Often they would do this if winnings were $100, so the cost made it simply not worth it. They’d then close your account and keep the money.

Traditional betting is mostly a lose-lose.

You lose, you lose because you’re poor now;

you win, you lose because you have to jump through a trillion hoops to keep your money.

Prediction markets, however, are both for fun and for serious people.

It’s you vs the world, not you vs the house.

You can become an expert in some tiny micro niche thing and actually have a real advantage. The platform itself will not ban you for winning. If anything they’ll thank you for bringing liquidity to the platform.

And you can continue winning freely until the skill gap lessens or the world catches up to you.

Ultimately things like sports betting are just another form of market. It’s just been held hostage under regulatory capture for such a long time that we’ve all kind of collectively forgotten that.

And this is why I am truly rooting for Polymarket to succeed.

Your access to markets should not be limited by some boomer risk department in a betting company that spends 90% of its energy figuring out how to trick people into getting addicted to staring at the bright, flashing lights of a slot machine.

I want to live in a world where anyone, anywhere, can bet freely against each other on anything.

I want markets to be global and not geographically restricted.

I want “predictions” to be open-sourced to the world and backed by real skin in the game, not just narratives pushed by news organisations or lobby groups.

I want us, the users, the people, the basement-dwelling statisticians, to actually have a chance to win for once and show everyone their skill.

I want Polymarket to win because it’s a better outcome for us all.

I want the house to finally lose.

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NONE OF THIS IS FINANCIAL ADVICE. IF YOU READ THIS AND DECIDE TO BET YOUR LIFE SAVINGS ON THE GENDER OF RIHANNA’S BABY YOU ARE AN IDIOT. NO ONE READING MY POSTS HAS ANY EDGE. YOU SHOULD PROBABLY LEARN PLUMBING OR SOMETHING SO YOU CAN RETAIN A JOB A BIT LONGER WHEN THE AIS TAKE OVER INSTEAD OF TRYING TO TURBO GAMBLE YOUR WAY OUT OF ETERNAL POVERTY. GAMBLING IS BAD AND ADDICTIVE.