This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Can I profit from prediction markets for the 2024 election? Or can you profit, let's say? Welcome to Sidusville School. In this episode, we're gonna dive into the dynamic world of prediction markets, focusing specifically on what's changed in the past couple of years. Now, I wrote about prediction markets in my last book, Gonzo Capitalism, how people are making money, sometimes lots of money, betting on different elections, betting on the outcomes of different events.
So it's not only about elections, but that's a big part of prediction markets. It's also all kinds of other events. But here we'll focus this question around the upcoming election without talking about politics itself, of course, because that's dumb. We're not gonna do that. But we're gonna talk about the prediction markets and how people are betting, and as I said, making money.
A listener's wondering any specific strategies or tips, or even if you just want to check this out, like where do you go to see how it works? It is kind of a fun little world. Like I said, I wrote a whole chapter in the last book about it. Learned a lot along the way, but it's an industry that changes quite frequently with regulation, with new platforms and websites, and new opportunities. So let's talk about it.
Let's see what we can learn in a quick action-packed episode all about prediction markets and side hustling the detailed question and my answer coming right up. [Music]
Hey, Chris. I'm fascinated by the idea of betting on prediction markets, especially with the 2024 election coming up. So you wrote about this in gonzo capitalism, and I'm wondering if there are any important updates as the new cycle approaches. Are there any specific strategies or tips you recommend for maximizing my chances of success and minimizing my risk?
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All right, great question. Since I first wrote about prediction markets, and I think we've talked about them here on the podcast, but it's been at least a year, if not more, the landscape has continued to evolve. So here are a couple of notable updates, and for anybody who's not familiar with prediction markets in general, it's basically a way to bet on the outcomes of elections. So if you're like, I know who's gonna win the election, or I know who's gonna, like which party's gonna take control of various parts of Congress, and it's not just in the United States, by the way, you can bet on this all over the world. And it's not just for fun, it's also for money, right?
You're betting real money. So some updates, definitely increased regulatory scrutiny. Predict It is one of the platforms I wrote about the most in the book. It has continued to face some legal challenges. Predict It is still up and running as of right now, but as to whether it's gonna continue a year from now, hard to know, right?
So it's just important to stay informed about the legal status of any platform that you're using. Let's see what else, expansion of market offerings. So prediction markets initially focused on these big high profile elections, like our caller was asking about, but you can also bet on all sorts of things these days. So lots of niche markets as well. There's also an increased emergence of decentralized platforms.
So Polymarket, I wrote about that a bit in the book. There's also Augur, some others decentralized, meaning that it's not really a company that's running it. It's basically built on blockchain technology. So this comes with some risks and just not even just risk, but also a learning curve, takes some time to figure out how to do this. And if you don't do it the right way, you can lose a lot of money.
So you wanna be careful with that. But to go back to the focus of the question, as the big 2024 election comes up in the United States, and obviously people are watching this around the world as well, there's going to be more people betting on it. And it can be possible to take advantage of inefficiencies and arbitrage. There are lots of swings that occur in the polls. So it's not even so much like what is the final outcome of the election.
It's like all the little micro points that happen between a time X days or weeks before the election, and then up to the election, and then they're releasing up results and so on. So definitely some opportunities, but of course do your own research, be careful. Listeners, if you have a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions. New episodes every day. This was 2,730, I'll be back again tomorrow.
My name's Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
