📋 摘要
預測市場面臨內部交易問題，這已成為其規模化發展的關鍵制約因素。儘管信息流通有助價格發現，但缺乏透明度和信任機制導致散戶投資者退出，進而削弱市場流動性。近期葡萄牙禁用主要預測平台、利用機密信息獲利等案例為監管機構提供了干預理由。 公開股票市場之所以具備巨大流動性優勢，核心在於標準化信息披露建立的信任基礎。預測市場若要實現可持續增長，必須建立類似的誠信規範。解決方案包括在交易時要求披露是否擁有重大非公開信息，建立違規責任追溯機制。 隨著主要機構陸續推出預測市場產品，信任將成為核心競爭優勢。機構資本基於受託責任關注市場誠信，散戶需要相信遊戲規則的公平性。將誠信視為產品優先級而非監管被動要求的平台，將構建更持久的流動性並吸引更多參與者。
📄 完整內容
Prediction Markets Won't Scale Without Trust
Insider trading isn't a values question. It's a growth constraint.
Santiago Roel Santos
Mar 06, 2026
10
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I have a stake in the success of these platforms. That’s exactly why I’m writing this.
The prediction market pitch is genuinely compelling: crowds aggregate information, prices reflect reality, and markets are better arbiters of truth than any commentator or expert ever will be. I believe that. What I don’t believe is that the industry can keep sidestepping its most obvious flaw and expect it not to matter.
That flaw is insider trading.
Public equities have more liquidity than any private market by orders of magnitude, and that gap exists for a simple reason: trust. When everyone operates from the same standardized, audited information, however imperfect, participants show up. Retail investors, institutions, pension funds, they trade because they believe the game isn’t fundamentally rigged against them. The disclosures aren’t perfect and the enforcement isn’t airtight, but the intent is legible, and legible intent is enough to sustain confidence.
Prediction markets haven’t made that same commitment. Not yet. Closing that gap is the most important thing this industry can do.
The counterargument deserves a fair hearing. Informed traders push prices toward truth; that’s the mechanism working as designed. It’s a coherent argument, and smart people make it sincerely. But it confuses epistemic value with commercial viability, and those are different things.
A retail participant who suspects they’re trading against someone who already knows the answer doesn’t stop to admire the price discovery. They leave. And when enough of them leave, the prices lose the depth that makes them meaningful in the first place. The academic argument is sound; the product built on top of it is not. You can be right about the theory and wrong about the market.
The cost of inaction is no longer hypothetical. Portugal banned a major prediction platform after millions of euros traded in the narrow window between private exit poll circulation and public results. A new account bet on a foreign leader’s removal hours before a classified military operation, walking away with a twelve-fold return. Two individuals were criminally indicted for using state secrets to time trades around military strikes. Each incident hands regulators a justification and skeptics a headline. The platforms with the most liquidity have the most to lose from each one.
The fix, at its most basic, is not complicated. A single disclosure at trade entry:
if you have material non-public information about this event, or the ability to directly influence its outcome, trading is prohibited under our terms
. A single line, requiring one acknowledgment, won’t catch everyone. But it creates a paper trail, shifts liability, and does the most important thing of all: it establishes a norm.
Markets have always run on norms as much as rules. The SEC’s insider trading regime has gaps you could drive a truck through, and securities markets function anyway, because the norm is clear enough that most participants internalize it without being forced to. Prediction markets need the same foundation. The hard definitional questions, where exactly the line falls between a well-informed trader and a genuine insider, can be worked out over time, the same way case law always works itself out. But that process must start somewhere, and starting it voluntarily is always better than waiting for a regulator to start it for you.
In a world where every major player eventually launches a prediction market, trust becomes the primary differentiator. Not features, not fees: trust. Institutional capital has fiduciary reasons to care about market integrity. Retail participants need to believe the game is worth playing. The platforms that treat integrity as a product priority, rather than a regulatory eventuality, will build more durable liquidity and capture the participants who simply won’t show up to a market they don’t trust.
Insider trading is a growth constraint. Not a values question, not a philosophical debate, but a constraint on how large and how liquid these markets can become. The platforms that understand this earliest will be the ones that scale.
10
2
2
Share
Insider trading isn't a values question. It's a growth constraint.
Santiago Roel Santos
Mar 06, 2026
10
2
2
Share
I have a stake in the success of these platforms. That’s exactly why I’m writing this.
The prediction market pitch is genuinely compelling: crowds aggregate information, prices reflect reality, and markets are better arbiters of truth than any commentator or expert ever will be. I believe that. What I don’t believe is that the industry can keep sidestepping its most obvious flaw and expect it not to matter.
That flaw is insider trading.
Public equities have more liquidity than any private market by orders of magnitude, and that gap exists for a simple reason: trust. When everyone operates from the same standardized, audited information, however imperfect, participants show up. Retail investors, institutions, pension funds, they trade because they believe the game isn’t fundamentally rigged against them. The disclosures aren’t perfect and the enforcement isn’t airtight, but the intent is legible, and legible intent is enough to sustain confidence.
Prediction markets haven’t made that same commitment. Not yet. Closing that gap is the most important thing this industry can do.
The counterargument deserves a fair hearing. Informed traders push prices toward truth; that’s the mechanism working as designed. It’s a coherent argument, and smart people make it sincerely. But it confuses epistemic value with commercial viability, and those are different things.
A retail participant who suspects they’re trading against someone who already knows the answer doesn’t stop to admire the price discovery. They leave. And when enough of them leave, the prices lose the depth that makes them meaningful in the first place. The academic argument is sound; the product built on top of it is not. You can be right about the theory and wrong about the market.
The cost of inaction is no longer hypothetical. Portugal banned a major prediction platform after millions of euros traded in the narrow window between private exit poll circulation and public results. A new account bet on a foreign leader’s removal hours before a classified military operation, walking away with a twelve-fold return. Two individuals were criminally indicted for using state secrets to time trades around military strikes. Each incident hands regulators a justification and skeptics a headline. The platforms with the most liquidity have the most to lose from each one.
The fix, at its most basic, is not complicated. A single disclosure at trade entry:
if you have material non-public information about this event, or the ability to directly influence its outcome, trading is prohibited under our terms
. A single line, requiring one acknowledgment, won’t catch everyone. But it creates a paper trail, shifts liability, and does the most important thing of all: it establishes a norm.
Markets have always run on norms as much as rules. The SEC’s insider trading regime has gaps you could drive a truck through, and securities markets function anyway, because the norm is clear enough that most participants internalize it without being forced to. Prediction markets need the same foundation. The hard definitional questions, where exactly the line falls between a well-informed trader and a genuine insider, can be worked out over time, the same way case law always works itself out. But that process must start somewhere, and starting it voluntarily is always better than waiting for a regulator to start it for you.
In a world where every major player eventually launches a prediction market, trust becomes the primary differentiator. Not features, not fees: trust. Institutional capital has fiduciary reasons to care about market integrity. Retail participants need to believe the game is worth playing. The platforms that treat integrity as a product priority, rather than a regulatory eventuality, will build more durable liquidity and capture the participants who simply won’t show up to a market they don’t trust.
Insider trading is a growth constraint. Not a values question, not a philosophical debate, but a constraint on how large and how liquid these markets can become. The platforms that understand this earliest will be the ones that scale.
10
2
2
Share
文檔 ID：
2761d0e6-0832-4b1a-b1b9-81ade3d60889
向量 ID：
doc_2761d0e6-0832-4b1a-b1b9-81ade3d60889
建立時間：
2026-03-10 17:10:35.545364
更新時間：
2026-03-10 17:10:35.545364