For some, voting is a civic duty. To others, a right to be exercised. To real-life bettors, voting provided an avenue to embody the nation’s capitalist spirit, turning a profit off of election results. 

Real-life betting sites raked in billions after Trump’s victory in the 2024 Presidential Election. Doubling their stress for double the reward, online bettors stared at their phone screens as election results came in, eyeballing payouts on apps like PredictIt, Kalshi and Polymarket. 

Going on one of these sites (some of which require VPNs to bet on), users are required to convert cash into cryptocurrency. From there, they can place bets on anything from election results, to Cabinet appointments, to the breakup of Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift. The world is up for betting in a prediction market that promises instant profit, and I would have been fleeced this election. 

If not for the dubious VPN requirements forcing me to change my computer’s country of origin, and if not for the requirement to transfer my cold, hard Federal Work Study cash into cryptocurrency, I would have bet on Harris winning. I would have secured a three-to-one payout, too, would she have won.

Of course, I didn’t bet. Harris also didn’t win, a fact that some political pundits claim was forecasted by these betting sites. In a Washington Post article, Robert Erikson, political science professor of Columbia University (I know, illustrious), claimed that these betting sites were naturally more accurate.

“As smart investors exploit faulty prices, they move the price toward its proper equilibrium value,” he wrote to the Washington Post. 

Based on Polymarket’s payout ratios, the majority of users were convinced that Trump was going to win the election, conflicting with national polls that placed Harris ahead. While this could be explained by Erikson’s “smart investor” theory, it can also be explained by these betting sites’ demographics: young wealthy dudes. 

This isn’t a gut feeling. According to an article by Birches Health, the demographic of sports bettors is primarily “young, male and wealthy.” These modern day Gatsbys, these MAGA-clad crypto bros, pump-and-dump private investors and overall scam artists overwhelmingly hoped (and bet) that they would see another Trump presidency.

Real-life betting is depraved. Not because I would have lost $10 betting on Kamala Harris, but because these sites use the same playbook as hateful demagogues like Trump. These sites offer ways to “get rich quick,” prescribing extracurricular, unregulated forms of capitalism (betting, crypto, and meme stocks) to get ahead in an economy that has left them behind. 

Betting is an easy solution to wealth inequality, an easy solution that supporters on both sides of the MAGA wealth spectrum desire. Jaded members of the working class distrust the government as a means of escaping inflation and are looking for other ways to support themselves. The elites willing to exploit workers, your modern day MAGA Gatsbys and crypto bros, are enticed by the American Dream of insurmountable wealth, and enjoy suckering people into dumping cash into unregulated markets – like these betting sites – to achieve this goal. 

Whether it’s tariffs, betting or cryptocurrency, there is no easy solution to income inequality. At least, there’s no solution that simply says “add more unregulated capitalism into the mix.” Real-life betting is decadent and depraved.