The Big Bet

'Michael Auerbach has one of the most original minds I've ever encountered . . . This is a dazzling and entertaining book . . . But it is also an urgent warning' PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE, author of Empire of Pain A brilliant exploration of the phenomenon of prediction markets that asks: what happens when democracy becomes another commodity? Prediction markets are sweeping the world, fundamentally changing the nature of gambling – and the very ways in which we attempt to divine the future. Posed as binary ‘Yes/No’ questions about future events, prediction markets allow any difference of opinion – whether on pop culture or politics, wars or assassinations – to be financialised. A regulatory minefield with moral implications that divide nations, governments and bettors, they have proved as effective at accurately predicting the timing of missile strikes as they have at calling the outcomes of elections. But are these markets really a new phenomenon? And what does it mean when those tasked with safeguarding democracy hold financial stakes in its volatility? From Renaissance Rome, where merchants wagered on papal conclaves, through nineteenth-century London’s wartime coffee house gossip, to the Pentagon’s ill-fated terrorism futures exchange and blockchain-based betting on Polymarket today, The Big Bet tells the gripping five-hundred-year story of a permissive regime that no one designed and no one voted for. Drawing on deep expertise, Michael Auerbach examines how these markets are changing our world, and what they mean for the future where democracy becomes just another commodity to be priced and traded. Because prediction markets are not an anomaly – they are the logical endpoint of a society that has applied market capitalism to every aspect of life. And in a world where everything is a wager and nothing is off limits, knowing where the chips will fall matters more than ever.