Comment Text:
I am a registered and licensed financial markets professional, who has working in the industry for 40 years. I have been a member of the NYMEX commodity exchange, and have worked at various investment banks, in several countries over the years, both in trading and sales. I have been using the Predictit platform for close to a decade. I can confirm, that this platform is about as far from a betting or gaming website as one could possibly imagine.
The main factor that separates Predictit from the betting websites is the fact that the entire system is based on non-deliverable futures contracts. There is no bookie. No one is setting odds for a gambler to take. And that means that any user can switch from being a "market taker" to "market maker' instantaneously. Without users creating markets, making markets - there is no market. Hence, this is a marketplace. This is NOT gaming, nor is it gambling.
From the perspective of a financial professional, I find the data that Predictit makes available to be invaluable in determining current public sentiment on many key events, that have a huge impact on the economy and financial markets. There is no replacement for that type of data, and banning Predictit would be a terrible disservice to the many who rely on that data as part of their macro and geo-political analysis of the world markets.
