The WSJ On Polymarket's Questionable Ads

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed talks with the Wall Street Journal’s Caitlin Ostroff and Katherine Long about how Polymarket is working with influencers to show videos of fake bets cashing out - and how the prediction markets have grown into a large, barely-regulated operation. Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off your first year of annual https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/84rt762qen They Looked Like They Were Getting Rich on Polymarket—but None of It Was Real - https://www.wsj.com/business/media/polymarket-social-media-bets-prediction-market-441cdeb5?st=57dR12&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/business/media/polymarket-social-media-bets-prediction-market-441cdeb5?st=57dR12&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink Caitlin Ostroff https://x.com/ceostroff https://bsky.app/profile/ceostroff.bsky.social https://www.wsj.com/news/author/caitlin-ostroff Katherine Long https://bsky.app/profile/klong.bsky.social https://x.com/ByKLong https://www.wsj.com/news/author/katherine-long YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. Buy our new “FUCK DATA CENTERS” shirts today! --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron Email Me: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:49Speaker 03

  Call Zone Media.

• 0:52Ed Zitron?

  Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I am, of course, your host, Ed Zitron.

• 1:07Ed Zitron?

  Today I am joined by two incredible reporters from The Wall Street Journal, Katherine Long and Caitlin Ostroff, who just published an incredible and truly horrible story about Polymarket and their extremely questionable influencer marketing campaigns. Catherine, Caitlin, thanks for joining me.

• 1:22Speaker 05

  So happy to be here. Thanks for having us, Ed.

• 1:25Ed Zitron?

  Okay. So walk me through exactly what Polymarket was doing with these influencers and social media. Like, what were they paying for? What was the end result?

• 1:35Speaker 05

  So the end result was an onslaught of videos that appeared to show college-age social media creators betting and winning large amounts of money online. But what we found is that all of those bets were actually fake. They were placed on a dummy platform that Polymarket built to almost exactly, but not precisely resemble the website. And some of the wins that the influencers showed themselves having were faked as well. The creators were using things like outdated footage or altered headlines to suggest that they won really lucrative bets when, in fact, they would have lost.

• 2:16Ed Zitron?

  Right, so just to be clear, so the bets were fake, the website was fake, but also the bets would have lost?

• 2:24Speaker 06

  A lot of them would have, not every single one, but the majority of the videos where bets were placed would have actually lost in real life, but they were depicted as winning.

• 2:36Ed Zitron?

  That's truly awful. I thought Polymarket was illegal in America as well.

• 2:41Speaker 05

  You would be right about that. Polymarket entered a settlement with federal regulators back in 2022, in which they agreed to stop offering their platform to US traders. But as anybody who's used a VPN knows, it's pretty trivial to get around things like that kind of geo fencing. Anybody with a VPN has been able to access Polymarket, even if they're based in the US or other countries where Polymarket is banned.

• 3:08Ed Zitron?

  And so these influencers, they're American-based, right?

• 3:11Speaker 06

  So it's a mix. Some are based in Canada, some are based in the US. And then, you know, there's likely creators in other jurisdictions as well, but that was one of the mix that we looked at in our corpus.

• 3:24Ed Zitron?

  And so it looks like here is about 1,100 videos you went over. So that's truly, it's truly a massive scale operation. But do you think it's bigger than the ones you saw? Or is it just, like, did you get any idea of the total scale?

• 3:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, so we reviewed 1,100 videos that had been posted between late December, correct me if I'm wrong, Caitlin, was it late December or late November? Late last year, late 2025 by all accounts. Late 2025 and mid-May of this year. So 1,100 videos, 10 creators. My impression and belief for my reporting and Caitlin's reporting and the reporting of our other colleagues is that this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as Polymarket's marketing operation. We identified dozens of other creators who were posting videos in similar formats. We didn't scrape their videos, but we thought our sample size was sufficient.

• 4:18Ed Zitron?

  That's crazy. So walk me through the exact stage. So you have a video of a guy guessing whether Trump will say Inshallah, I think was one of, probably not in your, but like Trump will say burger or something. And then they're staring at the TV. And then they go, oh, he said burger, but the website they were making the bet on was just completely fake?

• 4:41Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 4:42Ed Zitron?

  Just completely.

• 4:43Speaker 06

  So, yeah. So, so, yeah, so the in, in these videos, when you watch them, you will often see a college age student kind of go in with like this hook phrase where they'll say, throw what? Or wait, what? And then they will be like, oh, I can like, I can bet on this market and they'll depict the market. And then sometimes it will show essentially what the outcome is of that market. They'll cut to video of Trump saying a certain word or phrase and then they'll jump up and down and sort of give the impression that they've won.

• 5:17Ed Zitron?

  And this is targeting children. So, college age kids, like that it's explicitly targeting young people.

• 5:24Speaker 05

  Well, I wouldn't go that far as to say it's explicitly targeting young people, but what we do know about who it's targeting is that it is targeting Americans.

• 5:33Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 5:33Speaker 05

  We looked at Polymarket's instructions to people who were paid to boost the reach of this campaign online. A third party contractor that Polymarket worked with to help manage the campaign said, we'll only pay you if at least 60% of your audience is based in the United States. And then to, you know, as to the point you alluded to, yes, the, the creators who are making these videos, they are college age, college students, people in their early to mid twenties, certainly.

• 6:03Ed Zitron?

  Jesus. It, it feels like introducing children to gambling on some level. It, I mean, maybe you can't say that, but I'm certain, I mean, it seems like showing young people doing something and saying, you can get bread, which is a young person's way of referring to money for the old heads listening. I, I knew that one, I'm not that old, but it, it just, it feels quite dystopian is kind of what I'm getting at.

• 6:28Speaker 06

  It, it certainly is marketed to give the impression that this is a way to make money off of what you know. So, the majority of the bets that we looked at, you know, they showed a trade being placed. Most didn't show an outcome, but for those that did, you know, almost all of them, it was someone winning. I think there was like, what, four or five Catherine in the group that we looked at where someone was depicted as losing their bet. So, the overarching message was you can make money.

• 6:58Ed Zitron?

  I kind of find it fascinating that there's one where they lost. Anyway, keep going.

• 7:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was just going to chime in and add that, you know, in addition to the creators showing themselves appearing to win money, they also implied that they were wealthy in other ways, including by showing account balances on this dummy website, where, again, no real money was being traded. These balances were fictitious. But the videos showed their account balances on Polymarket in the tens of thousands of dollars. Some even had balances over $100,000. And one of the creators, whose videos we reviewed, she shows herself placing bets from a San Francisco bedroom. And then she'll have a video where she's showing herself dancing on a beach in front of the Golden Gate Bridge.

• 7:48Speaker 05

  And she says, "Polymarket funds my life." And there's a Hello Kitty sticker in the corner that says, "I am unemployed." So the impression is certainly that, you know, these people are making enough money off of Polymarket to support themselves and support themselves in fairly high style.

• 8:05Ed Zitron?

  And it sounds like, kind of, like a real operation here, like in the sense that there is, like, they're building functional dummy websites. Because looking, as we speak, I have the animate GIFs from the piece up. And it's, these seem quite intricate. These, perhaps they're vibe-coded, it doesn't really matter because no payment rails are in there. But these seem like they are built to look identical.

• 8:28Speaker 06

  They are extremely convincing. Catherine and I and our colleagues were looking at these for about two weeks before our colleague Neil Meta realized that, like, this is not Polymarket. Like, we started off firmly believing that this was Polymarket.

• 8:44Ed Zitron?

  Right. Well, when you say that, so this is the P-O-I-Y market website. When you say it believed, you believed it was Polymarket, what did you think the purpose was when you found it?

• 8:56Speaker 06

  We thought these were just videos that, you know, people were making showing themselves placing actual trades on Polymarket. I don't think we had a theory at the onset as to why they were doing this, but we came across a bunch of these videos and we were curious to understand, you know, what was happening, like who these people were, how they were making money. And so we have this database of all of the Polymarket trades that we had been building over the past several months. And we started off trying to trace these trades. We wanted to understand, you know, what bets were happening, who was making these, and we want to go about finding those because all of Polymarket's data is public. And we very quickly realized that we could not

• 9:40Speaker 06

  figure out, like, we couldn't place these trades. We could not find the actual trades shown in the video. And it took us a minute to realize that this was not actually happening on Polymarket. And the the red flag for that ended up being that website, P O I Y Market, which our colleague, Neil Meta, saw and flagged to us.

• 10:02Ed Zitron?

  Hell, yeah. Good work, Neil.

• 10:05Speaker 06

  Great work, Neil.

• 10:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, major shout out to Neil.

• 10:08Ed Zitron?

  Here's the thing, though. So wait, maybe I'm just misunderstanding this. So the not only did the trades, did some of the trades never exist? Like, it was never possible to bet on that particular outcome?

• 10:21Speaker 05

  All of the markets that we saw did exist. And that's one of the reasons why it took us so long to understand that we were looking at a fake website. I mean, we were combing through this database Caitlin has been painstakingly building over months of every single trade on Polymarket, which, you know, is accessible to us because Polymarket is a blockchain-based system. So everything is public. And, you know, we're looking for these trades that appear to have taken place, right? We saw a video of it taking place, and it just didn't seem to exist in this database. And at that point, we, you know, thanks to Neil's eagle eyes, showing that, you know, one of these creators had seemingly made a mistake and accidentally left the URL of

• 11:05Speaker 05

  fake site, Polymarket, P-O-I-Y market, yeah. That Polymarket had built in his video. And it was only because of that clue that we started being able to unravel that all of these videos that we were looking at were actually being placed on fake websites. Which, as we've mentioned, the fake websites were almost identical to the real Polymarket. But, you know, once we started looking for some more of these clues, once we knew that the website was fake, we were able to distinguish various ways in which to tell the fake website from the real website.

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• 13:03Speaker 03

  Zolir 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolir, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair.

• 13:46Speaker 03

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• 13:55Speaker 00

  Listen in as Ron and Kelly Moore share their story. I'm Ron Moore. And I'm Kelly Moore. And starting our own business in our 50s was a little scary, but exciting. The biggest advantage was our community. The whole thing about business is relationships. We'll say team a lot, not just our internal team. It's the team of our vendors, the team of our clients. We help the Veterans Resource Center and we give scholarships. I'm doing this for my heart, for my children, for you, for your children's family. I don't want anything back. And I tell a lot of people, don't give back to me, pay it forward. If you work to give, you just see the world differently. I'm going to help as many people as we can.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  I can't take it with me.

• 14:42Ed Zitron?

  To hear more from Ron and Kelly, listen to the Unshakeables wherever you get your podcasts.

• 14:53Ed Zitron?

  So was it just Polymarket? Or were there like multiple other fake websites as well?

• 14:59Speaker 06

  I mean, we like, once we started looking for other like simulated polymarket websites, we did find a couple of others, but the, I think all of the ones that like, we were able to identify specifically what the website was, was Polymarket. There was one other where it was like this developer link that appeared in a handful of videos where it was like one of the like polymarket.

• 15:25Speaker 06

  Developers dot like their name dot dev dot polymarket dot dev. Um. And so it was like this internal development site that appeared in a couple of the videos that also seemed like it was being used. So we weren't always certain like which simulated platform the trade was happening on, in part because we heard from creators, part of the instruction that they got in making these videos was to not make it obvious that it was on a simulated website. So if you were on a P O I Y market, you might uppercase the I to make it appear like Polly market. And so, you know, we we came across a handful of these, but I don't think we are exactly certain of how much each one was used.

• 16:11Ed Zitron?

  That's it's so strange. How is this not illegal? I mean, I guess if the website itself is illegal, then illegally advertising the illegal website is kind of just a just kind of doubling down at that point doesn't really matter like. Has the government, I saw that there was some sort of federal inquiry into Polly market. Was it related to this story?

• 16:31Speaker 05

  We are not sure of the precise parameters or subject of the the federal inquiry you're referring, I assume, to a CFTC investigation that we reported on last week. Um. Yeah, the the contours of that investigation are as yet unclear. Um, uh, you know, I know I know that it is um ongoing and extensive, according to a a person familiar with the investigation. You know, I should add as well that the the CFTC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the agency conducting this investigation, a spokesperson for that agency um declined to comment on the existence of an investigation citing H C policies.

• 17:07Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, that it's just so strange because I've I don't think I've seen anything like this in tech outside of crypto, which I know is, I know that crypto is kind of the is, I think Polly market is a crypto product, right? Or it's a blockchain one.

• 17:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:21Ed Zitron?

  They moved on from that crap. That crap referring to a comment that I'm making, not the journalist in question.

• 17:28Speaker 05

  No, Polly market is a is a crypto, is a crypto, uh, it's it's on, it's on crypto rails, as as they would say.

• 17:33Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 17:34Ed Zitron?

  That's so strange. What differentiates this from CalShe? Because I basically consider them the same website at this point, but I I guess they're different somehow.

• 17:45Speaker 06

  So we like, again, our social media feeds are just full with videos for different platforms. You know, we, we came across the poly market videos of them placing these trades. Uh, we've certainly come across a lot of videos of, you know, people promoting Kalsi, but we haven't come across anything similar in the sense of, you know, poly market was, you know, telling people, use the simulated website, create these bets and do not disclose that you have any affiliation. Um, we are always looking to see what we might be missing in coverage of the space. Um, but you know, Kalsi is, I guess, one difference between it and poly market is also that

• 18:30Speaker 06

  it is regulated by CFTC. Poly market has a new US product launched late last year that is CFTC regulated, but the broader platform is still offshore. So, you know, we, we try to look to see what we might be missing in this space. But the, the poly market videos kind of stuck out to us as we were going through our own social media feeds, just trying to understand, you know, why we're getting so many of these, what was behind that, and we did not expect it to lead to these simulated bets.

• 19:01Ed Zitron?

  So are your algorithms, but so did you do this on your own phones or like a journal approved one? Because I'm wondering, are your algorithms ruined now?

• 19:11Speaker 06

  Oh yeah, my algorithm is cooked.

• 19:14Ed Zitron?

  It's just like in, like 18 year old Zen kids telling you to gamble on the future.

• 19:20Speaker 06

  I'll always see our prediction markets. Um, I like, I see no other content at this point.

• 19:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:26Ed Zitron?

  That must be awful.

• 19:28Speaker 06

  I mean, it's great for keeping track of things. Um, it's probably not great for our long-term mental health.

• 19:34Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, this is why you've just got to look at like lifting videos and palace cats. That's how I get around this. Just like, you just need to cleanse your feet every so often. But on a, on a legal level, just like on a thing, what differentiates cat? Like you said, the poly market has a US approved product. Is like, is that a prediction market? Is it something different? And why is Kalsi able to operate legally but not poly market?

• 19:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, so taking a zooming out here a bit, right? So, Caloshi, Polymarket's biggest competitor. Caloshi and Polymarket, they're both prediction markets. The biggest distinction between the two is that Caloshi, Caloshi made a huge bet that it could successfully achieve US-regulated status. And Polymarket, conversely, decided that it was okay operating offshore as an unregistered crypto entity that, you know, people can access if they have a VPN, but, you know, they're not technically supposed to. So, Caloshi has not necessarily played nice with regulators. You know, it had a pretty significant legal battle early in its career over whether election

• 20:43Speaker 05

  markets would be allowed on the platform, but it did have success. It won that battle. And now Caloshi is a US-regulated prediction market, which it says is legally available in all 50 states, although there's currently some commotion over Nevada, which...

• 21:00Ed Zitron?

  I mean, as a Vegas resident, you can't take our beautiful gambling away from Vegas residents.

• 21:06Speaker 05

  Exactly. So, as one might suspect, the gambling industry is extremely worried about the rise of prediction markets. You know, unlike online sportsbooks or in-person gambling, Caloshi and other US-regulated prediction markets have successfully, up till now, made the argument that they are federally regulated. That means that states cannot restrict their operations. So, state gambling commissions can't say, can't impose conditions on how they operate. They also can't levy taxes on prediction markets. So, Caloshi has, you know, fairly successfully been playing within this federal regulatory

• 21:50Speaker 05

  structure. Polymarket has been playing outside of it. And for a while, the two platforms seem to be growing sort of in lockstep. You know, Polymarket started out with a bit of a lead. It got a huge amount of traction after the 2024 presidential election, which it successfully called for Donald Trump. Caloshi was...

• 22:11Speaker 05

  A bit of a bit more, it was a lesser known quantity at the time. I had less name recognition. But starting around late 2025, Calshi actually started to eke ahead of polymarket when it comes to relative share of trading volume on prediction markets. And as of last month, Calshi was doing insanely more volume than polymarket on polymarket's offshore and US app combined.

• 22:36Ed Zitron?

  And do you know what those volumes might be?

• 22:40Ed Zitron?

  Roughly? Are we talking 10 billion?

• 22:43Speaker 06

  I have to go back and look at the data. I'd love to consult a chart in our story. It was for the month of May, twice the amount of volume, almost twice, sorry, the amount of volume on Calshi versus polymarket.

• 22:56Ed Zitron?

  That's really worrying. I mean, I think, so looking this up, it looks like $17 billion in the month of May alone. We live in a godless society. It's a statement I am saying, not the journalist in question. It's very worrying. I find this whole thing quite worrying. Not just the gambling, but the financialization of everything. I don't think it's good to gamble on every outcome personally. And I worry, I worry about this spreading personally. And I don't like, it feels like it needs regulation in an extreme way that basically doesn't exist yet.

• 23:33Speaker 05

  I mean, I can, I can talk a little bit about my own experiences here. You know, I started covering, Caitlin's been covering this space a lot longer than I have. I sort of jumped into it at the beginning of this year. And as part of the process of growing familiar with how prediction markets operate, I decided to watch the State of the Union through the lens of a prediction market livestreamer who was livestreaming the State of the Union and talking about the bets that he was placing on what President Trump would say during, during that speech. And, you know, I think similar to watching live sports on which you have wagered, it was simultaneously more exciting. And I think also.

• 24:17Speaker 05

  Slightly concerning, the way that instead of sort of listening for the content of the speech, it very rapidly for me turned into something closer to a game of sort of wondering what the next word is, like what is he going to say and will it hit, like will the bet hit? And so I understand where the concerns that you're describing emanate from, certainly. I would say also that, you know, there's a lot of people who point to prediction markets as an extremely legitimate financial tool and one that institutions can increasingly take advantage of.

• 24:55Speaker 07

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• 25:40Speaker 07

  And their Free Empower Personal Dashboard shows you your full financial life in one place. You'll be able to see your net worth, monitor budgets, analyze your portfolio, set retirement goals, and more. Whether you're saving for something big, want to treat yourself, friends, or family, or meet long-term goals, Empower helps you see where you stand. You've worked hard for your money, and Empower can help you make the most of it. Download the Empower Personal Dashboard or visit empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  She's been thinking about the sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  Zolir 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolir, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolir. Zolir may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolir should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolir is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolir.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolir. This is an advertisement for Zolir,

• 27:05Speaker 03

  paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

• 27:08Speaker 07

  Hi, it's Kathleen Griffith, co-host of the Unshakeables podcast. Listen in as Ron and Kelly Moore share their story.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  I'm Ron Moore. And I'm Kelly Moore. And starting our own business in our 50s was a little scary, but exciting. The biggest advantage was our community. The whole thing about business is relationships. We'll say team a lot. Not just our internal team, it's the team of our vendors, the team of our clients. We help the Veterans Resource Center, and we give scholarships. I'm doing this for my heart, for my children, for you, for your children's family. I don't want anything back. And I tell a lot of people, don't give back to me, pay it forward. If you work to give, you just see the world differently. I'm gonna help as many people as we can. I can't take it with me.

• 28:00Speaker 07

  To hear more from Ron and Kelly, listen to The Unshakeables wherever you can.

• 28:04Speaker 06

  Get your podcasts.

• 28:12Ed Zitron?

  I mean, the only people I think they're taking, I think the only advantage being taken is of the customers because I have to wonder how many people win. And it probably isn't very much. And the fact that they have to resort to, the fact they have to resort to this kind of marketing suggests that the wins are not quite as common as they want you to believe.

• 28:30Speaker 06

  Well, and that's one of a previous story that Catherine and I worked on together, basically analyzed just that, how many people actually win on prediction markets? And what we found was that, you know, about 70% of people who had traded on poly market lost money. And losers to winners on Kalsi, you know, was about 2.9 to one. And so, you know, these, while, while a lot of the marketing is centered around, these are prediction markets where you can win money. In reality, most people do not win money.

• 29:03Ed Zitron?

  Kind of feels like the DraftKings stuff as well, the sports gambling. Where it's like, oh yeah, of course, it's really easy to, and this is not a statement I align with it. It's easy. You just bet on what the winning team will be, but the existence of spreads and also the existence of the weird nomenclature that the prediction markets use is how they get you. Like I remember with our camp, we were, I was talking about with Nick DeVore and Rebecca Ungarino from Barron's. And it was just like, yeah, the wording around Camonay's potential death, and then they just pulled the entire thing, screwed a bunch of people over. And how they desire, how they design and they say what a win is, seems to also undermine people.

• 29:44Speaker 06

  Right. And we've, we've previously reported that, you know, the wording for pretty much all of these prediction markets really matters. And so there's, you know, been a lot of people who have reached out to us as journalists and said, you know, I put money on this market, understanding that this is how it was structured. And then the resolution was entirely unexpected, or I don't think that it was a proper resolution. And so, you know, especially for some of these markets where it's not really a finite outcome, or the rules might be written in a way where there's potential for different interpretation. You know, there really is a risk of, you know, the market not going how people who are betting understand it might.

• 30:25Speaker 05

  Or maybe people can't even see the rules. The rules are difficult to access in the first place. That was the case of somebody we profiled for our last story, who wagered everything he had earned so far on prediction markets and ended up losing it all and is now living in a homeless shelter.

• 30:42Ed Zitron?

  Classic gambler stuff as well. I mean, it's even in Vegas, so I live in Vegas. And you walk around and even there in like the gambling hub of everywhere, the airport is full of the, hey, if you've got a gambling problem, call this number. Hey, gambling problems are scary. Gambling problem, gambling problem. Next to a slot machine, of course. But it doesn't feel like, probably due to a lack of regulatory oversight, that there's the same alarm concern thought from the people making these markets. Do they seem, have you heard anything from them about concerns related to gambling addiction or anything like that?

• 31:19Speaker 05

  So, CalShe fairly recently did add a, some language related to gambling addiction on its homepage. It gave people the option to exclude themselves from the website, which is another common feature that many gambling apps have.

• 31:37Ed Zitron?

  What does it, what does that mean?

• 31:39Speaker 05

  Self-exclusion is if somebody feels that they have a gambling problem, they can ask to be banned from, from the website, from the gambling app, from the casino. It's sort of, you know, it's not really a nuclear option, but it's a tool that people who are managing a gambling addiction can use if they feel like their, their gambling has gotten out of hand.

• 31:59Speaker 05

  You know, I think that these platforms, they don't conceive of themselves as gambling. They conceive of themselves as trading. This is, you know, in their minds, more akin to day trading or, you know, trading in currencies than it is to gambling.

• 32:11Ed Zitron?

  Question, so this is, hopefully this is a no, but I know when I had Areeh Fassan and Caleb Wilson on talking about sports gambling a few months ago. Apparently DraftKings and the like, sorry, that's last year, DraftKings and the like, they have like an account manager that will actually work with significant bettors. Do you know if such a thing exists with CalShe and Polymarket? Do they have high rollers that they covet? Is that something, I don't even mean influencers.

• 32:38Speaker 06

  I don't know the answer to this.

• 32:40Ed Zitron?

  I hope the answer is no.

• 32:42Speaker 05

  That's that's not something that I have heard about. You know what I can say from our own reporting is that both platforms seem intent on, you know, recruiting college students and Polymarket in particular has set up relationships with college clubs, fraternities, offering them, you know, payments in exchange for signing their classmates up to to the site. So I would I would say it's.

• 33:06Ed Zitron?

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Tell me more about that. What? What?

• 33:11Speaker 05

  This was a story that I reported with with colleagues, including my my colleague, Kevin Dugan, back in, I believe it was March. It was about both platforms' efforts to sign up college students. And, you know, some some great reporting that Kevin brought to the story was about Polymarket's efforts to recruit students at Columbia University. And they signed this partnership with a fraternity at Columbia. And in exchange for every student that members of that fraternity signed up, the fraternity got some money. And at the end of it, there was a big sort of Polymarket-funded party. The fraternity got a plaque that said, you know, that they were the first member of the Polymarket pledge class.

• 33:53Speaker 05

  And, you know, a lawsuit that was filed last week made similar allegations pertaining to Polymarket's activities on on other campuses.

• 34:03Ed Zitron?

  Have you heard about anything else like that with CalSheep perhaps? Or is it just is the were those the only events?

• 34:09Speaker 05

  CalSheep had some much smaller, much less well-funded partnerships with campus groups. I would say Polymarket is the the prime mover in in that space when it comes to recruiting college students.

• 34:24Ed Zitron?

  Getting kids into gambling. That's my statement.

• 34:28Ed Zitron?

  This is all truly horrible. Have you? So the one thing as we wrap up here, one thing that.

• 34:36Ed Zitron?

  I keep coming back to is are there not guidelines around truth and advertising that these cross over with?

• 34:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, so the Federal Trade Commission, which governs advertising, does have rules that require that advertisements be truthful and accurate. And then the CFTC also requires that, you know, marketing and that information not be deceptive. So there are laws from at least two federal regulators that, you know, do touch on how prediction markets market themselves to the public.

• 35:15Ed Zitron?

  That's but they don't appear to I just I keep thinking about these videos and I've had the animated gif just in the corner as I talk to you. And I'm just, I don't see how there's not anything being done about this because even in a very conservative government, this is a kind of vice that could genuine, in my opinion, could genuinely cause a form of financial crisis with young people, especially at a time when young people have trouble accumulating wealth.

• 35:43Speaker 06

  Well, I mean, we don't know like entirely what's happening on a regulatory front. Again, we've reported that the CFTC has some sort of investigation ongoing into polymarket, although we don't know the scope or details of that. And just from, you know, myself covering crypto for the last many years, you know, often federal inquiries when they happen can take many years. And so I think, you know, a lot of, a lot of these platforms are very new. And so I don't think we necessarily know, you know, how, if and how from a regulatory perspective, things might unfold.

• 36:20Speaker 05

  I should add here as well that, you know, both polymarket and its primary competitor, Kalshi, have ties to the White House in the form of involvement from Donald Trump Jr. So Donald Trump Jr. is a strategic advisor to Kalshi. He is through an investment fund, an investor in polymarket. We don't have any reporting to suggest that that has played any kind of role in the regulators willingness or unwillingness to take on prediction markets. But I think that, you know, that's important to mention here.

• 36:53Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I mean, I also, I will say, I would buy that they like doing this because it makes things easier for them. But I also think there's just no regulatory enforcement at the moment. There's just like, it feels we're just in a regulatory vacuum where the damage is going to come, not so much from what happens, but what doesn't happen, what there isn't. And like, we don't, like, the FTC could cut in here at some point. Like, I don't know, it feels that the SEC could do something. But to your point earlier around crypto, it feels that when Gary Gensler left the SEC, that was kind of the end of any serious crypto regulation anyway, which would have likely led to regulating this.

• 37:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, we're obviously extremely interested in what, if any, actions regulators will take on this. And we plan to continue reporting and try to to find out more about what's going on behind the scenes here.

• 37:46Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. Well, any closing thoughts, anything left off from the industry that I haven't gone over? Because this has been wonderful and also truly darkened my heart. Like, I'm gonna need to take a walk around the block.

• 37:57Speaker 05

  No, Ed, I'm so sorry to hear that.

• 37:59Ed Zitron?

  No, no, it's not your fault. It's been a very entertaining episode, but just this whole story is so grim.

• 38:05Speaker 06

  It's, it's, it's a feeling I understand. I mean, I think what, what really like stuck with me through all of this reporting was like, just how good the videos were at reporting to be on poly market. And yeah, I like, it gave me a bunch of anxiety for, you know, family members who are younger, and even myself, but more them, you know, like, how hard this is to actually know, is what you're watching, you know, truly something real? Or is it, you know, deceptive in some sort of manner? And so that's, that's what, that's been what stuck with me.

• 38:38Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, it does feel like social media is becoming increasingly fake in that way.

• 38:44Ed Zitron?

  No, go ahead.

• 38:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, I would, I would, I would underscore what Caitlin said, that is also something that has really been resonating with me. And I would just add that, you know, if any of your listeners have experiences with prediction markets, we'd love to hear from them. And our contact information is on our author pages on wsj.com.

• 39:02Ed Zitron?

  Well, as we wrap up then, where can people find you?

• 39:05Speaker 05

  Find us in the Wall Street Journal.

• 39:08Speaker 05

  If you're a print head, you know, we still publish in print, but otherwise it's WSJ.com.

• 39:14Speaker 06

  We live and breathe on social media right now, so you can give us a follow there, too.

• 39:18Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, where are you at? You on Twitter and Blue Sky? Just Twitter? Or where can we find you?

• 39:23Speaker 05

  I'm on Twitter at @BIKlong and on Blue Sky at, you know, I don't remember my Blue Sky username.

• 39:31Speaker 06

  All of my socials are C E Ostraw, so I should be able to look consistent.

• 39:36Speaker 05

  Caitlin has the best nominative determinism initials of all time. Her initials are C E O and she is our boss.

• 39:44Speaker 06

  No, Neil is our boss.

• 39:47Ed Zitron?

  Big shout out to Neil for finding Poey Market. I am, of course, Ed Zitroni. I'll be back with a monologue on Friday. You can, of course, bet on this on Goot. Each Goot is worth a thousand slubs, so make sure to invest your slubs based on the number of times I said "the" in this episode. That will, of course, funnel into a, it's an account in the Cayman Islands I have. It's fully legal. I've checked with many lawyers, several of which haven't been disbarred. This has, of course, been Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Zitroni. Thank you for listening.

• 40:24Ed Zitron?

  Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at mattosowski.com, M A T T O S O W S K I dot com. You can email me at [email protected] or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot wheresyoured dot at to visit the Discord and go to r/betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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