Opinion articles present diverse viewpoints and do not represent the stance of “WEB3+”.
The recent hot topic in the cryptocurrency community is the investigation faced by Taiwanese individuals participating in the “Taiwan 2024 Presidential Election Results” on the decentralized prediction platform, Polymarket. They are being investigated for gambling offenses.
However, this assertion contradicts my understanding because Polymarket is a prediction platform that relies on the collective intelligence of participants to make rational assessments of value for predictions.
It utilizes the prices generated by six stocks in the investment market (the victory or defeat of Lai Ching-te, Hou Yu-ih, and Ko Wen-je) to reflect the market’s probability of future events.
️ Recap:
Prediction of the presidential election on the blockchain may be illegal! Police have interviewed 17 “predictors”, but what is Polymarket?
What sets Polymarket apart from online gambling platforms?
I will explain the differences between Polymarket and online gambling platforms in four points.
First, gambling is a crime committed against the opponent, with the objective of making the gamblers lose money by making incorrect bets. The gamblers’ goal is to predict the outcome and make the opponent lose money. However, on the Polymarket platform, all participants aim to predict the outcome, not to earn money.
Taking the presidential election as an example, participants buy any stock to improve the simulated investment market and achieve a more accurate prediction of the future presidential election results. In analogy to prediction methods, each Polymarket participant’s role is similar to each card in tarot or each character in the I Ching, existing to make more accurate predictions, which is fundamentally different from gambling.
Second, gambling emphasizes committing and not retracting before the outcome is determined. Polymarket is completely different as it aims to make the most accurate prediction of future events through the buying and selling of products in the investment market. Therefore, after purchasing any future event on Polymarket, the market allows you to freely sell the stocks related to that event before it happens. This is also a clear distinction from gambling.
Third, Polymarket is similar in nature to the “Futures Event Exchange” at the National Chengchi University, which was not prosecuted in 2015. According to the principle of “same event, same treatment,” the Polymarket community should not face prosecution.
Fourth, does Polymarket involve “property”? According to practical interpretations, the answer should be negative. The Central Bank mentioned in the reference material before the press conference of the Central Bank’s board of directors on December 16, 2021, that “stablecoins, although emphasizing price stability as an alternative virtual asset, are not actually stable and do not play a core role as money.”
Hence, stablecoins do not have the functions of payment and recognition of value like traditional currencies. Therefore, unless Polymarket provides an exchange mechanism where stablecoins can be converted into property or other assets, the constitutive element of “gambling property” in gambling offenses clearly does not apply.
Returning to Polymarket, this platform does not have any exchange functionality, so participation in the Polymarket community’s predictions clearly has no relevance to “gambling offenses.”
The Taiwanese judicial system has made correct judgments in the past regarding “Futures Event Exchanges.” It will be worth observing how the judicial system will evaluate the “decentralized Futures Event Exchanges” emerging in the wave of technology.
Opinion articles present diverse viewpoints and do not represent the stance of “WEB3+”.
Proofreading editor: Gao Jingyuan