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.
> 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,
There are two conditions:
(1) A military offensive: obviously satisfied, and
(2) That military offensive being intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela: The President explicitly stated that the intended outcome was that US would run the country, and that, if it was necessary to use additional military force beyond the original act to secure that because of the lack of cooperation of the remnants of the regime left in Venezuela, that additional force would be applied. So, that part is also satisfied.
Any denial that the conditions were satisfied is pure sophistry.
Sounds to me like they intend to control the oil production infrastructure which is land/territory within Venezuela - but what do I know.
Isn't the entire Polymarket concept rife with ways to abuse the system? If I have insider knowledge I get shills to create a market for that knowledge - then make an extreme bet at the last moment. Seems sort of like betting the 49ers will not win the Super Bowl because you know that Purdy's kneecaps are about to be busted. Or large options trades the day before the Senate votes on Healthcare bills.
If you want a gambling site, you need to ban insider knowledge. If you want to generate accurate predictions, you want to encourage insider knowledge. But even then, the problem you mention can occur when an insider extreme bet happens at the last minute, because although you end up with an accurate prediction it isn't very useful in the few minutes before it becomes a fact. I don't know if there is a solution.
Time-weight predictions so that they're "worth" more the further in advance they are, converging to "worthless" as they approach the due date? Perhaps there is a way of making this result emerge "organically" from the rules of the system, rather than explicitly encoding it.
Depends on your goals. If you are the platform then there is nothing to solve: you’re running an illegal gambling website and currently getting away with it. If you are an inside trader you’re also doing well.
It’s not great for the gambling addicts but helping people better themselves doesn’t seem to be a theme in federal policy at the moment
Gambling sites probably do have it in their user agreements.
Further, "insider trading" in prediction markets is probably fundamentally illegal under existing commodities fraud laws in the US (I am not a lawyer,) but there's probably nobody actively policing it, and probably no precedent in how to prosecute the cases.
I think it hinges on whether "any part of Venezuela" includes intangible "parts" like being able to tell them who to sell oil to, or whether it only refers to land/territory. The second paragraph implies that control over land is the point of the bet, but it doesn't explicitly say so. Control over the oil industry doesn't require control over land.
Naive view is it's suppose to create public interest measures with real valued results.
Unfortunately, it's pretty easy to see something, eventually, like "X won't be seen in public after December 31st, 2026" essentially creating an assassination market.
The U.S. absolutely “commence[d] a military offensive” against Venezuela. The question said if it “intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela.”
The condition is based on intent, not outcome. (It’s a poorly-drafted contract.)
This is the whole thing about polymarket, whoever writes the original bet can lawyer it to create a misleading impression of probabilities by defining an overly narrow or vague victory condition that they will interpret to their benefit to make more money.
The conditions are public and (as far as I know) immutable, though. Getting language lawyered is part of the risk of taking such bets, which is why it's probably a bad idea for most laypeople to do it, except if they're hedging some other investment or something similar.
i think its supposed to be fun and if you get rules lawyered then you get to complain about it and have people agree with you at parties that you should have won the bet
i dont think it is intended to be used as a meaningful investment platform, or even a serious gambling establishment like an actual casino.
its whole angle is "wouldnt it be funny if you could bet on ____" and then you can
Yeah I think one could easily argue that the special military operation in Venezuela was intended to gain control over the country. Trump literally stated that his team, in particular lil Marco, would be running the country. Of course Rubio walked that back a little, explaining that we only have "leverage" (via Maduro's trial/pardoning), but that still is within the terms 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".
It was 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 for some length of time 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, inside venezuela, for exfil.
The terms do not require they establish permanent control, or control for any significant length of time. Just that they intend to control, and did control, some area.
1. "Establish". Stabilize the control, not temporarily visit. Similar to flying a bit in the airspace does not count as establishing a control.
2. "Establish an area" also means that the area would be big enough and control significant/independent enough in order to maintain (!) it. E.g. imagine if most of the Delta were eliminated and only one guy survived, holding a maid hostage in the toilet. That would not count because the area is small, the control is insignificant and keeping the toilet space was not the original point anyway. Similar as attacking Brazilian servers would not count only because the traffic went through Venezuela's network.
Taking words out of sentences and trying to define them piece by piece rarely makes sense.
For example, you forgot the "intended to" part.
Especially taking terms about a military operation and appling regular dictionary definitions to them makes little to no sense.
For example, in the legal and contract realm, something like establishing control means simply having authority over something, even temporarily. IE statements of the intent to run venezuela would suffice, even without any land control, ability to do so, etc.
In practice - a court is going to give it a fairly broad reading consistent with an everyday person's understanding, since that is who is betting. They will additionally rely on public statements about intent, etc.
This assumes nobody can get enough information about the actual operational plans.
So if the court wanted to interpret "establish control" (which, again, it would not do separately from the other words, but let's say they did), it would do something like the following:
1. Is it defined in the contract? Yes - contract definition controls
2. Is it consistently used in context? Yes - context control
3. Is it a term of art in the field? Yes - definition of
term of art controls
4. Is it still ambiguous? Yes - evidence about what it means gets presented by both sides
Part 4 is where you'd present a dictionary definition.
In any case, there is no point in having this argument, as polymarket's TOS almost certainly allows them to do what they want, and nobody is going to care what random internet commentators who suddenly have turned themselves into full blown lawyers, think :)
(In fact, polymarket's terms requires you to agree that they have no control whatsoever over contract resolution, etc. They are also governed by the law of panama)
POTUS literally, literally announced that the US had control over all (!) of Venezuela.
Now, sure, that's kind of a lie. But (ahem) By The Definition of The Bet, actual control is not required. Only a military offensive intended to establish control. What purer definition of intent can you have than the decisionmaker's literal statement? QED.
No, this is cheating. Now, sure, the bets placed seemed very likely to be fraudulent. Which is cheating too. But there's not "technically" here. Polymarket is playing games with its bets. And that's fraud, even if it's got company.
Polymarket is not a broker, counterparty, or even resolver, so the only thing they can arguably be criticized for is hosting a market without a sufficiently clear definition of "invasion".
How can they not be a "broker" when they handled the transaction?! How can they not be a "resolver" when they're the ones refusing to pay based on their own determination?
Also, what definition of "invasion" are you thinking of (please cite) which does not apply here?
They don't handle transactions. It's a blockchain-based platform that they design and operate, but part of that design is that they don't hold money themselves, nor are they the arbiter to any of the markets hosted on their platform.
> Also, what definition of "invasion" are you thinking of (please cite) which does not apply here?
No idea what a better definition of "invasion" could have been, but the only one that's relevant for the resolution is that listed on the market description on Polymarket (which many traders don't even read, but that's a different story).
This argument seems to be about the real meaning of words versus their overloaded legal analogues. I can’t imagine Venezuela’s military kidnapping Trump, then saying they would run the United States now, being parsed like this.
The things the POTUS says, are intended to further the US Government's goals. The actual statements made may be true or false.
If POTUS says "We did X because Y", that's no guarantee that Y is the reason that X was done, or even that X was done at all. That just means that POTUS would like people to think that Y was the reason X was done.
That Trump is also a serial liar is not actually relevant here, this is true for every President. They make statements in service of their agenda, not in service of the truth.
We have to take the Presidents Statements are credible, firstly, because it's the closest thing to the truth anyone has. He has no real strategy, he makes things up on the spot.
Secondly, even if argument could be that 'some other, more credible president would lie' - this actually does not hold up, because nobody could operate in those terms.
The presidents statements in an official context are official, that's it. Except in rare cases.
"He tells people what to do on a whim" and "has longstanding personal beefs and gripes" - that's it.
We don't know what he's going to wake up and tweet tomorrow so all we have are his statements.
Also, I think we give way to much credit to this notion of '4d chess' - he lies in the moment because he can get away with it, not out of some well plotted deception. He's not servicing some complicated scheme - just his gut.
He'll say something else the next day, but for that moment, what he says is policy.
>We have to take the Presidents Statements are credible, firstly, because it's the closest thing to the truth anyone has.
* "Statements", not "statement". Past statements can be used to assess the credibility of more recent ones.
* Actions speak louder than words. Pardoning the king of cocaine trafficking demonstrates just how seriously the administration is trying to counter drug trafficking.
> We have to take the Presidents Statements are credible, firstly, because it's the closest thing to the truth anyone has. He has no real strategy, he makes things up on the spot.
I'm sorry, this is nonsense. "He makes things up, therefore we have to take the things he says as credible"?
The President is not an oracle of truth, nor are his words the most accurate representation we have on the intentions of US government actions.
Let's say he had said directly, "The January 3rd operation in Venezuela was a best-effort attempt by the US to take control over Venezuela".
Now let's say he had instead said "The January 3rd operation in Venezuela was a best-effort attempt by the US to take control over Madagascar".
You would genuinely, truly believe that in that moment, the capture of Maduro from Venezuela was the most effective thing the US government could do to take control of Madagascar?
No, the position that POTUS statements can't be taken as valid are actually 'nonsense' - it's just the opposite.
The presidents statements are the legitimate statements of the State of the United States of America, it has nothing to do with what you or I think about 'Madagascar'.
He is POTUS, his words are nominally and pragmatically state policy.
If he makes a declaration of 'use of force' against another it should be taken at face value.
This would be true if were only a nominal figurehead, leaving policy to others, but he's not, he has material power and wields it.
Given the construction of the balance of power - 'He is America' at least for the time being.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding about how the Presidency of the US works.
The statements POTUS makes to the public are simply statements by a person and should be taken as such.
The instructions the POTUS gives, privately or publicly, to the various apparatuses of the US government, are what is nominally and pragmatically state policy. When these contradict public statements POTUS has made, it is these instructions that are what actually matter.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of power and geopolitics.
First this: "The statements POTUS makes to the public are simply statements by a person and should be taken as such." <-- this is definitely not true, even with a basic deference to the more traditional, formal view of the US president's role, or the role of any Head of State for that matter.
The US Presidents proclamations are policy, and always have been. Obviously - a statement at the 'correpondents dinner' is not the same thing as a quick media response, is not the same thing as a statement from behind the podium, is not the same thing as a prepared address or document - but anything above board is representative of the State.
Particularly given the current POTUS leverage over Congress and wide Judicial deference to his power.
Obviously, POTUS is going to have private discussions and give directions that are not consistent with public statements - that adds to the ambiguous nature of his statements, but his public statements are still facto policy and must be taken at face value.
A statement like 'force is on the table' internally may seem like a negotiating tactic or 'populist politics' or 'stuff tough business guys say' or even 'fodder for fox news', but geopolitically it's borderline a declaration of war. It should be taken seriously.
> We have to take the Presidents Statements are credible, firstly, because it's the closest thing to the truth anyone has.
You are welcome to believe everything that President Putin is saying about anything, including Ukraine.
That's a profoundly absurd statement. Appeal to authority is a fallacy, especially with a trackrecord of an "authority" lying.
If the President's words are the truth, what to do with the statements in which he contradicts himself? What about situations in which 2 presidents disagree?
>The presidents statements in an official context are official, that's it.
Official, perhaps most of the time. Truthful, definitely not.
What's up with the inability to separate "opinions/statements" vs. "facts/truth"?..
What credible source exists for the intent of this administration? You can have all the IR acumen in the world, but you won't be able to get into the head of this president.
News sources in Venezuela reporting on the presence of American troops might be one?
An invasion with the intent of taking control of the country would not involve troops arriving in the capital, completing their mission perfectly with no losses on their side, and then everybody leaving, such that no enemy troops remain.
The bet wasn't "will President Trump claim to have invaded Venezuela", it was whether the US would actually do it.
Your understanding of the relationship between the truth and the words being spoken by POTUS are the only discontinuity here. Update that expectation and everything makes sense.
The US did launch a military offensive in Venezuela, albeit briefly. That is not in question. What is in question is the intent, which how do you know intent without accepting the publicly stated intent of the commander in chief?
The bet was, specifically:
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".
I'm not saying I know the intent. I'm saying you don't know the intent, because the word of the commander in chief is not sufficient evidence.
Maybe Trump's eventual goal is to invade Venezuela with the intent of controlling it. I don't know. I do know that the intent of the brief military offensive was not to control it, because of what was done.
Yeah, not like the original plan was to keep the territory, but after failing they had to leave. No, they had a specific plan to capture Maduro and to leave; and this is exactly what they did.
Venezuala government calls it an invasion. U.S left with the evidence, do we trust the fascist regime of venezuala or the elected president of the U.S?
It seems like it would be common sense to trust neither party to the conflict to arbitrate such markets. That’s why e.g. for presidential election, the criterion is usually a quorum of different news outlets and not either party running.
It's not as if the site can steal money this way. Either something else happens before the 31st that does meet their definition, or else they have to pay out the "no" side.
> 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".
The US attack had no intent to control territory. It was to nab one guy. Second paragraph establishes that after intent, there must be de facto control of the territory.
1. Attack intent to control did not happen.
2. De facto control of Venezuelan territory did not happen.
Second paragraph establishes that after intent, there must be de facto control of the territory.
The way I read it, the second paragraph serves as the definition of territory ("any portion of Venezuela"), not as a condition for resolving the bet. The invasion doesn't need to be successful, it just needs to have the intent you specified in 1.
...which makes the entire bet like quicksand, because it relies on the public statements from a regime known for its "inaccurate" messaging.
The more interesting question for rules lawyers is whether the president itself classifies as "any portion of Venezuela" -- the claim doesn't explicitly limit itself to only geographical portions.
There is nothing both public and credible to substantiate the claim by the POTUS.
It’s possible we have de facto control of the regime through some backroom that only the Trump Administration knows about, but that’s just speculative on my part. We don’t know this is actually the case, and thus far there hasn’t been anything to substantiate the existence of such a thing.
So we’re at at a point where if put on the spot, gun to my head, I had to answer whether the United States controls the Government of Venezuela in any meaningful way, I would have to say “No” despite what Trump himself said. This is subject to change, pending further evidence made available to the American people.
It doesn’t matter whether the US actually has control, only that the military action was taken with intent to establish control.
>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".
What the military actually did was a raid which captured Maduro and his wife, and likely took out some of Venezuela’s anti-air capabilities—for all the good they did them—in the process. As far as we know, that was the intent. Actually establishing control is an occupational effort.
I see your argument, and I think it is even defensible but I think it falls short. An actual resolution to this question may require a judge to weigh in on the contract.
"Actually establishing control is an occupational effort."
Not quite.
They're trying to establish control by threatening to kill or imprison the leaders and by blockade.
Venezuela apparently handed over a lot of oil, it seems like they've been able to do something.
That said - we don't really know how much 'control' that is.
If I were Polymarket, I wouldn't say that the US has control either, but, it's entirely plausible.
We'll see.
This could go the way of DOGE or the Trade War aka just a trailing mess of ongoing concerns that people forget about, though to play my own devil's advocate, ICE is consistently ramping up.
I understand that he made that claim, but until we see something that effectively substantiates that claim, it’s just words. Right now Maduro is in custody and being tried for the charges, but the regime he built is still in place, and as far as we know, not feeling any warm feelings about cooperating with us.
Now realistically no one in that regime is any safer than Maduro was, but it’s also a possibility they resist and carry on without Maduro. It’s only been since Saturday. I’m not saying there’s no world where Trump & Rubio are correct today or when they said it over the weekend, I’m saying that there is no public information substantiating those claims. Near as I can tell, it’s a “listen to us or else” kinda deal, which could be enough, but then we would see the effects of that through cooperation with the Trump Administration.
The claim doesn’t need to be substantiated, because it doesn’t matter whether they actually will control Venezuela, it only matters that it was their intent to do so, which Rubio and Trump have both admitted.
Like I said, I think your position is defensible but I think it falls short so I still disagree. If the people who bought into this contract can get it in front of a judge though, the judge might agree with you.
I am prepared to be wrong on this one, but I just don’t think that Trump & Rubio’s words after the fact are enough.
Except neither Trump or Rubio are credible sources. Their actions and words are notoriously unreliable.
In fact, citing them as an authority leads to the transitive property applying to credibility in an argument.
All of us here know Trump is an unreliable person, why is he being cited to support definitive claims? And Yes His unreliably most certainly extends to his own aims, there is no question on that.
You can for the most part evaluate intent based on actions. There are some actions which can have multiple possible intents behind them, where things get trickier. But in most situations, there is one primary consequence of something, and the action needs to be taken with deliberation, hence you can state with high certainty what the intention was, based purely on what was done. Consversely, if a person has complete freedom to complete some action, but chooses not to, then we can say their intention wasn't to do that thing.
The Chavez Museum was also destroyed...but no it wasn't an invasion. It didn't control land which is the definition in this case. The blockade provides de facto control which is what Trump is referring to.
They ARE, or INTEND to? It's not Jan 31, 2026 yet, so, AFAICT, only the "Yes" option can be short-circuited if it occurs. They can't pay the "No" side until Feb 1, 2026, right?
Good point, so for completeness: They'll pay out either "Yes" or "No", but definitely not nobody or themselves (except if they're also "Yes" or "No" holders).
Is it having heavy influence over through proxies? You can't just snatch a guy like Maduro out of a country without some local help. Help that would presumably be aligned with you on goals.
Or is it setting up a complete government like in Iraq, postwar Germany/Japan, etc.?
Yes, it is clear there was local help. Someone who had a lot to gain, it could even be someone from government looking for promotion or seeing maduro as a threat, including the new president herself. That does not imply control over Venezuela. Nor alignment with American goals.
I mean, official American goals are "taking oil and getting money from it, putting it to offshore account". There is no "alignment on goals" possible, but there is a space for corruption and pressure. Venezuela is highly corrupt country after all.
> Or is it setting up a complete government like in Iraq, postwar Germany/Japan, etc.?
That would require actual invasion and actual control over land - military on the ground. Soldiers in high numbers, patrolling streets and shooting it out with militias. There is nothing of the sort going on. Besides, Iraq was failure.
Germany was literally defeated and destroyed after the war. Fight capable men were already killed in large numbers and Germans themselves seen themselves as losers of that war. And comfortably, their ideology of "might is right" meant that once they were destroyed they accepted to loss.
Trump and Vance may be able to peer it with militias, as another gang competing with local gangs, but they cant build equivalent of post WWII Germany. Because both sides are different - Venezuela is not defeated, there is no American military in there and American ideology is closer to that of past Germany then that of post WWII America.
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.
> pay out to neither side and pocket all funds at stake
That's also not possible, as far as I understand. If the smart contracts are worth their salt, the only possible outcomes per binary option is to pay out in full to either "yes" or to "no" holders, not to any other unrelated party, including Polymarket.
The real risk is somebody subverting a sufficiently large proportion of (anonymous, stake-based) arbiters on UMA, which is the on-chain entity that actually arbitrates outcomes and as such releases funds to one side or the other. Then, somebody could buy the "wrong" outcome tokens for cheap and flip the payout their way.
No idea how feasible that is and which game-theoretic protections UMA/Polymarket have against that possibility, but I don't think we've seen a smoking gun for that yet.
Maybe I don't understand it enough, but I don't see how it's hard at all to manipulate this with a lot of money. Buy a lot of the wrong resolution, and all the other individuals will be too afraid to buy the right one.
Not quite, Polymarket is decentralized so they are even more removed from the outcome. When a dispute happens like this, a vote happens in the UMA DAO, essentially a decentralized "democratic" vote. What people are complaining about is UMA whales skewing votes.
I think its a bit more complicated than this. Disputed outcomes are decided by votes from UMA token holders, which are anonymously owned. I remember reading a theory (with evidence, can't find the article now) that the venn diagram between Polymarket owners/stakeholders and UMA whales is close to a circle.
For the same people accept Tether's claims of solvency even though they refuse audits and obviously lie about ownership of various assets. For the same reason people ignore wash trading. For the same reason people continue using Sam-coins even after FTX's implosion.
Because A) they're not paying attention, B) they're in denial and C) because they think they can profit in the short term before it collapses, or that the odds are in their favor to profit despite the risks.
I don't think this government particularily cares about convincing people about anything, they are just doing whatever they want public opinion be damned.
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.
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.
Dictionary definition of "invasion" and "invasive" with regards to military incursions tend to emphasize the size of the force. Same for "invasive species" and invasion biology.
But you can also have an invasion of privacy or invasive surgery. In that sense it is about unwelcome intrusion into one's body / sovereignty.
And people are entertained by news articles with titles like, "10 times countries accidentally invaded their neighbors." Clearly the intent to violate sovereignty matters.
I think you can argue that the Bin Laden raid was and invasion into Pakistan. Anytime a military forces enters uninvited, that's an invasion.
No that is not the definition of a military invasion.
> An invasion is a military action consisting of a large armed force of one geopolitical entity entering the territory of another with the goal of militarily occupying part or all of the invaded polity's territory, usually to conquer territory or alter the established government.
What happened on Saturday was not an invasion. It was an extraction/capture operation. It was a large scale one, but they left after they captured Maduro and his Wife.
> I think you can argue that the Bin Laden raid was and invasion into Pakistan. Anytime a military forces enters uninvited, that's an invasion.
No it wasn't. When they killed Bin Laden they didn't "invade" Pakistan. They infiltrated, then assassinated him and left.
Still doesn't make it an invasion. If they drone striked and thus killed Majuro it would not be an invasion. It would be an assassination.
Invasion in this context has a specific meaning. The bet on the market would have been done with this specific meaning in mind.
No invasion, means no payout.
It would be like making a bet where someone scores in Football/Soccer from a penalty, but in the game they score from a free kick outside the penalty box. You wouldn't pay out on the bet, because a penalty is not a free kick even though they are similar and had the same result.
If somebody breaks into my house, fucks my shit up and leaves, are they not guilty of home invasion anymore because they didn't stick around for long enough?
Is Stuxnet not a virus because it isn't genetic material inside a protein capsule? It's almost as if words have different definitions depending on the context.
When you are referring to a military action, invasion has a particular meaning.
The definition on Wikipedia seems reasonable:
> An invasion is a military action consisting of a large armed force of one geopolitical entity entering the territory of another with the goal of militarily occupying part or all of the invaded polity's territory, usually to conquer territory or alter the established government
What the US did wasn't a military invasion by that definition as they left after they grabbed Maduro.
I agree that most people would use the term invasion to describe it. But this story is related to how a betting market decided to pay out.
The US forces left immediately after the target (Maduro and his wife) were extracted. So according to the definition I gave (which is more precise) then it isn't an invasion.
Whenever I envision an military invasion, I think of troops storming Normandy Beaches to invade Europe, When the Falklands invaded Argentina or When Hitler invaded France. All of these actions were with the intent to hold seize and hold territory.
An operation where people fly in, knocking out critical defences, capture someone and then leave clearly isn't the same thing.
Arguing over whether a different situation qualifies as a different sort of invasion doesn't move the conversation forward as much as you might intuit.
They amassed critical pieces of military hardware off the coast (carriers, warships, helicopters, planes). They took out military infrastructure. They placed radar systems throughout the region. Just because it was fast and met its goal doesn't mean it wasn't an invasion. You don't need an on-the-ground force when you control everything that can go in and out.
Yes, that's an invasion! And the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands during WWII. Taking even a barely inhabited frozen rock by force is an invasion. Has nothing to do with the scale of destruction.
“Invasion” implies the intent of sustained military occupation/control over some portion a country’s territory. There’s no suggestion that was ever the objective here.
> To be an invasion there needs to be a sustained on the ground presence of the invading force.
What exactly do you think is going to happen to the oil in Venezuela? Are you under the impression that they will simply leave them be and hope for the best?
United States will be placing military assets to secure it, just like they did with IRAQ. The entire point of this was to secure the oil and now they have to to guard it.
Establishing military bases on sovereign nations that you captured by force illegally is an invasion.
Ultimately, "invasion" is one of those terms that gets used for rhetorical effect more than a concrete claim about the world. If you think the US "invaded" Venezuela, and I think it's better to say they "attacked" Venezuela and "kidnapped" the president, we're not normally going to get into an argument about it - we'll just each use the terms that make sense to us, since we clearly agree about the facts of the terrible thing that happened. But Polymarket has to force the dumb semantic argument because they have to resolve the prediction one way or another. (One of the reasons to be skeptical of prediction markets as applied to geopolitics.)
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
One of the few valid uses for polymarket is hedging against events that are hard to insure for. E.g. it made sense to bet on a Trump win (at least early on when odds were good) if you would lose out from him winning.
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.
Standard Polymarket legalese for invasions requires the goal of indefinite "control of territory" for this reason.
Raids don't qualify.
This issue already happened with the war in the Middle East when Israel engaged in cross border raids that weren't intended to establish permanent control.
The US didn't kill all Iraqis, so it was just a "limited" military action or "raid" also? The intent was a nation removing the head of another nation to cede control of the nation to the invading nation. If you kill 1 or 100,000, it's still an invasion.
If a nation assassinates a leader, then leave the country to their own devices (which may include a more friendly replacement), I could see the ground on this logic. NEITHER of these events (killing nor elected replacement) has happened. The US has asserted control.
In Iraq the US entered with a force numbering in the hundreds of thousands and occupied the country for years. That's what makes it an invasion, not whether the leader was the target. The US didn't remove Saddam Hussein when they attacked in 1991 and that was still, beyond any doubt, an invasion.
The US has asserted control with words and threats, not with sustained military presence or a successor not approved by the previous Venezuelan administration. The Venezuelan military has full control of its territory, and leadership has passed to the next in line to the Venezuelan presidency who even Trump acknowledges needs to be negotiated with to get the oil he wants, and is busy telling her own domestic audience Maduro is still her president.
It's obviously far closer to assassinating a leader and leaving the country to its own devices than the complete destruction of the Iraqi army as a viable fighting force, installation of an entirely new government and extended military occupation, or even something like Russia's ultimately unsuccessful annexation of Kherson.
The presence is not in Venezuela. Sure, they can threaten Venezuela's new president, just like they can (and do) threaten other countries that they have not invaded [recently] and having a powerful military not in Venezuela adds a certain credibility to those threats, but that doesn't change the fact its the successor under the Maduro administration's rules, not theirs, and she's able to publicly insist that Maduro still the president! The threats of dire consequences if she doesn't do what they want are precisely because they don't control the country.
It's really not "serious hair splitting" to point out that they haven't "invaded" a country they haven't even attempted to maintain non-covert presence in, particularly not when you've conveniently provided the perfect analogy of a state assassinating a leader and then letting them pick a successor who might be more convenient.
What is the difference between having the militaire have boots in the ground to kill you if you don't comply, and having military in the border next to you to kill you, bomb you or kidnap you if you don't comply?
USA is not meaningfully in control of Venezuela. They have no more control then a week ago.
Venezuela regime did not changed either. The same generals and politicials remain on power, altrough there is bound to be some power struggle between them.
There's certainly a fuzzy line there somewhere, but the Maduro raid is clearly on the non-invasion side of it. This operation was much more similar to the Bin Laden raid than to even the smallest operation that could be considered an invasion.
Intent is important here. It’s an invasion if the objective is to establish sustained military control over some portion of the country’s territory.
But if the intention is some other military objective: blow up a military base, kidnap a president, etc, and get out quickly, then I don’t think the word “invasion” applies.
I have no idea who has decided that "invade" means "establish sustained military control".
With certainty that is not the original meaning of the word. In Latin and in classic English, the meaning of the word is just: "enter in a hostile manner", as it can be verified in any dictionary.
As long as foreigners have entered the territory of another country by force, that is an invasion.
It does not matter which was the duration of the invasion or whether the intent of the invasion was to stay there permanently.
An invasion may be followed, or not, by a military occupation, which is "establish sustained military control".
The real answer is that the people that set up the bet decided, and they listed the conditions upfront.
And imagine how silly it would be if 1-5 soldiers came across the border by force and left a few minutes later and that counted as a major world event!
Compared to other dictionaries, this is a very poor explanation of the word.
Nevertheless, even here it says clearly that "invade" refers only to "enter", and neither to "subjugate" or to "occupy".
Other dictionaries explain better the distinction between "invading" and normal "entering", which is in the manner how one enters, i.e. "in a hostile manner" or "by the use of force".
Your dictionary explains the distinction by intent, not by manner, but this is wrong, as at the time of the invasion one cannot know which is the intent, which will become known only in the future.
By this definition one could never recognize an invasion while it happens, even when one sees a foreign army entering and killing everyone on sight.
I agree however, that the Polymarket bet has specified that the object of the bet was an invasion followed by an occupation of the territory, so the conditions of the bet have not been met.
This has already been the case for political and/or social impact events for years in the UK's betting exchanges. The settlement rules for any potentially hairy real-world event have to be explicitly clear and account for all possible outcomes that might affect the resolution.
When there's money on the line, I have years of hard evidence that arm-chair lawyers (ie. betting exchange clients) will do absolutely anything to find potential loopholes in settlement rules and argue that their bets should have paid off.
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.
Number of aircraft don’t seem to contribute to whether or not it’s classified as “hostilities”, much less “invasion”. Is this ridiculous ? Certainly. But it’s fairly par for the course in terms of politically complex issues in the USA.
The War Powers Resolution (WPR) of 1973 sets a 60-day limit for U.S. forces in hostilities without a formal declaration of war or congressional authorization, allowing for a potential 30-day extension for withdrawal, totaling 90 days, after which the President must remove troops.
Airstrikes on Libya (2011): Obama administration argued they did not need Congressional authorization because the operations did not constitute "hostilities" as defined by the War Powers Resolution. Therefore, the Obama administration argued, the 60-day clock never started.
The bombings involved 26,500 sorties over eight months, including 7,000 bombing sorties targeting Gaddafi's forces.
Also, on-the-day commentary about "regime change" was very much premature. A "regime" is not a single person, it is a ruling group, a system (1). The existing regime in Venezuela is still very much in place. It is undergoing change for sure, even having a crisis (2). But as this implies, it has not yet been swapped out for something else.
I don't follow. What are you trying to say? Your question is not relevant to the proposition that the existing regime in Venezuela is still very much in place. I don't know how to say this more clearly than "a regime is not a person (source, the dictionary)".
"Was this attempted regime change?" and "Was the regime change successful?" are two different questions. Given the facts, it's hard to deny that the purpose of this operation was explicitly regime change.
> "Was this attempted regime change?" and "Was the regime change successful?" are two different questions.
What I said was "on-the-day commentary about "regime change" was very much premature".
My apologies, for the avoidance of any doubt I should have said "on-the-day commentary about "regime change" having already occurred successfully was very much premature".
Does "The existing regime in Venezuela is still very much in place" not emphasise that meaning?
Is that clearer to you? I didn't think it needed to be added, but people can be creative with misreadings. This seems like a issue at your end.
Dictionary defition is "when an army or country uses force to enter and take control of another country".
They went in and out. They used force to enter, but they did not took control of another country. The government and regime is basically intact, maybe with some bruised ego assuming existing players did not tacitly allowed this to happen to promote themselves.
Functionally, the situation is very similar to the situation from before the event, except there was some display of force and it was made clear someone inside is cooperating with usa.
Does this mean that any time an invasion fails it retroactively doesn't count? For example, the Bay of Pigs event universally known as the "Bay of Pigs invasion" was not an invasion because the US never took control of any territory?
The invaders took and held some territory near the Bay of Pigs for about three days, and they were planning to stay a lot longer if the fighting had gone their way. Whereas for a raid, a withdrawal is also planned in case of mission success.
Do you mean that if the US Marine Corps takes some foreign territory by force, it's not an invasion, because there is no army involved in the operation?
Vague everyday language is unsuitable for contracts. When there are multiple reasonable interpretations, it's impossible to know what has been agreed. It's better to be pedantic and use precise language and narrow technical definitions of words.
In some languages and situations, "army" is a general term for the military or for a military force. In other languages and situations, it refers specifically to ground forces. Americans are usually in the latter camp, especially if they have a connection to the military.
I meant that the person writing the contract must be a pedant. Vague everyday language can only lead to bad things, when someone inevitably interprets in a different way.
In this particular case, the bets were clearly about military operations with the intention to take control of Venezuelan territory. This is the established meaning of "invasion", in contexts where people care about distinguishing between different types of military operations. But because people could plausibly interpret the word in a different way, the rules did not use words "invade" or "invasion" at all.
What Trump means is that he has kicked the Venezuela government in the balls in order to coerce them.
Trump is a mob boss. He considers himself "in charge" of them now because he has clearly dominated them, expects them to comply with his future demands, and will continue to use force against them in the future if they don't do what he wants.
Or it means Trump saying what Trump always says, whilst also being extremely clear that he's negotiating with Venezuela's VP, who is busy asserting equally implausibly that Maduro is the country's only president to her own audience of people that believe whatever the government says.
FWIW, this is usually called buying either "life insurance" or a "life annuity," depending on whether you want to take a short or long position. The underwriters of such bets tend to be reticent about offering them to 3rd parties, though, for what are probably obvious reasons.
Not really a counterpoint, but interestingly there used to be a fairly widespread practice of corporations buying life insurance for low level employees. It was often called "Dead Peasant Insurance", and when the employee died the corporation benefited.
It never made an iota of economic sense -- if insurance underwriters are on the wrong end of that deal, they aren't doing their jobs very well -- but a number of large corporations would do it, and gleefully pocket the payouts when rank and file employees died.
Are you sure you’d like random people putting a price on your head?
A sufficiently liquid prediction market on a human life is indistinguishable from a bounty. That’s exactly why you can only take out life insurance if you have some reasonable financial stake in somebody staying alive and not the opposite.
Who are Uma token holders? I'm assuming some token people can buy? Could someone not corner that market, then make a ton of longshot bets, then dispute them all and win every case as majority Uma token holder?
"After the debate period, Uma token holders vote (this process takes approximately 48 hours) and one of four outcomes happens:"
That is true. UMA tokens are just a coin on the blockchain that can be bought. The resolution is put up for a vote. People can vote by staking their tokens and the losing side(s) lose their tokens. The winning side are rewarded the tokens of losing sides. In theory you can just buy out these votes with enough money/tokens
UMA's security model assumes the cost to corrupt the oracle exceeds the profit from corruption. It is quite interesting because it doesn't consider the Polymarket side at all in the calculation.
Doesn't this whole model break down when the Polymarket market far exceeds UMA's market cap?
Not just in theory, it happens frequently. There's multiple 'markets' that resolved in untruth when it suited UMA whales. Polymarket is a scam site, with a thin veneer of gambling over the top.
Not only did they correctly hold a Yes bet about Maduro they also "correctly" made a bet about the US invading Venezuela and then they _sold_ it early at 18c for a profit as opposed to holding it to maturity (which would've been a "no").
They also did this the correct hold vs sell-early on 4 contracts.
How do you define maturity time here? Is it when the incident occurred (in this case the downfall or the invasion)? Otherwise why is there a buffer between the time this incident took place to the time the contracts matured?
It's maturity is ideally the date listed in the contract (i.e. by Jan 9th) but may extend for 10 days in case a report's publication was delayed.
That said, you can sell contracts to other users (which is typically what happens ...) so when people buy a Yes contract for 5c they're not buying from Polymarket; they're buying it from somebody else. This allows you to make money before maturity. The reason for this is that you can mint YES+NO contracts by paying Polymarket $1 which nets you 0$ as you spent $1 and between the Yes and No contracts Polymarket pays back $1. But if you spend $1 for a YES+NO and sell the No for 50c to another user and the Yes for 70c then you net 20c or alternatively you sell the No for 5c to another user and hold the Yes to maturity and get the $1 back from Polymarket.
Although to be clear, I don't exactly know all the inner workings of Polymarket so it could be the case that they've started to act more like a House than a Market and they're actually putting money on the other side of the contract (IIRC, Kalshi is starting to do that for Sports-based contracts either that or having a partner company do it as opposed to actual users).
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)?
That's a good point. I think the assertion that Polymarket is actively doing (or not doing) anything here is at least incomplete. As far as I know, resolutions are still via UMA, which is (at least formally) an independent entity. No idea how big overlaps in personnel and control are in reality.
This is a tangent, but man the world of traditional news sites must be really suffering. I've been noticing more and more that have this model where you can't see anything until you pay up. I have to assume they've tested it and found this approach works best, but I'm not signing up for your newspaper before I can even see the quality of the journalism. Back with print newspapers you could just buy a copy before getting a subscription. Now to get a taste you've got to pay for the $1 trial which will auto-convert into a $75/mo subscription. And I wouldn't be surprised to learn that to cancel that trial requires a phone call to a service rep.
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.
This term is a bit ambiguous, and there's some nuances that make it different from both sportsbooks and poker.
They don't ever take a nominal cut, their revenue model is in holding USD deposits and making money of interest.
> No, Polymarket is not the house. All trades happen peer-to-peer (p2p).
The documentation is purposefully misleading, but it's true that unlike a sportsbook, they don't take the risk of bets. It's a classic case of a blockchain company exaggerating to what extent they are on the blockchain and to what extent they are centralized and just minimally wrapping the blockchain, like when NFTs were actually a URL to an image.
Trades do NOT happen p2p, polymarket functions as an escrow, payments are sent to polymarket accounts and released by polymarket. Each prediction market does have their own contract, but Polymarket staff rules on each event through off-chain (although they are based on the wording used in the specific event).
New events are solely released by polymarket staff (although users can 'suggest' markets).
I think most questions on polymarket use order books now. But they used to use AMMs (where people bet against polymarket) and their FAQ says some questions still use them
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:
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.
Seems unlikely the US had scores of boats lined up for a well-planned invasion which they chickened out of at the first sign of return fire and then "desperately" captured the enemy president some miles inland in a relatively bloodless operation instead.
A small detachment of US troops didn't succeed in taking some sort of secondary objective like taking out a coastguard station or comms node, maybe.
Forward operating site is not what you seem to think. It's more like a place to set up temporary comms support, recon support, maybe SAMs etc then skedaddle out of there (perhaps leaving the equipment behind for the duration of the operation). If the site cannot be clandestinely set up then it's often not worth trying. What parent described is perfectly reasonable
If the US planned to invade rather than raid Venezuela, I don't think the inability to capture a single forward operating site clandestinely would lead to the entire operation being called off. If they didn't, the alleged beachhead is moot. They had boots on the ground when capturing Maduro too.
What's more likely: the US "desperately" stumbled upon a capture of Maduro at almost zero cost to them after their real plan to seize Venezuelan territory went awry due to heroic Venezuelan defending as the parent implies, or that the intention was to capture and remove Maduro without invading and this was what they did, regardless of whether a few peripheral targets got missed?
Words have meanings and the word relatively present in the original sentence clearly indicates that it was a comparison with the many orders of magnitude more casualties that would be expected from a full scale invasion. Particularly when the consideration was whether the mission panned out as the US intended, and their priority is bringing their own troops home (which they apparently managed with only a few injuries), not sparing Venezuelans unfortunate enough to be at the other end of their weapons.
I agree that it stretches credulity but one scenario is that they were promised the Venezuelan military would stand down and let the US conduct its operation with minimal resistance. If that was not the case then the minimal troops for the beachhead may have decided that the token landing for PR purposes was not necessary and bugged out.
One of the strangest things about the entire operation is how the US left absolutely nobody behind to administer the country. Not even a consultant. The Venezuelan VP is now in charge and the government is largely intact. It's hard to see how this affects any meaningful change in the country. I did find it amusing that the opposition leader released a statement with her lips firmly planted on Trumps ass and even talked about "sharing" the Nobel Peace Prize just to see if he's enough of an idiot that such obvious flattery would work.
> The Venezuelan VP is now in charge and the government is largely intact. It's hard to see how this affects any meaningful change in the country.
It's a threat - "Do as we say or you're next." Which the US was pretty public and explicit about. They don't need anyone on site for that. It's not like they actually care what happens beyond the resources use.
> 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
That sounds unlikely. They have aircraft carriers and just a large modern navy but a helicopter comes under fire and they cancel the invasion?
> Some Venezulean sources claim US troops on a helicopter initially tried to capture a beach to turn it into a beachhead
With a myoptic view of the battlefield it is easy to convince yourself that the distractions launched to keep the military busy were the primary objectives.
Sounds like BS to me. If the Venezuelan military has the ability to drive back an actual US military landing operation, then a deep raid into the capital would be impossible.
How would they even know that? If this is true, then all they actually know is that an American helicopter was fired on and departed. They'd have no way of knowing why it was there, what was being attempted, why it left, or what the plans were.
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.
Polymarket isn't on the other side of those bets though. It's a two-sided market. I don't think Polymarket even sets the terms of the bets, or adjudicates them?
You know there's crazy conspiracies and there's sensible conspiracies. That casinos are out to fuck you is a sensible conspiracy that no one doubts, so I will look like a naïve idiot when claiming that the casino/sportsbook isn't actually out to get you in this case.
What you ran into is a fairly standard term, and you were equally likely to be benefitted by it. If you would have bet that the team tied, and the match went to extra time before deciding on a victor, you would have gotten an unexpected payout.
There's other ways they fuck you over, this just isn't one of them.
> That casinos are out to fuck you is a sensible conspiracy that no one doubts
I absolutely doubt it. Why would they even need to? Seems like much more risk and work than to just rely on negative expected values, the law of large numbers, and human nature.
1- Having each game have negative odds for the player to begin with.
2- Making it conveniently easy to deposit, but very hard to cash out, at that point compliance and KYC suddenly becomes very important to casinos.
3- Using shady jurisdictions to avoid law enforcement (Curacao, isle of man,etc...)
4- Banning players that find an edge, like in BlackJack. (Was way worse before, using physical coercion)
5- Prosecuting players that find an edge and recovering the money when they lose (see Phil Ivey's case)
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.
> 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,
There are two conditions:
(1) A military offensive: obviously satisfied, and
(2) That military offensive being intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela: The President explicitly stated that the intended outcome was that US would run the country, and that, if it was necessary to use additional military force beyond the original act to secure that because of the lack of cooperation of the remnants of the regime left in Venezuela, that additional force would be applied. So, that part is also satisfied.
Any denial that the conditions were satisfied is pure sophistry.
Sounds to me like they intend to control the oil production infrastructure which is land/territory within Venezuela - but what do I know.
Isn't the entire Polymarket concept rife with ways to abuse the system? If I have insider knowledge I get shills to create a market for that knowledge - then make an extreme bet at the last moment. Seems sort of like betting the 49ers will not win the Super Bowl because you know that Purdy's kneecaps are about to be busted. Or large options trades the day before the Senate votes on Healthcare bills.
If you want a gambling site, you need to ban insider knowledge. If you want to generate accurate predictions, you want to encourage insider knowledge. But even then, the problem you mention can occur when an insider extreme bet happens at the last minute, because although you end up with an accurate prediction it isn't very useful in the few minutes before it becomes a fact. I don't know if there is a solution.
Time-weight predictions so that they're "worth" more the further in advance they are, converging to "worthless" as they approach the due date? Perhaps there is a way of making this result emerge "organically" from the rules of the system, rather than explicitly encoding it.
Depends on your goals. If you are the platform then there is nothing to solve: you’re running an illegal gambling website and currently getting away with it. If you are an inside trader you’re also doing well.
It’s not great for the gambling addicts but helping people better themselves doesn’t seem to be a theme in federal policy at the moment
Gambling sites probably do have it in their user agreements.
Further, "insider trading" in prediction markets is probably fundamentally illegal under existing commodities fraud laws in the US (I am not a lawyer,) but there's probably nobody actively policing it, and probably no precedent in how to prosecute the cases.
They should have some kind of controls:
- throttle how much a new account can wager, allowing more to be placed after the account gets older
- limit double-down bets to some fraction of your initial. To reduce the benefit of last minute wagers
- end wagering at a random time before the deadline.
- ban accounts that act in concert to evade the throttling. Or charge a hefty one-time fee or escrow that you eventually get refunded
I think it hinges on whether "any part of Venezuela" includes intangible "parts" like being able to tell them who to sell oil to, or whether it only refers to land/territory. The second paragraph implies that control over land is the point of the bet, but it doesn't explicitly say so. Control over the oil industry doesn't require control over land.
It does mention land too. Could be more explicit, but the intent seems clear enough.
Naive view is it's suppose to create public interest measures with real valued results.
Unfortunately, it's pretty easy to see something, eventually, like "X won't be seen in public after December 31st, 2026" essentially creating an assassination market.
Basically, boil finance bros down to sociopathy.
The U.S. absolutely “commence[d] a military offensive” against Venezuela. The question said if it “intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela.”
The condition is based on intent, not outcome. (It’s a poorly-drafted contract.)
This is the whole thing about polymarket, whoever writes the original bet can lawyer it to create a misleading impression of probabilities by defining an overly narrow or vague victory condition that they will interpret to their benefit to make more money.
The conditions are public and (as far as I know) immutable, though. Getting language lawyered is part of the risk of taking such bets, which is why it's probably a bad idea for most laypeople to do it, except if they're hedging some other investment or something similar.
Yea, but to get an idea of how events will be decided you need to look at similar past bets.
i think its supposed to be fun and if you get rules lawyered then you get to complain about it and have people agree with you at parties that you should have won the bet
i dont think it is intended to be used as a meaningful investment platform, or even a serious gambling establishment like an actual casino.
its whole angle is "wouldnt it be funny if you could bet on ____" and then you can
Unfortunately, no it's supposed to be a predictive platform that uses market forces to reduce bias.
they can pitch themselves however they want, I am thinking along the lines of where I believe it works as a product
The creator of the event doesn't resolve it, I thought
Yeah I think one could easily argue that the special military operation in Venezuela was intended to gain control over the country. Trump literally stated that his team, in particular lil Marco, would be running the country. Of course Rubio walked that back a little, explaining that we only have "leverage" (via Maduro's trial/pardoning), but that still is within the terms of the bet.
Contra proferentem or caveat aleator? That is the question.
"against the proffer-er" vs "gambler beware"
I think this is called 'being specific'
>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".
“We will run the country, yes” - Trump
This is wrong.
It was 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 for some length of time 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, inside venezuela, for exfil.
The terms do not require they establish permanent control, or control for any significant length of time. Just that they intend to control, and did control, some area.
1. "Establish". Stabilize the control, not temporarily visit. Similar to flying a bit in the airspace does not count as establishing a control.
2. "Establish an area" also means that the area would be big enough and control significant/independent enough in order to maintain (!) it. E.g. imagine if most of the Delta were eliminated and only one guy survived, holding a maid hostage in the toilet. That would not count because the area is small, the control is insignificant and keeping the toilet space was not the original point anyway. Similar as attacking Brazilian servers would not count only because the traffic went through Venezuela's network.
Taking words out of sentences and trying to define them piece by piece rarely makes sense. For example, you forgot the "intended to" part.
Especially taking terms about a military operation and appling regular dictionary definitions to them makes little to no sense.
For example, in the legal and contract realm, something like establishing control means simply having authority over something, even temporarily. IE statements of the intent to run venezuela would suffice, even without any land control, ability to do so, etc.
In practice - a court is going to give it a fairly broad reading consistent with an everyday person's understanding, since that is who is betting. They will additionally rely on public statements about intent, etc. This assumes nobody can get enough information about the actual operational plans.
So if the court wanted to interpret "establish control" (which, again, it would not do separately from the other words, but let's say they did), it would do something like the following:
1. Is it defined in the contract? Yes - contract definition controls
2. Is it consistently used in context? Yes - context control
3. Is it a term of art in the field? Yes - definition of term of art controls
4. Is it still ambiguous? Yes - evidence about what it means gets presented by both sides
Part 4 is where you'd present a dictionary definition.
In any case, there is no point in having this argument, as polymarket's TOS almost certainly allows them to do what they want, and nobody is going to care what random internet commentators who suddenly have turned themselves into full blown lawyers, think :)
(In fact, polymarket's terms requires you to agree that they have no control whatsoever over contract resolution, etc. They are also governed by the law of panama)
Wait, how do you exfiltrate a head of state without establishing some level of control for even the briefest of periods?
POTUS literally, literally announced that the US had control over all (!) of Venezuela.
Now, sure, that's kind of a lie. But (ahem) By The Definition of The Bet, actual control is not required. Only a military offensive intended to establish control. What purer definition of intent can you have than the decisionmaker's literal statement? QED.
No, this is cheating. Now, sure, the bets placed seemed very likely to be fraudulent. Which is cheating too. But there's not "technically" here. Polymarket is playing games with its bets. And that's fraud, even if it's got company.
Polymarket is not a broker, counterparty, or even resolver, so the only thing they can arguably be criticized for is hosting a market without a sufficiently clear definition of "invasion".
How can they not be a "broker" when they handled the transaction?! How can they not be a "resolver" when they're the ones refusing to pay based on their own determination?
Also, what definition of "invasion" are you thinking of (please cite) which does not apply here?
With all respect, that's 100% bonkers.
They don't handle transactions. It's a blockchain-based platform that they design and operate, but part of that design is that they don't hold money themselves, nor are they the arbiter to any of the markets hosted on their platform.
> Also, what definition of "invasion" are you thinking of (please cite) which does not apply here?
No idea what a better definition of "invasion" could have been, but the only one that's relevant for the resolution is that listed on the market description on Polymarket (which many traders don't even read, but that's a different story).
This argument seems to be about the real meaning of words versus their overloaded legal analogues. I can’t imagine Venezuela’s military kidnapping Trump, then saying they would run the United States now, being parsed like this.
That's not my point at all. I'm only saying that your criticism and claims of fraud are probably directed at the wrong entity.
There is an arbiter tho. That's the point of the article. Unless you tell us who inputs the bits for a bet, you're just spewing chatgpt bable.
Someone flips the bits to the bet.
The current POTUS is not a credible source.
On the intent of the US administration?
Obviously.
The things the POTUS says, are intended to further the US Government's goals. The actual statements made may be true or false.
If POTUS says "We did X because Y", that's no guarantee that Y is the reason that X was done, or even that X was done at all. That just means that POTUS would like people to think that Y was the reason X was done.
That Trump is also a serial liar is not actually relevant here, this is true for every President. They make statements in service of their agenda, not in service of the truth.
We have to take the Presidents Statements are credible, firstly, because it's the closest thing to the truth anyone has. He has no real strategy, he makes things up on the spot.
Secondly, even if argument could be that 'some other, more credible president would lie' - this actually does not hold up, because nobody could operate in those terms.
The presidents statements in an official context are official, that's it. Except in rare cases.
"He tells people what to do on a whim" and "has longstanding personal beefs and gripes" - that's it.
We don't know what he's going to wake up and tweet tomorrow so all we have are his statements.
Also, I think we give way to much credit to this notion of '4d chess' - he lies in the moment because he can get away with it, not out of some well plotted deception. He's not servicing some complicated scheme - just his gut.
He'll say something else the next day, but for that moment, what he says is policy.
>We have to take the Presidents Statements are credible, firstly, because it's the closest thing to the truth anyone has.
* "Statements", not "statement". Past statements can be used to assess the credibility of more recent ones.
* Actions speak louder than words. Pardoning the king of cocaine trafficking demonstrates just how seriously the administration is trying to counter drug trafficking.
> We have to take the Presidents Statements are credible, firstly, because it's the closest thing to the truth anyone has. He has no real strategy, he makes things up on the spot.
I'm sorry, this is nonsense. "He makes things up, therefore we have to take the things he says as credible"?
The President is not an oracle of truth, nor are his words the most accurate representation we have on the intentions of US government actions.
Let's say he had said directly, "The January 3rd operation in Venezuela was a best-effort attempt by the US to take control over Venezuela".
Now let's say he had instead said "The January 3rd operation in Venezuela was a best-effort attempt by the US to take control over Madagascar".
You would genuinely, truly believe that in that moment, the capture of Maduro from Venezuela was the most effective thing the US government could do to take control of Madagascar?
No, the position that POTUS statements can't be taken as valid are actually 'nonsense' - it's just the opposite.
The presidents statements are the legitimate statements of the State of the United States of America, it has nothing to do with what you or I think about 'Madagascar'.
He is POTUS, his words are nominally and pragmatically state policy.
If he makes a declaration of 'use of force' against another it should be taken at face value.
This would be true if were only a nominal figurehead, leaving policy to others, but he's not, he has material power and wields it.
Given the construction of the balance of power - 'He is America' at least for the time being.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding about how the Presidency of the US works.
The statements POTUS makes to the public are simply statements by a person and should be taken as such.
The instructions the POTUS gives, privately or publicly, to the various apparatuses of the US government, are what is nominally and pragmatically state policy. When these contradict public statements POTUS has made, it is these instructions that are what actually matter.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of power and geopolitics.
First this: "The statements POTUS makes to the public are simply statements by a person and should be taken as such." <-- this is definitely not true, even with a basic deference to the more traditional, formal view of the US president's role, or the role of any Head of State for that matter.
The US Presidents proclamations are policy, and always have been. Obviously - a statement at the 'correpondents dinner' is not the same thing as a quick media response, is not the same thing as a statement from behind the podium, is not the same thing as a prepared address or document - but anything above board is representative of the State.
Particularly given the current POTUS leverage over Congress and wide Judicial deference to his power.
Obviously, POTUS is going to have private discussions and give directions that are not consistent with public statements - that adds to the ambiguous nature of his statements, but his public statements are still facto policy and must be taken at face value.
A statement like 'force is on the table' internally may seem like a negotiating tactic or 'populist politics' or 'stuff tough business guys say' or even 'fodder for fox news', but geopolitically it's borderline a declaration of war. It should be taken seriously.
> We have to take the Presidents Statements are credible, firstly, because it's the closest thing to the truth anyone has.
You are welcome to believe everything that President Putin is saying about anything, including Ukraine.
That's a profoundly absurd statement. Appeal to authority is a fallacy, especially with a trackrecord of an "authority" lying.
If the President's words are the truth, what to do with the statements in which he contradicts himself? What about situations in which 2 presidents disagree?
>The presidents statements in an official context are official, that's it.
Official, perhaps most of the time. Truthful, definitely not.
What's up with the inability to separate "opinions/statements" vs. "facts/truth"?..
I don't believe anything he says.
But his statements are the position of the US government aka the most 'truthful' representation of US policy.
I'm responding to the notion that because he lies and misrepresents, his statements don't count as representative somehow, which is not true.
If he says 'military force is on the table' for acquiring Greenland, we should assume he means to invade if wants.
Well, then the polymarket bet was written stupidly because you can argue all day about intent if you refuse to accept the man's words.
He may also claim Venezuela is controlled by aliens. AFAIK the bet was not about what deranged stuff POTUS might express?
> The resolution source for this market will be a consensus of credible sources.
There are other credible sources whose consensus could be checked.
What credible source exists for the intent of this administration? You can have all the IR acumen in the world, but you won't be able to get into the head of this president.
News sources in Venezuela reporting on the presence of American troops might be one?
An invasion with the intent of taking control of the country would not involve troops arriving in the capital, completing their mission perfectly with no losses on their side, and then everybody leaving, such that no enemy troops remain.
The bet wasn't "will President Trump claim to have invaded Venezuela", it was whether the US would actually do it.
Your understanding of the relationship between the truth and the words being spoken by POTUS are the only discontinuity here. Update that expectation and everything makes sense.
The US did launch a military offensive in Venezuela, albeit briefly. That is not in question. What is in question is the intent, which how do you know intent without accepting the publicly stated intent of the commander in chief?
The bet was, specifically:
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".
I'm not saying I know the intent. I'm saying you don't know the intent, because the word of the commander in chief is not sufficient evidence.
Maybe Trump's eventual goal is to invade Venezuela with the intent of controlling it. I don't know. I do know that the intent of the brief military offensive was not to control it, because of what was done.
Yeah, not like the original plan was to keep the territory, but after failing they had to leave. No, they had a specific plan to capture Maduro and to leave; and this is exactly what they did.
Yeah, actually. He's basically a spokesperson. A non credible one. Someone like Stephen Miller is more credible.
Venezuala government calls it an invasion. U.S left with the evidence, do we trust the fascist regime of venezuala or the elected president of the U.S?
It seems like it would be common sense to trust neither party to the conflict to arbitrate such markets. That’s why e.g. for presidential election, the criterion is usually a quorum of different news outlets and not either party running.
> do we trust the fascist regime of venezuala or the fascist president of the U.S?
FTFY
It's not as if the site can steal money this way. Either something else happens before the 31st that does meet their definition, or else they have to pay out the "no" side.
That's not what it says.
Isn’t it?
> 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".
The US attack had no intent to control territory. It was to nab one guy. Second paragraph establishes that after intent, there must be de facto control of the territory.
1. Attack intent to control did not happen.
2. De facto control of Venezuelan territory did not happen.
Second paragraph establishes that after intent, there must be de facto control of the territory.
The way I read it, the second paragraph serves as the definition of territory ("any portion of Venezuela"), not as a condition for resolving the bet. The invasion doesn't need to be successful, it just needs to have the intent you specified in 1.
...which makes the entire bet like quicksand, because it relies on the public statements from a regime known for its "inaccurate" messaging.
The more interesting question for rules lawyers is whether the president itself classifies as "any portion of Venezuela" -- the claim doesn't explicitly limit itself to only geographical portions.
Kidnapping the president of a country is very clear intent to exert control over a country.
The second "de facto" part is about the preconditions of the bet, to define what is Venezuela versus the US.
> Kidnapping the president of a country is very clear intent to exert control over a country.
I personnally view it more as a marketing stunt.
Maybe in the same way Hiroshima was.
There is nothing both public and credible to substantiate the claim by the POTUS.
It’s possible we have de facto control of the regime through some backroom that only the Trump Administration knows about, but that’s just speculative on my part. We don’t know this is actually the case, and thus far there hasn’t been anything to substantiate the existence of such a thing.
So we’re at at a point where if put on the spot, gun to my head, I had to answer whether the United States controls the Government of Venezuela in any meaningful way, I would have to say “No” despite what Trump himself said. This is subject to change, pending further evidence made available to the American people.
It doesn’t matter whether the US actually has control, only that the military action was taken with intent to establish control.
>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".
What the military actually did was a raid which captured Maduro and his wife, and likely took out some of Venezuela’s anti-air capabilities—for all the good they did them—in the process. As far as we know, that was the intent. Actually establishing control is an occupational effort.
I see your argument, and I think it is even defensible but I think it falls short. An actual resolution to this question may require a judge to weigh in on the contract.
"Actually establishing control is an occupational effort."
Not quite.
They're trying to establish control by threatening to kill or imprison the leaders and by blockade.
Venezuela apparently handed over a lot of oil, it seems like they've been able to do something.
That said - we don't really know how much 'control' that is.
If I were Polymarket, I wouldn't say that the US has control either, but, it's entirely plausible.
We'll see.
This could go the way of DOGE or the Trade War aka just a trailing mess of ongoing concerns that people forget about, though to play my own devil's advocate, ICE is consistently ramping up.
Rubio literally said that the US could control Venezuela via the leverage they have.
I understand that he made that claim, but until we see something that effectively substantiates that claim, it’s just words. Right now Maduro is in custody and being tried for the charges, but the regime he built is still in place, and as far as we know, not feeling any warm feelings about cooperating with us.
Now realistically no one in that regime is any safer than Maduro was, but it’s also a possibility they resist and carry on without Maduro. It’s only been since Saturday. I’m not saying there’s no world where Trump & Rubio are correct today or when they said it over the weekend, I’m saying that there is no public information substantiating those claims. Near as I can tell, it’s a “listen to us or else” kinda deal, which could be enough, but then we would see the effects of that through cooperation with the Trump Administration.
The claim doesn’t need to be substantiated, because it doesn’t matter whether they actually will control Venezuela, it only matters that it was their intent to do so, which Rubio and Trump have both admitted.
Like I said, I think your position is defensible but I think it falls short so I still disagree. If the people who bought into this contract can get it in front of a judge though, the judge might agree with you.
I am prepared to be wrong on this one, but I just don’t think that Trump & Rubio’s words after the fact are enough.
Actually, the way the bet is worded a truthful statement on intent in 2050 could change the outcome of the bet retroactively.
Except neither Trump or Rubio are credible sources. Their actions and words are notoriously unreliable.
In fact, citing them as an authority leads to the transitive property applying to credibility in an argument.
All of us here know Trump is an unreliable person, why is he being cited to support definitive claims? And Yes His unreliably most certainly extends to his own aims, there is no question on that.
If Trump and Rubio are not credible, then there is no way to determine the intent of any military action, so the bet is impossible to evaluate.
That’s pretty funny.
You can for the most part evaluate intent based on actions. There are some actions which can have multiple possible intents behind them, where things get trickier. But in most situations, there is one primary consequence of something, and the action needs to be taken with deliberation, hence you can state with high certainty what the intention was, based purely on what was done. Consversely, if a person has complete freedom to complete some action, but chooses not to, then we can say their intention wasn't to do that thing.
Intend and action don’t have to align if the people with the intend don’t know what they are doing.
“If Trump is not credible”!!??? If??!
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool me 500 times, I want to be lied to”
Similarly no one believes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was to “denazi-ify” it as Putin and the kremlin claimed many times among other things.
Neither was the troop building up in 2022 near Ukraine purely for training as repeatedly claimed by the top Russian officials.
Trump is equally credible.
Words that prove intent.
The Chavez Museum was also destroyed...but no it wasn't an invasion. It didn't control land which is the definition in this case. The blockade provides de facto control which is what Trump is referring to.
The bet never used the phrase invasion fwiw.
Why is this downvoted? The argument is solid.
USA did not achieved control, but its leadership apparently think they have it.
The bet doesn't specify that the US achieves control over Venezuela, only that they invaded with the intent to exert control over Venezuela.
Because it's blaming Polymarket for something not within its control, which is imprecise. TFA makes the same mistake, fwiw.
That's a minor flaw but the comment seems mostly correct.
It's almost like they were not going to pay up regardless.
Might as well have bet "doll hairs"…
They are paying up, just for the "no" outcome.
They ARE, or INTEND to? It's not Jan 31, 2026 yet, so, AFAICT, only the "Yes" option can be short-circuited if it occurs. They can't pay the "No" side until Feb 1, 2026, right?
Good point, so for completeness: They'll pay out either "Yes" or "No", but definitely not nobody or themselves (except if they're also "Yes" or "No" holders).
Depends on what you mean by "achieved control".
Is it having heavy influence over through proxies? You can't just snatch a guy like Maduro out of a country without some local help. Help that would presumably be aligned with you on goals.
Or is it setting up a complete government like in Iraq, postwar Germany/Japan, etc.?
Where are you getting "achieved" from? The wager only requires that the USA INTENDED to seize control.
Yes, it is clear there was local help. Someone who had a lot to gain, it could even be someone from government looking for promotion or seeing maduro as a threat, including the new president herself. That does not imply control over Venezuela. Nor alignment with American goals.
I mean, official American goals are "taking oil and getting money from it, putting it to offshore account". There is no "alignment on goals" possible, but there is a space for corruption and pressure. Venezuela is highly corrupt country after all.
> Or is it setting up a complete government like in Iraq, postwar Germany/Japan, etc.?
That would require actual invasion and actual control over land - military on the ground. Soldiers in high numbers, patrolling streets and shooting it out with militias. There is nothing of the sort going on. Besides, Iraq was failure.
Germany was literally defeated and destroyed after the war. Fight capable men were already killed in large numbers and Germans themselves seen themselves as losers of that war. And comfortably, their ideology of "might is right" meant that once they were destroyed they accepted to loss.
Trump and Vance may be able to peer it with militias, as another gang competing with local gangs, but they cant build equivalent of post WWII Germany. Because both sides are different - Venezuela is not defeated, there is no American military in there and American ideology is closer to that of past Germany then that of post WWII America.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/business/energy-environme...
Sounds pretty much like it
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.
> pay out to neither side and pocket all funds at stake
That's also not possible, as far as I understand. If the smart contracts are worth their salt, the only possible outcomes per binary option is to pay out in full to either "yes" or to "no" holders, not to any other unrelated party, including Polymarket.
The real risk is somebody subverting a sufficiently large proportion of (anonymous, stake-based) arbiters on UMA, which is the on-chain entity that actually arbitrates outcomes and as such releases funds to one side or the other. Then, somebody could buy the "wrong" outcome tokens for cheap and flip the payout their way.
No idea how feasible that is and which game-theoretic protections UMA/Polymarket have against that possibility, but I don't think we've seen a smoking gun for that yet.
This has happened multiple times [0]. You shouldn't put your money into Polymarket
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/1jki1lj/pol...
Maybe I don't understand it enough, but I don't see how it's hard at all to manipulate this with a lot of money. Buy a lot of the wrong resolution, and all the other individuals will be too afraid to buy the right one.
> whichever side of the bet wins, Polymarket makes the same amount
How would we know if Polymarket was an active participant in these bets?
Not quite, Polymarket is decentralized so they are even more removed from the outcome. When a dispute happens like this, a vote happens in the UMA DAO, essentially a decentralized "democratic" vote. What people are complaining about is UMA whales skewing votes.
To add, that's not the same as "not paying out", it's settling in the opposite direction.
And my understanding is polymarket themselves don't have much financial incentive to settle one way or the other.
I think its a bit more complicated than this. Disputed outcomes are decided by votes from UMA token holders, which are anonymously owned. I remember reading a theory (with evidence, can't find the article now) that the venn diagram between Polymarket owners/stakeholders and UMA whales is close to a circle.
I am surprised to learn this.
Can you influence outcomes on Polymarket by purchasing enough UMA tokens?
Why would people accept this? Especially if ownership is anonymous and could overlap with market actors?
For the same people accept Tether's claims of solvency even though they refuse audits and obviously lie about ownership of various assets. For the same reason people ignore wash trading. For the same reason people continue using Sam-coins even after FTX's implosion.
Because A) they're not paying attention, B) they're in denial and C) because they think they can profit in the short term before it collapses, or that the odds are in their favor to profit despite the risks.
People will accept it as long as it mostly operates in an expected manner and they get their payout.
People are very good at convincing themselves that because something has not happened, therefore it will not.
When UMA is eventually abused to make a lot of money, then perhaps things will change.
But it will feel pressure from a certain government that want's to convince people that it did not "invade" but rather "policed" Venezuela.
I don't think this government particularily cares about convincing people about anything, they are just doing whatever they want public opinion be damned.
Maybe.
I've found that dishonest bookies will commonly bet when they have insider information or some way to push the outcome in one direction.
That's why the mob both employs bookies and pays boxers to throw fights.
It's not settling though is it? Surely it's open until the US does it? I don't think it's timeboxed
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.
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.
Dictionary definition of "invasion" and "invasive" with regards to military incursions tend to emphasize the size of the force. Same for "invasive species" and invasion biology.
But you can also have an invasion of privacy or invasive surgery. In that sense it is about unwelcome intrusion into one's body / sovereignty.
And people are entertained by news articles with titles like, "10 times countries accidentally invaded their neighbors." Clearly the intent to violate sovereignty matters.
I think you can argue that the Bin Laden raid was and invasion into Pakistan. Anytime a military forces enters uninvited, that's an invasion.
No that is not the definition of a military invasion.
> An invasion is a military action consisting of a large armed force of one geopolitical entity entering the territory of another with the goal of militarily occupying part or all of the invaded polity's territory, usually to conquer territory or alter the established government.
What happened on Saturday was not an invasion. It was an extraction/capture operation. It was a large scale one, but they left after they captured Maduro and his Wife.
> I think you can argue that the Bin Laden raid was and invasion into Pakistan. Anytime a military forces enters uninvited, that's an invasion.
No it wasn't. When they killed Bin Laden they didn't "invade" Pakistan. They infiltrated, then assassinated him and left.
It was an extraction/capture operation “with the goal… to alter the established government”
Still doesn't make it an invasion. If they drone striked and thus killed Majuro it would not be an invasion. It would be an assassination.
Invasion in this context has a specific meaning. The bet on the market would have been done with this specific meaning in mind.
No invasion, means no payout.
It would be like making a bet where someone scores in Football/Soccer from a penalty, but in the game they score from a free kick outside the penalty box. You wouldn't pay out on the bet, because a penalty is not a free kick even though they are similar and had the same result.
I’m quibbling with invasion per the Wiki definition quoted in this thread, which is different from the Kalshi one.
I think the Kalshi one is bad because “intent” is not something that can be objectively defined.
The bet uses it's own definition.
It's written there.
I'm looking at it right now but not copy pasting it here.
If somebody breaks into my house, fucks my shit up and leaves, are they not guilty of home invasion anymore because they didn't stick around for long enough?
Is Stuxnet not a virus because it isn't genetic material inside a protein capsule? It's almost as if words have different definitions depending on the context.
Well if Polymarket says it's not because they use that definition who are we to say words have meaning? It's all bullshit all the way down
When you are referring to a military action, invasion has a particular meaning.
The definition on Wikipedia seems reasonable:
> An invasion is a military action consisting of a large armed force of one geopolitical entity entering the territory of another with the goal of militarily occupying part or all of the invaded polity's territory, usually to conquer territory or alter the established government
What the US did wasn't a military invasion by that definition as they left after they grabbed Maduro.
They left so that doesn't count as an invasion?? They have already invaded when they enter Venezuela with military force.
> transitive. To enter in a hostile manner, or with armed force; to make an inroad or hostile incursion into.
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/invade_v?tab=meaning_and_use
I agree that most people would use the term invasion to describe it. But this story is related to how a betting market decided to pay out.
The US forces left immediately after the target (Maduro and his wife) were extracted. So according to the definition I gave (which is more precise) then it isn't an invasion.
Whenever I envision an military invasion, I think of troops storming Normandy Beaches to invade Europe, When the Falklands invaded Argentina or When Hitler invaded France. All of these actions were with the intent to hold seize and hold territory.
An operation where people fly in, knocking out critical defences, capture someone and then leave clearly isn't the same thing.
Arguing over whether a different situation qualifies as a different sort of invasion doesn't move the conversation forward as much as you might intuit.
They amassed critical pieces of military hardware off the coast (carriers, warships, helicopters, planes). They took out military infrastructure. They placed radar systems throughout the region. Just because it was fast and met its goal doesn't mean it wasn't an invasion. You don't need an on-the-ground force when you control everything that can go in and out.
And the bombing of Hiroshima leveled an entire city. Still wasn't an invasion.
While true, the US did actually invade Imperial Japan. They captured nearly all the Ryukyu islands before the atomic bombings.
Yes, that's an invasion! And the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands during WWII. Taking even a barely inhabited frozen rock by force is an invasion. Has nothing to do with the scale of destruction.
“Invasion” implies the intent of sustained military occupation/control over some portion a country’s territory. There’s no suggestion that was ever the objective here.
Idk, Trump seems to have strong intent to control the oil production.
Agreed. However what happened Jan 3rd wasn't an invasion.
That doesn't make it an invasion. It was a capture/extraction operation.
Was it a large scale one, sure. But it was not an invasion.
I think the more appropriate comparison is the Invasion of Panama.
> To be an invasion there needs to be a sustained on the ground presence of the invading force.
What exactly do you think is going to happen to the oil in Venezuela? Are you under the impression that they will simply leave them be and hope for the best?
United States will be placing military assets to secure it, just like they did with IRAQ. The entire point of this was to secure the oil and now they have to to guard it.
Establishing military bases on sovereign nations that you captured by force illegally is an invasion.
Yes but that's all future tense
>intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela
The word "land" was not used. Is El Presidente not considered a portion of Venezuela?
[flagged]
"Don't be snarky."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Correct. That would not be an invasion because it is pretty obvious that extraction raids are not invasions.
That would start a war / be an act of war, but probably not an invasion no.
Open to running the experiment!
Ultimately, "invasion" is one of those terms that gets used for rhetorical effect more than a concrete claim about the world. If you think the US "invaded" Venezuela, and I think it's better to say they "attacked" Venezuela and "kidnapped" the president, we're not normally going to get into an argument about it - we'll just each use the terms that make sense to us, since we clearly agree about the facts of the terrible thing that happened. But Polymarket has to force the dumb semantic argument because they have to resolve the prediction one way or another. (One of the reasons to be skeptical of prediction markets as applied to geopolitics.)
That's just a rescue op, bro.
Bin Laden was not the president of Pakistan.
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.
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?
> Like, how many American soldiers is an invasion?
Depends entirely on what they're doing.
One could be an invasion. A million might not be. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_military_inst...)
Oh it does lol: https://www.wired.com/story/volodymyr-zelensky-suit-polymark...
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.
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.
At least $400,000 worth: https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/maduro-polymarket-bet-a2e...
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.
One of the few valid uses for polymarket is hedging against events that are hard to insure for. E.g. it made sense to bet on a Trump win (at least early on when odds were good) if you would lose out from him winning.
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.
Standard Polymarket legalese for invasions requires the goal of indefinite "control of territory" for this reason.
Raids don't qualify.
This issue already happened with the war in the Middle East when Israel engaged in cross border raids that weren't intended to establish permanent control.
The US didn't kill all Iraqis, so it was just a "limited" military action or "raid" also? The intent was a nation removing the head of another nation to cede control of the nation to the invading nation. If you kill 1 or 100,000, it's still an invasion.
If a nation assassinates a leader, then leave the country to their own devices (which may include a more friendly replacement), I could see the ground on this logic. NEITHER of these events (killing nor elected replacement) has happened. The US has asserted control.
In Iraq the US entered with a force numbering in the hundreds of thousands and occupied the country for years. That's what makes it an invasion, not whether the leader was the target. The US didn't remove Saddam Hussein when they attacked in 1991 and that was still, beyond any doubt, an invasion.
"Control" refers to military occupation of territory. Boots on the ground.
No part of Venezuela (referring to its sovereign territory) was indefinitely occupied by the USA. That's why the market is "No" right now.
The number of dead people isn't relevant here.
Polymarket rules sometimes diverge from what you might consider an "invasion", but those are the pre-agreed upon and standardized rules.
The US has asserted control with words and threats, not with sustained military presence or a successor not approved by the previous Venezuelan administration. The Venezuelan military has full control of its territory, and leadership has passed to the next in line to the Venezuelan presidency who even Trump acknowledges needs to be negotiated with to get the oil he wants, and is busy telling her own domestic audience Maduro is still her president.
It's obviously far closer to assassinating a leader and leaving the country to its own devices than the complete destruction of the Iraqi army as a viable fighting force, installation of an entirely new government and extended military occupation, or even something like Russia's ultimately unsuccessful annexation of Kherson.
> The US has asserted control with words and threats, not with sustained military presence
The presence is global. The threat is the same as anyone taking over another country. This is some serious hair splitting.
The presence is not in Venezuela. Sure, they can threaten Venezuela's new president, just like they can (and do) threaten other countries that they have not invaded [recently] and having a powerful military not in Venezuela adds a certain credibility to those threats, but that doesn't change the fact its the successor under the Maduro administration's rules, not theirs, and she's able to publicly insist that Maduro still the president! The threats of dire consequences if she doesn't do what they want are precisely because they don't control the country.
It's really not "serious hair splitting" to point out that they haven't "invaded" a country they haven't even attempted to maintain non-covert presence in, particularly not when you've conveniently provided the perfect analogy of a state assassinating a leader and then letting them pick a successor who might be more convenient.
What is the difference between having the militaire have boots in the ground to kill you if you don't comply, and having military in the border next to you to kill you, bomb you or kidnap you if you don't comply?
One involves an invasion having already occured and the other doesn't. Making this distinction is literally the subject of the entire thread.
USA is not meaningfully in control of Venezuela. They have no more control then a week ago.
Venezuela regime did not changed either. The same generals and politicials remain on power, altrough there is bound to be some power struggle between them.
If threats and global military presence count as invasion then the US has invaded a lot of countries lately, and I don't think that's right.
So if you enter a country using a military force and arrest the president quickly enough, it's not an invasion?
How slowly would it need to be done to be counted as an invasion? A day? A month?
There's certainly a fuzzy line there somewhere, but the Maduro raid is clearly on the non-invasion side of it. This operation was much more similar to the Bin Laden raid than to even the smallest operation that could be considered an invasion.
Intent is important here. It’s an invasion if the objective is to establish sustained military control over some portion of the country’s territory.
But if the intention is some other military objective: blow up a military base, kidnap a president, etc, and get out quickly, then I don’t think the word “invasion” applies.
I have no idea who has decided that "invade" means "establish sustained military control".
With certainty that is not the original meaning of the word. In Latin and in classic English, the meaning of the word is just: "enter in a hostile manner", as it can be verified in any dictionary.
As long as foreigners have entered the territory of another country by force, that is an invasion.
It does not matter which was the duration of the invasion or whether the intent of the invasion was to stay there permanently.
An invasion may be followed, or not, by a military occupation, which is "establish sustained military control".
The real answer is that the people that set up the bet decided, and they listed the conditions upfront.
And imagine how silly it would be if 1-5 soldiers came across the border by force and left a few minutes later and that counted as a major world event!
> ”I have no idea who has decided that "invade" means "establish sustained military control".”
Oxford Languages, for one, who provide the definition used by Google:
invade /ɪnˈveɪd/ verb
(of an armed force) enter (a country or region) so as to subjugate or occupy it.
Compared to other dictionaries, this is a very poor explanation of the word.
Nevertheless, even here it says clearly that "invade" refers only to "enter", and neither to "subjugate" or to "occupy".
Other dictionaries explain better the distinction between "invading" and normal "entering", which is in the manner how one enters, i.e. "in a hostile manner" or "by the use of force".
Your dictionary explains the distinction by intent, not by manner, but this is wrong, as at the time of the invasion one cannot know which is the intent, which will become known only in the future.
By this definition one could never recognize an invasion while it happens, even when one sees a foreign army entering and killing everyone on sight.
I agree however, that the Polymarket bet has specified that the object of the bet was an invasion followed by an occupation of the territory, so the conditions of the bet have not been met.
So then by your definition, Mexican drug cartels have invaded the US, right?
If you sent in a small strike force they could probably stay there indefinitely without qualifying.
The relevant definition is already posted upthread...
Where do I find that standard legalese on Polymarket? https://polymarket.com/event/will-the-us-invade-venezuela-in... only shows some "additional context" added after the fact.
Edit: I see now that you have to select one of the possible dates, scroll down to the rules section, and then expand it.
yeah but the difference is with Israel, they didn't literally take a foreign country's leader hostage and extract him out of the country.
This has already been the case for political and/or social impact events for years in the UK's betting exchanges. The settlement rules for any potentially hairy real-world event have to be explicitly clear and account for all possible outcomes that might affect the resolution.
When there's money on the line, I have years of hard evidence that arm-chair lawyers (ie. betting exchange clients) will do absolutely anything to find potential loopholes in settlement rules and argue that their bets should have paid off.
Polymarket users will remain foolishly optimistic for longer than it takes for Polymarket's reputation to collapse, unfortunately.
Predictions and betslop are a scourge on this poor and fiscally irresponsible nation.
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.
Not so great to bet on 97% chance Jesus not returning before 2027 now
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.
150 aircraft is not an invasion?
Number of aircraft don’t seem to contribute to whether or not it’s classified as “hostilities”, much less “invasion”. Is this ridiculous ? Certainly. But it’s fairly par for the course in terms of politically complex issues in the USA.
The War Powers Resolution (WPR) of 1973 sets a 60-day limit for U.S. forces in hostilities without a formal declaration of war or congressional authorization, allowing for a potential 30-day extension for withdrawal, totaling 90 days, after which the President must remove troops.
Airstrikes on Libya (2011): Obama administration argued they did not need Congressional authorization because the operations did not constitute "hostilities" as defined by the War Powers Resolution. Therefore, the Obama administration argued, the 60-day clock never started.
The bombings involved 26,500 sorties over eight months, including 7,000 bombing sorties targeting Gaddafi's forces.
The bombing of Dresden involved thousands of aircraft and it was not an invasion.
It was part of an ongoing invasion.
It depends on what you do with the aircraft.
Also, on-the-day commentary about "regime change" was very much premature. A "regime" is not a single person, it is a ruling group, a system (1). The existing regime in Venezuela is still very much in place. It is undergoing change for sure, even having a crisis (2). But as this implies, it has not yet been swapped out for something else.
1) https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/regime
2) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/07/caracas-venezu...
So... Maduro was captured solely for his *personal* crimes? If not, then why was he captured?
I don't follow. What are you trying to say? Your question is not relevant to the proposition that the existing regime in Venezuela is still very much in place. I don't know how to say this more clearly than "a regime is not a person (source, the dictionary)".
"Was this attempted regime change?" and "Was the regime change successful?" are two different questions. Given the facts, it's hard to deny that the purpose of this operation was explicitly regime change.
> "Was this attempted regime change?" and "Was the regime change successful?" are two different questions.
What I said was "on-the-day commentary about "regime change" was very much premature".
My apologies, for the avoidance of any doubt I should have said "on-the-day commentary about "regime change" having already occurred successfully was very much premature".
Does "The existing regime in Venezuela is still very much in place" not emphasise that meaning?
Is that clearer to you? I didn't think it needed to be added, but people can be creative with misreadings. This seems like a issue at your end.
Dictionary defition is "when an army or country uses force to enter and take control of another country".
They went in and out. They used force to enter, but they did not took control of another country. The government and regime is basically intact, maybe with some bruised ego assuming existing players did not tacitly allowed this to happen to promote themselves.
Functionally, the situation is very similar to the situation from before the event, except there was some display of force and it was made clear someone inside is cooperating with usa.
Does this mean that any time an invasion fails it retroactively doesn't count? For example, the Bay of Pigs event universally known as the "Bay of Pigs invasion" was not an invasion because the US never took control of any territory?
The invaders took and held some territory near the Bay of Pigs for about three days, and they were planning to stay a lot longer if the fighting had gone their way. Whereas for a raid, a withdrawal is also planned in case of mission success.
The plan was to use Maduro's capture as the mechanism for continued exertion of control.
It just didn't work.
I don't expect people to answer to this comment as it makes the situation absurdly clear.
To me, it's simple, a foreign army enters your country in violation of your sovereignty? That's an invasion.
They kidnapped the president, lmao, what else could be more against the sovereignty of a nation.
Do you mean that if the US Marine Corps takes some foreign territory by force, it's not an invasion, because there is no army involved in the operation?
Vague everyday language is unsuitable for contracts. When there are multiple reasonable interpretations, it's impossible to know what has been agreed. It's better to be pedantic and use precise language and narrow technical definitions of words.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/army
In some languages and situations, "army" is a general term for the military or for a military force. In other languages and situations, it refers specifically to ground forces. Americans are usually in the latter camp, especially if they have a connection to the military.
No offense, just stating the truth. Only someone who has never been involved in a legal argument thinks that kind of "pedantry" is good for something.
Try to "aschkually" a judge irl and you'll find out. Hilarious.
I meant that the person writing the contract must be a pedant. Vague everyday language can only lead to bad things, when someone inevitably interprets in a different way.
In this particular case, the bets were clearly about military operations with the intention to take control of Venezuelan territory. This is the established meaning of "invasion", in contexts where people care about distinguishing between different types of military operations. But because people could plausibly interpret the word in a different way, the rules did not use words "invade" or "invasion" at all.
Who knows? Might have been a special military operation, right? /s
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-vows-us-in-charge-ven...
>"Don’t ask me who’s in charge because I’ll give you an answer, and it’ll be very controversial," Trump told a reporter.
>He was then asked to clarify, to which Trump replied, "It means we’re in charge."
Whether or not he's right, the US President's words seem to reveal an intent for the actions to result in the US being in control of Venezuela.
And yet they're directly contrary to what actually happened. We're not actually in charge and haven't made any visible attempt to take charge.
It might happen, if Trump doesn't get distracted by a shiny object first, but it hasn't yet.
What Trump means is that he has kicked the Venezuela government in the balls in order to coerce them.
Trump is a mob boss. He considers himself "in charge" of them now because he has clearly dominated them, expects them to comply with his future demands, and will continue to use force against them in the future if they don't do what he wants.
Or it means Trump saying what Trump always says, whilst also being extremely clear that he's negotiating with Venezuela's VP, who is busy asserting equally implausibly that Maduro is the country's only president to her own audience of people that believe whatever the government says.
Good. Shame on anyone who makes bets on human lives.
I give permission to anyone to make bets on my human life, I don’t mind at all :-)
FWIW, this is usually called buying either "life insurance" or a "life annuity," depending on whether you want to take a short or long position. The underwriters of such bets tend to be reticent about offering them to 3rd parties, though, for what are probably obvious reasons.
I don’t think it’s even legal in at least the US, also for obvious reasons.
Not really a counterpoint, but interestingly there used to be a fairly widespread practice of corporations buying life insurance for low level employees. It was often called "Dead Peasant Insurance", and when the employee died the corporation benefited.
It never made an iota of economic sense -- if insurance underwriters are on the wrong end of that deal, they aren't doing their jobs very well -- but a number of large corporations would do it, and gleefully pocket the payouts when rank and file employees died.
Then I don't think you've thought your position through very well.
Are you sure you’d like random people putting a price on your head?
A sufficiently liquid prediction market on a human life is indistinguishable from a bounty. That’s exactly why you can only take out life insurance if you have some reasonable financial stake in somebody staying alive and not the opposite.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate-owned_life_insurance aka Dead Peasant Insurance.
Well, the money is just going to people that bet differently on human lives.
Someone gambling on human lives is getting paid no matter what, though.
Yeah, fuck those life insurance companies!
https://archive.ph/meJqK
Look up "The Oracle Problem"
clickbait headline. Polymarket doesn't decide
https://docs.polymarket.com/polymarket-learn/markets/how-are...
Who are Uma token holders? I'm assuming some token people can buy? Could someone not corner that market, then make a ton of longshot bets, then dispute them all and win every case as majority Uma token holder?
"After the debate period, Uma token holders vote (this process takes approximately 48 hours) and one of four outcomes happens:"
That is true. UMA tokens are just a coin on the blockchain that can be bought. The resolution is put up for a vote. People can vote by staking their tokens and the losing side(s) lose their tokens. The winning side are rewarded the tokens of losing sides. In theory you can just buy out these votes with enough money/tokens
UMA's security model assumes the cost to corrupt the oracle exceeds the profit from corruption. It is quite interesting because it doesn't consider the Polymarket side at all in the calculation.
Doesn't this whole model break down when the Polymarket market far exceeds UMA's market cap?
Wouldn't UMA tokens increase in value proportionally to Polymarket's market cap, considering they're basically a unit of control of that market cap?
I am pretty low confidence here but I think in theory it should but in practice there is no mechanism enforcing that?
UMA's current market cap is $68M. There are some Polymarket markets far exceeding that.
Not really, because unless you control 50% of all tokens they are worthless.
Only if you assume literally all other tokens are voting against you
Not just in theory, it happens frequently. There's multiple 'markets' that resolved in untruth when it suited UMA whales. Polymarket is a scam site, with a thin veneer of gambling over the top.
Got examples? Articles about them? That sounds very interesting.
In 1983 the US (actually) invaded Grenada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Gren...
Polymarket uses UMA as the resolution mechanism. It's not quite Polymarket, but UMA. See Zelenskyy's suit last year.
Can we stop calling these platforms "prediction markets" and start calling them "gambling apps"?
They are closer to binary options on things other than stocks
That's gambling.
Depends
It's useful to keep the word "prediction" in there, and "gambling" implies almost total randomness so I'd rather use a word like "betting".
"Prediction betting" maybe? "News betting"?
Related:
A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46508582
It seems the user's genius has been missed.
Not only did they correctly hold a Yes bet about Maduro they also "correctly" made a bet about the US invading Venezuela and then they _sold_ it early at 18c for a profit as opposed to holding it to maturity (which would've been a "no").
They also did this the correct hold vs sell-early on 4 contracts.
How do you define maturity time here? Is it when the incident occurred (in this case the downfall or the invasion)? Otherwise why is there a buffer between the time this incident took place to the time the contracts matured?
Maturity is when the other party pays back the initial principal back which in this case is the $1.
So for an example contract "Trump invokes War Powers against Venezuela by...?" - https://polymarket.com/event/trump-invokes-war-powers-agains...
It's maturity is ideally the date listed in the contract (i.e. by Jan 9th) but may extend for 10 days in case a report's publication was delayed.
That said, you can sell contracts to other users (which is typically what happens ...) so when people buy a Yes contract for 5c they're not buying from Polymarket; they're buying it from somebody else. This allows you to make money before maturity. The reason for this is that you can mint YES+NO contracts by paying Polymarket $1 which nets you 0$ as you spent $1 and between the Yes and No contracts Polymarket pays back $1. But if you spend $1 for a YES+NO and sell the No for 50c to another user and the Yes for 70c then you net 20c or alternatively you sell the No for 5c to another user and hold the Yes to maturity and get the $1 back from Polymarket.
Although to be clear, I don't exactly know all the inner workings of Polymarket so it could be the case that they've started to act more like a House than a Market and they're actually putting money on the other side of the contract (IIRC, Kalshi is starting to do that for Sports-based contracts either that or having a partner company do it as opposed to actual users).
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)?
That's a good point. I think the assertion that Polymarket is actively doing (or not doing) anything here is at least incomplete. As far as I know, resolutions are still via UMA, which is (at least formally) an independent entity. No idea how big overlaps in personnel and control are in reality.
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.
This is a tangent, but man the world of traditional news sites must be really suffering. I've been noticing more and more that have this model where you can't see anything until you pay up. I have to assume they've tested it and found this approach works best, but I'm not signing up for your newspaper before I can even see the quality of the journalism. Back with print newspapers you could just buy a copy before getting a subscription. Now to get a taste you've got to pay for the $1 trial which will auto-convert into a $75/mo subscription. And I wouldn't be surprised to learn that to cancel that trial requires a phone call to a service rep.
A lot of sights actually use very sophisticated prediction models to decide on what users and when to show paywalls.
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.
> Is Polymarket The House?
> No, Polymarket is not the house. All trades happen peer-to-peer (p2p).
(from https://docs.polymarket.com/polymarket-learn/FAQ/is-polymark...)
> Is Polymarket The House?
This term is a bit ambiguous, and there's some nuances that make it different from both sportsbooks and poker.
They don't ever take a nominal cut, their revenue model is in holding USD deposits and making money of interest.
> No, Polymarket is not the house. All trades happen peer-to-peer (p2p). The documentation is purposefully misleading, but it's true that unlike a sportsbook, they don't take the risk of bets. It's a classic case of a blockchain company exaggerating to what extent they are on the blockchain and to what extent they are centralized and just minimally wrapping the blockchain, like when NFTs were actually a URL to an image.
Trades do NOT happen p2p, polymarket functions as an escrow, payments are sent to polymarket accounts and released by polymarket. Each prediction market does have their own contract, but Polymarket staff rules on each event through off-chain (although they are based on the wording used in the specific event).
New events are solely released by polymarket staff (although users can 'suggest' markets).
> Polymarket staff rules on each event through off-chain
Theoretically, no. Predictions are resolved through UMA, a decentralized stake-based oracle system, which is at least theoretically decentralized.
Practically, I have no idea how big the overlap between Polymarket staff and UMA stakeholders is.
Oh, my bad, thanks!
I think most questions on polymarket use order books now. But they used to use AMMs (where people bet against polymarket) and their FAQ says some questions still use them
Were the liquidity pools backing the AMMs actually operated by Polymarket?
At the beginning, yes. Or polymarket employees, anyway
The latter. The other side now wins, in theory.
Heads I win, tails you lose.
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.
Seems unlikely the US had scores of boats lined up for a well-planned invasion which they chickened out of at the first sign of return fire and then "desperately" captured the enemy president some miles inland in a relatively bloodless operation instead.
A small detachment of US troops didn't succeed in taking some sort of secondary objective like taking out a coastguard station or comms node, maybe.
Forward operating site is not what you seem to think. It's more like a place to set up temporary comms support, recon support, maybe SAMs etc then skedaddle out of there (perhaps leaving the equipment behind for the duration of the operation). If the site cannot be clandestinely set up then it's often not worth trying. What parent described is perfectly reasonable
If the US planned to invade rather than raid Venezuela, I don't think the inability to capture a single forward operating site clandestinely would lead to the entire operation being called off. If they didn't, the alleged beachhead is moot. They had boots on the ground when capturing Maduro too.
What's more likely: the US "desperately" stumbled upon a capture of Maduro at almost zero cost to them after their real plan to seize Venezuelan territory went awry due to heroic Venezuelan defending as the parent implies, or that the intention was to capture and remove Maduro without invading and this was what they did, regardless of whether a few peripheral targets got missed?
IDK what you are saying but I don't think we disagree. Maybe I had meant to reply to parent comment instead of you
>50 people killed is not a "bloodless" operation. Lets not minimize.
In terms of war that's basically nothing
Words have meanings and the operation was not bloodless.
Words have meanings and the word relatively present in the original sentence clearly indicates that it was a comparison with the many orders of magnitude more casualties that would be expected from a full scale invasion. Particularly when the consideration was whether the mission panned out as the US intended, and their priority is bringing their own troops home (which they apparently managed with only a few injuries), not sparing Venezuelans unfortunate enough to be at the other end of their weapons.
I agree that it stretches credulity but one scenario is that they were promised the Venezuelan military would stand down and let the US conduct its operation with minimal resistance. If that was not the case then the minimal troops for the beachhead may have decided that the token landing for PR purposes was not necessary and bugged out.
One of the strangest things about the entire operation is how the US left absolutely nobody behind to administer the country. Not even a consultant. The Venezuelan VP is now in charge and the government is largely intact. It's hard to see how this affects any meaningful change in the country. I did find it amusing that the opposition leader released a statement with her lips firmly planted on Trumps ass and even talked about "sharing" the Nobel Peace Prize just to see if he's enough of an idiot that such obvious flattery would work.
> The Venezuelan VP is now in charge and the government is largely intact. It's hard to see how this affects any meaningful change in the country.
It's a threat - "Do as we say or you're next." Which the US was pretty public and explicit about. They don't need anyone on site for that. It's not like they actually care what happens beyond the resources use.
> 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
That sounds unlikely. They have aircraft carriers and just a large modern navy but a helicopter comes under fire and they cancel the invasion?
I’m not wholly convinced, I think you’d have had US sources corroborating that by now.
> Some Venezulean sources claim US troops on a helicopter initially tried to capture a beach to turn it into a beachhead
With a myoptic view of the battlefield it is easy to convince yourself that the distractions launched to keep the military busy were the primary objectives.
Sounds like BS to me. If the Venezuelan military has the ability to drive back an actual US military landing operation, then a deep raid into the capital would be impossible.
How would they even know that? If this is true, then all they actually know is that an American helicopter was fired on and departed. They'd have no way of knowing why it was there, what was being attempted, why it left, or what the plans were.
Or that was just a distraction intended to obscure the true intent. Frankly that sounds a lot more plausible.
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.
Polymarket isn't on the other side of those bets though. It's a two-sided market. I don't think Polymarket even sets the terms of the bets, or adjudicates them?
Did they even have "extra time" as an option? This feels like a scam if every bet "lost" their money.
If the teams go over time it’s a tie by (regular) game end
Ah makes sense.
You know there's crazy conspiracies and there's sensible conspiracies. That casinos are out to fuck you is a sensible conspiracy that no one doubts, so I will look like a naïve idiot when claiming that the casino/sportsbook isn't actually out to get you in this case.
What you ran into is a fairly standard term, and you were equally likely to be benefitted by it. If you would have bet that the team tied, and the match went to extra time before deciding on a victor, you would have gotten an unexpected payout.
There's other ways they fuck you over, this just isn't one of them.
> That casinos are out to fuck you is a sensible conspiracy that no one doubts
I absolutely doubt it. Why would they even need to? Seems like much more risk and work than to just rely on negative expected values, the law of large numbers, and human nature.
Online casinos certainly try to make any excuse to not let you withdraw money
A couple of ways:
1- Having each game have negative odds for the player to begin with. 2- Making it conveniently easy to deposit, but very hard to cash out, at that point compliance and KYC suddenly becomes very important to casinos. 3- Using shady jurisdictions to avoid law enforcement (Curacao, isle of man,etc...) 4- Banning players that find an edge, like in BlackJack. (Was way worse before, using physical coercion) 5- Prosecuting players that find an edge and recovering the money when they lose (see Phil Ivey's case)