Bobby Allyn

Correspondent at @NPR covering tech. Now focusing on prediction markets.

Signal: ballyn.77
Discord: bobby16663
Email: [email protected]

[Bobby Allyn @BobbyAllyn]

NEW: DOJ is investigating former congressman George Santos for insider trading on Kalshi

https://t.co/FW4bAozvd3

[Sam Biddle @samfbiddle]

I think AI executives have become so accustomed to gullible, fawning media writeups that are indistinguishable from press releases that the notion of a reporter describing unflattering scene-setting minutia is seen as some kind of violation

[Bobby Allyn @BobbyAllyn]

Athletic/NYT is the first news organization to successfully organize against a prediction market partnership because most of the other deals were made known to newsrooms only after they were a done deal

[Ben Horney @BenHorney]

UPDATE: The Athletic is not moving forward w/ Kalshi on a "sports betting or prediction markets partnership," a source tells @FOS. Decision was made before today's letter.

Talks about potential advertising or “other commercial opportunities" are ongoing.
https://t.co/8APqvCKKoG

[Hamed Aleaziz @Haleaziz]

Scoop: Hundreds of federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security have been assigned to an intensive, weekslong hunt for noncitizens among the nation’s registered voters despite an absence of evidence of widespread fraud, according to documents and training videos.

[Bobby Allyn @BobbyAllyn]

One of the most opaque parts of Kalshi is its in-house trading operation. Kalshi says it's a peer-to-peer platform but sometimes average traders are up against Kalshi's own trading arm, which the company claims is unprofitable and only a very small part of total volume.

My response to that is: OK, prove it! Publicly disclose how much liquidity the trading arm is putting up and in what markets and its PnL.

[Yueqi Yang @Yueqi_Yang]

The CFTC is deliberating rules to address potential conflicts of interest arising from prediction market exchanges that also have affiliated trading firms trading on the exchange
https://t.co/QTSnhYIs3I

[Bobby Allyn @BobbyAllyn]

It's interesting that Dodd-Frank reforms after 2008 brought "swaps" under CFTC’s watch to close a loophole for risky black market investing. And now NJ says that closed loophole has become Kalshi's own loophole for avoiding state gambling laws.

[Bobby Allyn @BobbyAllyn]

The Supreme Court has received a prediction markets case.

NJ has asked the court to review a Third Circuit decision which now conflicts with a Ninth Circuit ruling over whether Kalshi’s sports betting should be considered a swap under commodities law or state-regulated gambling.

This is a massively important battle for the prediction market industry.

[Max Tani @maxwelltani]

I wrote about a guy running a network of secret "ghost creators," paying actors $26 per video to read AI-assisted "anti-Dem" videos on YouTube.

In just a few months, the channels got 45 million views, more than media companies like WaPo, the New Yorker, and, sadly, Semafor.

[Bobby Allyn @BobbyAllyn]

Reminder: Among the remedies NYT is seeking if OAI is found to have infringed on the paper’s copyright is that OAI destroy its model weights entirely and retrain the systems from scratch on clean datasets that do not include NYT’s work

[Eriq Gardner ✍️ @eriqgardner]

The Trump Administration files a statement of interest in the copyright lawsuit brought by The New York Times against OpenAI, taking the position that it’s fair use to train an LLM on copyrighted text.

[Bobby Allyn @BobbyAllyn]

As the Lindsay Clancy jury deliberates anonymous bettors on Polymarket are wagering five-figure sums on what the verdict might be

[Bobby Allyn @BobbyAllyn]

Polymarket's investor money/brand deals are interesting given how its most popular platform is still banned in the US.

In fact, its banned-in-the-US status has become part of the company's legal defense.

Polymarket is facing a federal class-action lawsuit in NY alleging it is an illegal/unlicensed gambling operation, and its defense is

a) US residents are not permitted to use Polymarket's international exchange, so if you use a VPN to trade on the platform, you're violating its terms of service, so cannot bring a lawsuit, and

b) any/all disputes with Polymarket are to be taken to Panama for an arbitration process per the arbitration agreement in its terms of service

Filing here:
https://t.co/bkgKBYLfDy

[Bobby Allyn @BobbyAllyn]

@katienotopoulos @mkarolian my latest for a16z: haters may hate the boone catalog, but "fireworks & rollerblades" has 9 trillion plays

[Lulu NYT @LuluGNavarro]

An important investigation from @npr on how our warming planet is killing us in insidious ways. https://t.co/aSnZMpd7rM

[Katherine Long @ByKLong]

NEW: With an additional $300M investment, Donald Trump Jr.’s 1789 Capital is set to become one of Polymarket’s largest backers.

From @neilmhta @DanaMattioli @ceostroff

https://t.co/bxtusFeEVQ

[Bobby Allyn @BobbyAllyn]

“Creators say some campaigns have even asked them to actively conceal the fact that they’re being compensated, making it impossible to know what’s genuine support — and what is pay-for-play.”

[Ken Bensinger @kenbensinger]

Social media influencers are taking $$$ to support candidates for political office on TikTok & IG. Often, they're not disclosing that — because they don't have to. @stuartathompson and I took a dive deep into the murky world of paid political influence

https://t.co/ap00r4x5xs

[talmon joseph smith @talmonsmith]

my latest @NYTimes - 'Proposed Rollback of SEC Rules Raises Fears of Another Enron Crisis'
Under the radar, Trump's SEC is about to exempt 80% of companies from post-Enron auditing standards. The Business Roundtable has been supportive...but not all of Wall St. some PMs are wary:

[Bobby Allyn @BobbyAllyn]

Important to note that after he gives back his ill-gotten gains, this amounts to a $65,000 fine for months of profiting off advance notice of the president’s words

[Bobby Allyn @BobbyAllyn]

NEW: Regulatory filings show Trump’s former teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez ordered to pay $172,000 for using the president’s prepared remarks to trade on Kalshi’s “mention markets.” Kalshi also suspended him for three years.

[Bobby Allyn @BobbyAllyn]

Here’s the CFTC’s order on Perez

https://t.co/LyFYtntu62