Lots of cash in sight, you could win it all; you could take everything

At 404 Media Jason Koebler walks readers through the depravity of the “perverse Silicon Valley, AI, crypto, and X-adjacent hustlebro gambling economy,” which openly encourages people to go broke betting on blood, devastation, death, war and horror, but then gets coy if someone dies.

That we are discussing the ins-and-outs of which random gamblers get paid out during an illegal war in which already hundreds of school children have been bombed to death feels like the type of grotesque sideshow that is only possible because the U.S. government is only interested in regulating its perceived political enemies, and which only feels possible because much of the American economy feels held together by cope and the gobs of money being thrown into AI, data centers, and gambling. All of this is part of the perverse Silicon Valley, AI, crypto, and X-adjacent hustlebro gambling economy … and has turned this all into a massive industrial complex that is not-so-slowly bankrupting a generation of underemployed people addicted to gambling.

You may have heard that Kalshi, the newer gamble-on-anything company, is refusing to pay out bets that the Ayatollah Khamenei would be out of power by Feb. 28, because it doesn’t “list markets directly tied to death,” or allow people to profit from death.

The obvious farce of all of this is that Kalshi’s line that “we design the rules to prevent people from profiting from death” is obviously untrue on its face, it’s just that the company would rather let you bet on the deaths and suffering of civilians rather than dictators and presidents. Betting that Khamenei would stay in power is an explicit bet that he would be allowed to continue silencing dissent and killing those who oppose him; betting that he would be deposed is an explicit bet on what has already become a very deadly, illegal regional war.

Incidentally, the only ad I’ve ever seen for Kalshi (AI slop, of course) features death.

Polymarket used the fact that it allows people to bet on death to hype itself as better than news or social media as a source of information for a mysterious “those” who are “directly affected by the attacks.”

Polymarket has added a note to all Iran-focused bets that says “The promise of prediction markets is to harness the wisdom of the crowd to create accurate, unbiased forecasts for the most important events to society. That ability is particularly invaluable in gut-wrenching times like today. After discussing with those directly affected by the attacks, who had dozens of questions, we realized that prediction markets could give them the answers they needed in ways TV news and X could not.”

They spoke to some people … somewhere? And decided this is best for them. Somehow.

We’re going to need a lot more walls to throw motherfuckers against.

Please stay on topic in the comments. People who post off-topic comments are obnoxious hustlebros.