This Wildfire Prediction Market is Crazy

Today's FULL PDS here: Watch the full Daily DeFranco Show: https://www.youtube.com/@PhilipDeFranco?sub_confirmation=1 Get More News Clips: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpLB7kBu9O5dbBKhaIOmqcQ?sub_confirmation=1 We should also talk about the outrage around a new platform called Wyldfyre. Because it is a prediction market specifically focused on wildfires in California. Its slogan is “You can’t predict fire, but you can trade on it.” And it is positioning itself as a new way to monitor and track fire behavior, with its site explaining: “Prediction markets harness the wisdom of crowds to surface what models and satellites might miss. Wyldfyre turns collective intelligence into better wildfire forecasting — one trade at a time.” It has a map of hotspots and ongoing fires and allows you to wager on whether or not more acres will burn in a certain period of time. And in its fine print, it does note that right now, these wagers are not real money, it is simulated trading, but multiple reports say that the ability to bet with real money is in fact coming soon. And this has prompted a ton of concern, because even though betting on storms and weather is not new, fire is not like rain or wind, someone can start a fire/ In fact, the vast majority of wildfires are caused by humans in some way. So you had a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service saying: “Systems that tie financial gain to wildfire outcomes risk encouraging misuse, including arson, and are not compatible with our mission.” With that spokesperson also sort of dismissing its use as a forecasting resource, saying: “The Forest Service does not use information from prediction markets for wildfire forecasting, and we do not rely on any system that treats wildfire as an event for speculation.” And while this platform claims to be the first service specifically for trading just on California wildfires, this is not the first time people have wagered on them. There was a ton of controversy last year during the fires in the LA area that burned thousands of homes and killed dozens of people. Because on Polymarket, you could bet on how far they would spread, what neighborhoods the fires might reach, when they would be contained, and more. So you had op-eds accusing the site of: “gamifying the pain and suffering of living, breathing human beings.” At the time, Polymarket took a similar angle to the one Wyldfyre is taking now, insisting that prediction markets can be used as tools, explaining: “These markets address the same questions being discussed across cable news and X. We’ve proven that prediction markets can be an invaluable alternative information source for those seeking real-time quantitative data.” —————————— Produced by: Cory Ray, Philip DeFranco Edited by: James Girardier, Maxwell Enright, Julie Goldberg, Christian Meeks, Matthew Henry Art Department: William Crespo Writing/Research: Maddie Crichton, Philip DeFranco ———————————— #Wildfires #News #Polymarket