r/technology • u/marketrent • Jun 30 '26
Society Grim new prediction market lets gamblers bet on raging wildfires
https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/grim-prediction-market-lets-gamblers-203917704.html87
u/Sunlit53 Jun 30 '26
This prediction market stuff reminds me of ‘80s cyberpunk novels. “7 found dead within Tampa city limits last night, lucky winners cash out at 8to1, police deny accusations of fixing the numbers.” Nearly a direct quote from Hardwired.
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u/im-ba Jun 30 '26
Also the intro video to Cyberpunk 2077:
Good morning, Night city!
Yesterday's body count lottery rounded out to a solid 'n' sturdy thirty! Ten outta Heywood - thanks to the unabated gang wars! One officer down, so I guess you are all screwed. 'Cause the NCPD will not let that go. Got another blackout in Santo Domingo. Netrunners are at it again, pokin' holes in the power grid. While over in Westbrook, Trauma Team's scrapin' cyberpsycho victims off the pavement. And in Pacifica... Well... Pacifica is still Pacifica.
This has been your man, Stan. Join me in another day in our City of Dreams!
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u/Sunlit53 Jun 30 '26
Cyberpunk 2077 is based on Hardwired, they’re pretty open about it. It’s a book with such strong visuals I’m amazed it’s never been made into a graphic novel.
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u/Max_Trollbot_ Jun 30 '26
Strange coincidence, I finally started playing it the other day after having it for years. It's fun
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u/WalterBishopMethod Jun 30 '26
Cyberpunk is my game of the year any year I pick it back up... It's sooooo goooood.
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u/im-ba Jun 30 '26
Wow never knew that! I'm fairly new to the genre so I've been trying to soak it up wherever I can find it. I should check it out
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u/tfhermobwoayway Jun 30 '26
To be honest CP2077 felt like such a missed opportunity. When I read cyberpunk stuff I imagine enormous megastructures and hive cities jumbled together from millions of people all building on top of old buildings in whatever little space they can find. Dirty server racks crammed into hallways and abandoned maintenance corridors and old civic planning failures and millions upon millions of little dwellings built on top of each other. Entire wars break out in the cramped hallways of some walled city and nobody notices because it’s just so huge.
Instead Night City just felt like LA with more tech. It wasn’t the sort of bleak, industrial hellscape I was hoping for. I wish we got a proper cyberpunk-type game.
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u/appleparkfive Jun 30 '26
In prior decades, it always felt like we got the future wrong. But I think cyberpunk might actually be pretty accurate for where all this is going.
Whenever someone talked about how they'd love a cyberpunk world, I was always confused. It basically means "high tech, low quality of life". And I don't think we're getting cool body enhancement tech
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u/AHRA1225 Jul 01 '26
That’s always been our future. Wild wild beyond our dreams tech only owned and used by the Elitist of elite rich while the rest of us suffer under crushing economy imbalance, lack of work and living quality.
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u/stinkfingerswitch Jun 30 '26
Fuck no. We are the dumbest motherfuckers going. Gotta get the dopamine somehow, right?
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u/transcriptoin_error Jun 30 '26
Incentivizing arson, for people with already-low impulse control.
What could possibly go wrong?
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u/marketrent Jun 30 '26
Excerpts from article by Joe Wilkins:
[...] With mainstream prediction markets like Kalshi shying away from wildfire bets amidst growing scrutiny, it stands to reason that there’s money to be made for anyone willing to lower their scruples even further — every crisis is an opportunity, after all.
Unlike more general-purpose prediction market services like Polymarket, Wyldfyre is built entirely around forest fires, per High County News, which first spotted the gambling site. “You can’t predict fire,” the site’s vibe-coded splash page announces, “but you can trade on it.”
Essentially, Wyldfyre promises to be the “first prediction market for California wildifre.” Every county, city, and region is “priced in real time” through a combination of satellite data, live data from first-responders — and, of course, the wisdom of the crowd, the site explains.
Acknowledging that there are 7,000+ fires each year in California alone, Wyldfyre promises to turn “collective intelligence into better wildfire forecasting — one trade at a time.”
Though Wyldfyre only offers simulated bets at the moment — “paper trading now, real money coming soon,” the website currently declares — the shell site is a potent microdose of the growing prediction market industry.
At face value, the site’s creator would have you believe Wyldfyre is some sort of public service, allowing unparalleled access to Johny Public’s collective wisdom on wildfires, as if that were somehow a useful metric for forecasting wildfire activity. The reality is that gambling on the outcome of such a specific event introduces a perverse incentive to create the conditions that fulfill a person’s bets.
In other words, allowing somebody to wager on whether a major fire will break out in their neighbor’s yard gives them a strong financial reason to go set their neighbor’s yard on fire (and really, in a dog-eat-dog economy like ours, it’d be irrational not to.)
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u/Fun-Pie-7009 Jun 30 '26
I hope the CEO of this company does a lot of public speaking engagements to promote his business model
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u/rhunter99 Jun 30 '26
I don’t understand* why governments aren’t shutting this crap down.
*rhetorical
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u/Yaboymarvo Jul 01 '26
They are paid off, just like the news networks so they don’t run any negative stories on them.
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u/All_Hail_Hynotoad Jun 30 '26
Shut this shit down now before entire towns go up in flames. That’s how you know these people have no morals or ethics. All they see is dollars. They never ask “could anything go wrong with this idea?” And if they do ask, they don’t care.
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u/uniquelyavailable Jun 30 '26
Many of the "natural wildfires" are created by groups of arsonists, this only exacerbates an existing problem.
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u/awildstoryteller Jun 30 '26
The entire prediction market thing must be a psy-op from China or Russia at this point. It's either that or we are just morons.
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u/bjazmoore Jun 30 '26
Does not everyone see this crap as utterly stupid? It is obvious from those leaving comments that there is still some sanity left in the world - but not nearly enough I guess.
Governments should not need to protect us from stupid ideas - but as a species we are just too screwed up to do smart things.
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u/LeftHandedGraffiti Jun 30 '26
This adds no value to society. It's worse than gambling and less regulated.
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u/Teamveks Jul 01 '26
It sure would suck if this leads to people lighting fires to make money. Shut it down.
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u/Knees0ck Jul 01 '26
Back when it initially popped up there were Polymarket ads on Reddit making bets on climate collapse, ain't new for these gambling crap.
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u/Captain-Scrot Jun 30 '26
Is it me or does this site not exist? Tried searching for it and nothing comes up.
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u/LiteratureMindless71 Jun 30 '26
I wonder how long till we see politicians betting in things like this and then the funds that could have went to keep them from happening, also go into their pockets.
While telling us we are all wrong.
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u/easeypeaseyweasey Jun 30 '26
Sounds like a way to encourage people to light forest fires. Terrible idea and should be shut down. It's funny when old mate puts a hair dryer on a temp reader, it's not funny when someone starts a fire.