For context (plausibly Mac already knows this): At least in the U.S., real-money prediction markets are apparently legal so long as the profits from successful bets do not go to the bettors (e.g. because they go to charity instead): see Bet2Give. As I understand it, Bet2Give didn’t become popular enough to be sustainable — perhaps because not enough players were motivated to participate given that they couldn’t actually receive monetary rewards for successful bets.
For context (plausibly Mac already knows this): At least in the U.S., real-money prediction markets are apparently legal so long as the profits from successful bets do not go to the bettors (e.g. because they go to charity instead): see Bet2Give. As I understand it, Bet2Give didn’t become popular enough to be sustainable — perhaps because not enough players were motivated to participate given that they couldn’t actually receive monetary rewards for successful bets.
My suspicion is that prediction markets on ‘boring’ topics will only take off if they are heavily subsidized.