Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period.Sep 6, 2025Pluralistic: Stock buybacks are stock swindles (06 Sep 2025)
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/06/computer-says-huh/
@molly0xfff and that's just the reported fraud where people actually pressed charges...
"The prediction market Polymarket has skyrocketed into mainstream consciousness during the 2024 U.S. elections, with the platform reporting that users have placed $2.7 billion in bets over whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will be elected president in early November.
But analysts at two crypto research firms have found evidence of rampant wash trading on Polymarket, even as its odds have been shared widely across social media and mainstream media outlets. Donald Trump currently has a 67% chance of winning, according to the platform.
In separate investigations completed by the blockchain firms Chaos Labs and Inca Digital and shared exclusively with Fortune, analysts found that Polymarket activity exhibited signs of wash trading, a form of market manipulation where shares are bought and sold, often simultaneously and repeatedly, to create a false impression of volume and activity. Chaos Labs found that wash trading constituted around one-third of trading volume on Polymarket’s presidential market, while Inca Digital found that a “significant portion of the volume” on the market could be attributed to potential wash trading, according to its report.
While other prediction markets, including Kalshi and Robinhood, have launched in the U.S. since a pivotal court decision in September legalized electoral betting, Polymarket remains the largest platform by far, thanks in part to its crypto-native design and offshore operations. Polymarket remains inaccessible to U.S. investors. Still, with less than a week until Election Day, the suspicious activity on Polymarket raises questions about the accuracy of the site, which, its 26-year-old founder Shayne Coplan has touted, can “demystify the real-world events that matter most to you.”"
https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/10/30/polymarket-trump-election-crypto-wash-trading-researchers/
#USA #Politics #PresidentialElection2024 #PredictionMarkets #Polymarket #Crypto #Cryptocurrencies #WashTrading
#WashTrading #NFTs #Crypto #Cryptocurrencies #Fraud: "If you've heard of wash-trading, it's probably something you picked up during the NFT bubble, which was a cesspit of illegal wash-trading. Remember all those eye-popping NFT sales? It was just grifters with multiple wallets, buying NFTs from themselves, making it seem like there was this huge, white-hot market for monkey JPEGs. Wash-trading.
Turns out that crypto really did democratize finance…fraud.
Wash-trading has been illegal for a century, but brokerages have invented modern variations on the theme that are legal-ish, and the most lucrative versions of these scams are only available to billionaires, through companies like Goldman Sachs.
There are a bunch of these variations, but they all boil down to this: there are lots of ways to sell an asset and buy it again, while making it look like you bought a different asset. Like, say you're invested in Chinese tech companies through an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that bundles together "all the Top Chinese tech stocks.""
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego
That way you'd have the "loss" from selling the cinema stocks, but you'd *still* have the stocks.
That's called "#WashTrading," and Congress promptly banned it. If you've heard of wash-trading, it's probably something you picked up during the #NFT bubble, which was a cesspit of illegal wash-trading.
12/
Don Marti
Hứa Văn Tài
Kevin Karhan 
Miguel Afonso Caetano
Cory Doctorow
Jason Yip
gaby_wald