How to make money betting against Qanon

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/04/how-to-make-money-betting-against-qanon.html

8 Likes

“They may be pink, but their money is green!”

22 Likes

Fascinating bit of culture-clash there. In Europe, “reds” are still extreme left-wingers, and “pinkos” are lukewarm leftists - As in the song “The Worker’s Flag is deepest pink, it’s not as red as you might think” satirising the modified stance of the British Labour Party.
In European parlance, we would rephrase your observation to be “They may be green (ignorant or naive) but so is their money!”

8 Likes

It’s a SubGenius reference.

15 Likes

Disappointed he’s only profited $400 off of them. I’d be much happier if he had made $1,000,000 or more off of those fools.

15 Likes

Is there a handy Vanguard ‘QAnon Is The Stupidest Thing Ever’ ETF I can buy…?

10 Likes

See also this article from December about the presidential election.

The takeaway is that Turmplings are so delusional that they invert the normal mechanics of betting – they put so much on losing bets that both the bookies and the people putting money on the safe bet can win at their expense. You can just walk up and take as much of their money as you want, and the only thing that could stop it is if they start believing in reality.

(I linked to the Daring Fireball post, rather than the original article, because I was so amused by his comment that “it was like taking candy from babies who deserved to have their candy stolen”)

Confusingly, that is also true in the US – “reds” are communists, and Nixon smeared Helen Gahagan Douglas as “the pink lady” in his McCarthy phase. For various reasons, the tradition arose that color TV news showed election results using red for Republicans and blue for Democrats, but that wasn’t related, because neither party is socialist, or even left-wing by European standards. Lately people have started using the terms “red state” and “blue state”, but “red” on its own is still widely understood to mean “communist”.

(But also, what @markfrauenfelder said).

7 Likes

Gotta get the word out that Trump is shorting Qanon by not being Qanon, which is insider trading. Do I have the conspiracy logic right?

7 Likes

Dammit. I wish I’d thought of that…

4 Likes

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been reading something online and thought “there must be a way to monetize this stupidity”. Kudos to him for figuring it out.

13 Likes

Yeah, that’s surprising. It’s such a sure thing. I wondered if there were limits on how much people could bet, but that doesn’t seem to be the issue, or if he just felt bad taking advantage of delusional idiots.

3 Likes

it kind makes one want to to start their own betting site. and conspiracy site put out the conspiracies and bet against them.

1 Like

Of course in Europe (outside the UK) we also have viable green parties, so that statement would also be misleading.

4 Likes

Yeah when he’s quoted about how willing people are to bet thousands on dumb predictions but he’s only profited $400 over years, it kind of took the air out of the story.

7 Likes

I’m suspecting the disappointing truth is that it’s a gambling site that doesn’t have enough choads willing to lay off his bets.

For example you could place a million dollar bet that tRump will be indicted before July 4th, but that means there have to be 100,000 Quidiots each willing to bet $10 that he won’t. (Plus, if someone’s betting that much, it’s likely they know something the public doesn’t, so maybe no one would take that bet.)

6 Likes

Also, they might be trying to stay under the IRS’s radar.

1 Like

Only person making any money off these dopes is Trump.

4 Likes

I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if “Q” is making the exact same bets. The only major limiting factor of this scam is that most die hard conspiracy nuts don’t have a lot of disposable income to waste on the betting markets.

1 Like

Let’s not forget the evangelicals. They’re all in on this grift as well.

5 Likes

I had almost forgotten. Birds of a feather and all that.

1 Like