A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gn93292do

Polymarket crypto gambler made $436,000 on Maduro capture

The account placed a $32,000 wager just before Trump announced the Venezuelan leader was in US custody.

can i bet on when prediction markets will collapse due to rampant insider bets?
Insider bets are literally the purpose of prediction markets.
How? Then why would non-insiders bet? The classic prediction market is guessing the weight of an elephant (or some animal) at a circus. The average guess of the crowd will actually get very close. But if someone knows the actual weight, no one would play.

The entire idea of a prediction market is to aggregate insider information. If you don't have insiders, you're not doing predictions, you're just doing gambling.

Granted: that's what almost every Polymarket user is actually doing. But that's a bad thing. The insider whales are the only ones actually using it for its intended purpose.

If you don't have insiders, you're not doing predictions, you're just doing gambling.

Non-insiders can't make predictions? I'm not into betting as a hobby but I make minor bets with myself or friends on topics with clear win-loss conditions in areas of politics where I consider myself knowledgeable. I'm pretty good at it since I find it easy to distinguish between results I'd like to see vs what I expect to actually happen.

They can, they're just not doing anything they couldn't do at a blackjack table.
I don't think you have a real point here, and are just using pejorative language about gambling to suggest one. Your thesis seems to be that only insiders can make valid predictions, which is nonsense.

I'm saying that most people --- and functionally all the people who feel victimized by insiders --- on Polymarket are gambling, not predicting. I feel pretty comfortable with how sound that argument is. I agree that there are users of prediction markets who are neither "insiders" (for whatever definition of that you want to use) nor gamblers, but they're participating with the understanding that they're bidding alongside insiders. And they're a tiny cohort.

If it helps, draw a line between "entertainment" and "enterprise", and use whatever term you like for uses on the "entertainment" side of the line. Either way: it has stark implications for the notion of insider impropriety.