What does it mean when everything is a gamble? This is a question the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI), formally established under the Gambling Regulation Act 2024, needs to consider.

The pandemic era changed gambling. With in-person gambling restricted, online gambling grew. During that time, levels of traditional sports betting also decreased, because little sport was happening, and the use of online casino-style games and other kinds of betting expanded. Today, one of the liveliest novel arenas for betting is prediction markets – including the platforms Polymarket, founded during the pandemic in 2020, and Kalshi.

These markets operate through “event contracts”. Polymarket uses cryptocurrency. On Kalshi, which is limited to US residents, you can bet regular currency. This means a person betting buys a share in the outcome of an event. A user can also sell a bet as it’s ongoing, and as the value of the prediction goes up and down, as though it were a stock.

Offering the opportunity, as Kalshi puts it, to “trade on anything”, the menu of things to gamble on is virtually limitless. Current Kalshi markets include whether Elon Musk will purchase Ryanair. Will the Rotten Tomatoes score for the new blockbuster Project Hail Mary be above 94? Who will win the 23rd season of Top Chef? You can bet on the highest or lowest temperature in a city on a given day, or on how many barrels will be released by the US’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve by April 1st. The trading volume on whether........

© The Irish Times