“If a society cannot find a way to deal with something that is actively melting it from within, then that is a terminal symptom.” — Finn Brunton

A couple of days ago, Donald Trump Jr.’s investment firm, 1789 Capital, led a billion-dollar funding round in Polymarket. As today’s guest, the fintech expert Finn Brunton, notes in an insightful Harper’s essay this month, prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi are transforming America into an always-on gambling den. No wonder, then, that the Trumps are such gleeful participants in what Brunton calls “the casinoification of modern life.” From the father’s Taj Mahal in Atlantic City to the son’s Taj on everyone’s phone. “Trade on Anything” as Kalshi promises (or threatens) us.

In “The Chaos Machine,” Brunton introduces us to two visionaries of prediction marketplaces. On the one hand, there’s the idealistic Robin Hanson, who dreamed of prediction markets as machines for truth with experts betting real money and generating trustworthy odds about the future. And then there’s Tim May, a self-described crypto-anarchist, the “bad guy,” according to Brunton, who invented the idea of BlackNet as an anonymous marketplace designed to destroy institutional trust from within. Brunton warns that today’s prediction marketplaces have bet on May, rather than Hanson. They are insider-trading machines where the smart money is always on the other side of the table.

It’s no wonder that Donald Trump Jr.’s investment firm is called 1789 Capital. By investing in prediction marketplaces, they are accelerating an anarchic French rather than institutionally trustworthy American-style revolution. These BlackNet operations are both the cause and effect of today’s destruction of trust. Polymarket is the polycrisis. It is cashing in on chaos.

Five Takeaways

•       From Papal Bets to Polymarket. Prediction markets are centuries old — people have wagered on wars, weather, elections, and popes — but the modern idea belongs to the economist Robin Hanson, the hedgehog (per Isaiah Berlin) with one big idea: turn expert opinion into a market. Since experts are famously bad at prediction (Philip Tetlock’s research), make them bet: specify the outcome precisely, let the odds be anonymous, and people must wager what they really believe rather than what fits in or stands out. Hanson’s markets were meant for specialists — internal corporate markets synthesizing insider knowledge into actionable odds — not Surowiecki’s cow-weighing crowds. However disputed, Brunton insists, it was “a fundamentally positive idea”: a machine for honest consensus about the future.

•       The Casinoification of Modern Life. Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan credits Hanson outright — then flips him. The modern slogan: “monetize any difference in opinion.” The sportsbook has been absorbed and joined by elections, crude prices, and missile strikes — anything anyone will bet on. The tragedy, per Brunton: an idea about synthesizing expertise became “the spread of gambling into every aspect of contemporary living.” And the experts who do bet are now effectively insider traders — a possibility Hanson, contrarian to the last, actually welcomes, but which has made the platforms “rip-off machines in which people who know what’s going to happen… exploit suckers.” The data is unambiguous: a handful of whales win; everyone else loses. The platforms’ defense — we just give people what they want — is, Brunton notes, the classic play of buying time against regulation, perfected by YouTube a generation ago. Meanwhile New York’s subway ads sell the flattering fantasy that you’re not gambling; you’re deploying your sophisticated read of the news. No wonder the Trumps are gleeful participants — from the father’s Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, as Andrew puts it, to the son’s Taj on everyone’s phone.

•       Tim May’s BlackNet. The essay’s second character is the late Tim May: cypherpunk pioneer, gleeful provocateur, “idealist of the dark web” in Andrew’s phrase — and, Brunton says flatly, “a bad guy” whose politics were racist and violent. May’s gift was seeing the worst use of every technology, and his masterwork was BlackNet: an anonymous marketplace for secrets — exams, health records, trade secrets, classified plans — whose deeper purpose was to destroy institutional trust from within. Create a world where no one inside any institution knows whom to trust (a Leninist move, Andrew observed), and the institutions dissolve. Brunton’s thesis in one line: prediction markets present themselves as the fulfillment of Hanson’s vision, but they are really the fulfillment of May’s. The evidence is already tabloid fact: the operator of Trump’s teleprompter betting on the words of future speeches; a US soldier arrested in April for wagering on operations he knew were coming.

•       Polymarket & the Polycrisis. These platforms are worse than casinos: at least the Nevada State Gaming Commission checks that the roulette wheel isn’t rigged, while prediction markets are “so thoroughly crooked and corrupt in their current setup” that Brunton — who still cherishes Hanson’s original promise — doesn’t know where regulation would begin. Andrew’s coinage-pairing landed: Polymarket and Adam Tooze’s polycrisis are siblings — nested, interlinked crises producing unmanageable volatility, with betting as a way of “interacting with a future that otherwise feels completely out of your control.” Hence Brunton’s students on Polymarket: not just addictive app design but “a weirdly rational decision” for a generation with no faith in pensions, home ownership, or the long-term dollar. Lambos or food stamps. The house rule stands: the smart money is always on the other side of the table — and the winners-take-all arithmetic mirrors the broader digital economy.

•       Betting on Hanson Over May. Prediction markets, Brunton argues, are the heirs of crypto twice over: the next stop for fevered capital, and — like the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial, which horrifies even the Cato Institute — a mechanism for relatively untraceable corruption, a natural extension of the family casino business. Andrew’s twist on the firm’s name: 1789 Capital is accelerating an anarchic French rather than institutionally trustworthy American-style revolution. His warning is the episode’s pull quote: platforms designed to dissolve institutional trust, monetize interference with journalism, and sow paranoia are a solvent, and a society that cannot deal with what is melting it from within shows “a terminal symptom.” But he ends with a fix, and it is refreshingly concrete: KYC. Impose the know-your-customer identity rules we demand of banks, and “you immediately eliminate 95% of the bad actors” — official insider bets become visible, and the markets might even get smarter. A partisan of anonymous speech, Brunton draws the line at anonymous betting on information. Andrew’s closer: he’s still betting on Hanson over May — Kant over Hobbes. And his verdict: Polymarket is the polycrisis. It is cashing in on chaos.

About the Guest

Finn Brunton is Professor of Science and Technology Studies and of Cinema and Digital Media at the University of C...