Statement on the Mainstreaming of Prediction Markets for War and Genocide

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security is deeply disgusted by the legitimization and mainstreaming of “prediction markets” for conflicts, especially in the context of the current war in Iran. Prediction market platforms offer users the ability to place bets on wars and other global crises with the promise of substantial gains for winning bets. Those who correctly guess what will happen or when something will happen stand to gain large pools of money. The longer the odds, the larger the reward. After the 28 February U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, for example, bettors on Polymarket collectively made over $1.5 million on wagers betting that the U.S. would strike Iran on that date. The legitimization of prediction markets actively upholds corporate complicity in war and genocide and invites private individuals to become complicit, as well, by potentially tying their own financial interests to the outbreak of conflict or the success of a genocidal process. Prediction markets have become a new, modernized example of dehumanization, which is a central and necessary component of genocidal processes.

Although the owners of prediction markets like to distance themselves from the gambling industry, prediction markets are gambling repackaged. Platforms offering the opportunity to “buy and sell contracts based on the outcomes of events,” such as Kalshi and Polymarket, have branded themselves as “markets,” but these platforms are very clearly gambling websites. Regardless of how they wish to present themselves, they allow people to place bets on outcomes — the very definition of gambling.

The large Iran war winnings have raised questions about insider trading. The Atlantic detailed how most of the bets on the U.S. striking Iran were placed just the day prior to the U.S.-Israeli strikes. The same suspicious phenomenon occurred the day preceding the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, although that time only one gambler profited. The Atlantic points out that insider trading that exposes planned military activity poses an obvious risk to national security and could result in pre-emptive, deadly strikes in similar scenarios. Nevertheless, the war markets have continued to operate throughout this new conflict in the Middle East, which has resulted in more concerns about insider trading from within the White House.

Following a large number of suspicious bets on oil markets just 15 minutes before President Trump announced a pause in hostilities against Iran on 23 March, the White House sent a letter to staffers on 24 March instructing them not to use insider information to place bets on prediction markets. Putting aside the fact that staffers have to be instructed not to commit crimes, which is no longer even surprising in current times, this letter appears to have been ineffective.

In the hours prior to President Trump’s announcement of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire on 7 April 2026, at least 50 brand new accounts on Polymarket placed substantial bets in favour of the President announcing a ceasefire. These accounts bet that a ceasefire would be reached in spite of the fact that President Trump had just that morning announced his intentions to commit genocide against the people of Iran. According to the Guardian, one of these accounts profited $200,000 from this bet.

Kalshi, one of the two top prediction markets, has distinguished itself from Polymarket as the more ethical of the two. It has drawn a hard line at bets on the death of an individual, refusing to pay out winnings from a wager that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be killed in an airstrike and reimbursing those who had made bets. Speaking on this decision, Kalshi’s communications chief Elizabeth Diana, said “[p]rofiting from death is not allowed on Kalshi, and that’s a good thing.”

It is unclear whether Kalshi does not allow for bets on war and death on the basis of a moral imperative or simply because, as a U.S.-based company, it is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which prohibits such bets. Polymarket, which is also based in the U.S., restricts certain bets geographically instead to comply with this regulation.

Given the existence of such regulation in the United States, bets on war and death are meant to be off-limits for anyone accessing any prediction market from the U.S. However, U.S.-located users are able to sidestep these regulations easily through the use of VPNs. The news media coverage on this issue has been largely silent on the existence of regulations in other countries.

On the whole, the reporting on this subject has largely been focused on the mounting evidence of insider trading on prediction markets in the U.S. The Lemkin Institute would like to direct the reader’s attention to the broader ethical concerns connected to war and death gambling. In addition to the bets which have been scrutinized as possible sites of insider trading, Polymarket has allowed users to bet on the following questions – among many – surrounding the conflict in the Middle East: will the Iranian regime fall by April 30? Will the U.S. invade Iran before 2027? When will Israel enter Beirut?

The war in Iran is not the first example of unethical bets on prediction markets. Over the course of their short existence, instead of ensuring that their betting sites are regulated by even the most basic of ethical standards, the CEOs of real-life gambling platforms like Polymarket have allowed the most heinous of bets to be placed, such as bets on the number of deportations that President Trump’s administration will carry out a calendar year; when Israel will next strike Gaza and Lebanon; whether Israel will annex Gaza; whether a famine would be declared in Gaza; the possibility of military engagement in or invasion of Venezuela by the US; and the outcomes of many battles in Ukraine.

These are bets on whether living and breathing human beings will be killed, torn from their homes and families, starved to death, or stripped of their rights. They are also bets that create enormous conflicts of interest among powerful people who may be using these platforms.

On the February 5, 2025 episode of the Wall Street Journal’s “Your Money Briefing Podcast,” reporter Alexander Osipovich spoke glibly about how some critics found betting on death to be “ghoulish” and described bets on the possibility of certain genocidal actions by Israel as “edgy.” This is how desensitization to genocide and its monetization operate in late stage capitalism.

The Lemkin Institute finds it irresponsible to present betting on the deaths of innocent women, men, and children as “edgy” and not as categorically despicable.

We at the Lemkin Institute would like those who partake in and promote such activities to be aware that they are gambling on the deaths of other human beings. For those familiar with Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games book series, prediction markets starkly resemble the way members of the Capitol bet on the victors of the Hunger Games. When this happens in fiction, audiences decry the epitome of injustice being played out on the page or screen. We are now witnessing it happen in real life without consequences. It is hardly surprising that this is considered acceptable, given that corporations are already allowed to profit off of genocide with impunity.

Genocide gambling is a gruesome extension of the already shameful monetization structures around genocide which operate as part of the global military-industrial complex.

As detailed in the 2025 report from the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, corporate entities across the globe directly profit from the unfolding of genocide in Palestine. They quietly bankroll the genocide of Palestinians through heavy investment in Israeli arms companies and treasury bonds, while publicly declaring themselves to be staunch upholders of ethical values. Their profit margins are dependent on the continuation of the horrors inflicted by Israel on the Palestinian people.

These corporations, which range from arms manufacturers and banks to universities and charities, are complicit in genocide and have made it clear that human lives are worth less to them than lining their own pockets.

The monetization of genocide and consequential complicity of corporations is not unique to the Palestinian case, but rather standard practice in the modern world. Similar patterns of corporate investment and profit from the systematic violent erasure of a people are present across multiple ongoing conflicts and genocides. For example, the role of the U.A.E’s gold mining in Sudan, Meta's well-documented role in the genocide against the Rohingya, Apple's role in mining in Democratic Republic of Congo, and China’s pursuit of oil in conflict-affected areas on the African continent. Prediction markets not only engage in corporate complicity, but also encourage everyday citizens to engage in the same behavior and to profit off genocide and conflict similarly to the way corporations like Apple and Meta do.

The Lemkin Institute would like to emphasize that individuals betting on the outcomes of war and genocide are just as guilty and complicit in genocide as are the platforms hosting those bets. This is simply a new way for individuals to amass wealth off the backs of innocent victims.

Dehumanization is a central component of genocidal ideology and the genocidal processes. It serves to justify the killing and erasure of a group and sheds the perpetrators of guilt by warping the public’s view of the victims, who become nameless, faceless, unimportant, and unworthy of life. In many cases, dehumanization is a precursor to genocide, setting the stage for future unspeakable acts. The perpetrator often continues to reinforce dehumanization throughout the genocidal process and afterward, in order to justify ongoing genocidal violence and to prevent culpability for past harms.

The new conflict in the Middle East is the first conflict the world has witnessed for which people profited off of predictions right from the start. The more gamified conflicts become, the less human the victims seem. In a world where President Trump’s threat of genocide passed with no reaction from the vast majority of world leaders or even from the United Nations, this gamification contributes to an already alarming level of normalization of genocide.

Betting on genocidal violence, invasions, battles for inhabited cities, and deportations are all clear examples of dehumanization. The gambler ceases to acknowledge the humanity of the Ukrainian families whose homes have become battlefields, for example, or the Palestinians trapped in Gaza who are starving to death, and sees them instead as no more than horses on a racetrack or stock numbers on the board. The gambler’s joy and sorrow are not linked to the reality captured within the bet but rather to the winnings or losses they incurred as a consequence. In fact, if a gambler were to bet in favour of someone’s death, they would be sorrowed by that person or group’s survival.

The Lemkin Institute denounces any bets on prediction markets linked to war, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Prediction markets serve as a grave foreshadowing of the escalation of dehumanization and the widespread justification of genocidal processes rapidly taking place in late stage capitalism. The precedent set by companies like Polymarket and those who choose to engage in it reduces human beings into bounty-marked chess pieces. What is "harmless" political betting to someone behind a laptop screen can easily become the genocidal slaughter of large numbers of people that we see in daily headlines.