Sylvie Andrews and her associate didn’t simply lose the brand new home they’d helped construct when the Eaton Fireplace ripped by way of Altadena, California, in January 2025. They misplaced a complete decade’s value of sacrifices they’d made to place down roots of their hometown, and the group they’d created. “We put a number of blood, sweat, and tears into it,” Andrews mentioned. “That’s what we misplaced within the fireplace.”
That fireplace, together with the Palisades Fireplace to the west, destroyed greater than 16,000 buildings and killed 31 individuals. However whereas Andrews and 1000’s of Angelenos have been racing to evacuate, different individuals noticed a monetary alternative. Utilizing Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market platform, they made bets on the fires—how they might develop, how lengthy they might final, and the way a lot they might destroy.
Prediction markets are primarily playing web sites the place individuals guess on the result of occasions, together with elections, sports activities, the climate, and extra. Something is truthful recreation, from oil costs and the unfold of infectious ailments to worldwide incidents. Markets normally body questions in a “sure” or “no” trend, with the value of a “contract” fluctuating between $0 and $1. A worth of fifty cents on a “sure” contract implies that the individuals doing the betting collectively consider the occasion has a 50 % probability of occurring. Market hosts generate income by charging a payment on wagers.
In January 2025, Polymarket listed nearly 20 questions, created by the platform’s “markets workforce,” associated to the wildfires burning up Southern California. How many acres will the Palisades Fireplace burn by Friday, three days after it ignited on a Tuesday? Will the Palisades Fireplace attain Santa Monica by Sunday? When will the Palisades fireplace be 50 % contained? Will the Palisades and Eaton fires be contained earlier than February?
Folks spent $1.2 million betting on these queries, in accordance to Aeon Journal. “Wow,” Andrews mentioned repeatedly when she discovered the determine. “My first take is that it’s morally reprehensible,” she mentioned. “The truth that somebody would really feel OK doing that flabbergasts me.”
“The prediction markets are simply the wild, wild West,” mentioned Susan Sherman, who grew up in Pacific Palisades. She misplaced her childhood house within the Palisades Fireplace; her late dad and mom had owned it since 1963, and now it was gone. She offered the empty lot a couple of months in the past. “I have a look at (betting on the fires) as simply being very crass and heartless.”
As prediction markets growth and a brand new wildfire season begins, fireplace survivors and ethicists say that the betting encourages and rewards callous considering—and harmful habits.
One main concern stemming from wildfire prediction markets is arson. “That’s what has me nervous,” Sherman mentioned. Theoretically, having a bet may give somebody the perverse incentive to start out a hearth or assist one develop. In contrast to different disasters, akin to hurricanes, flooding, or excessive warmth, a hearth will be manipulated in minutes by only one individual. “Methods that tie monetary acquire to wildfire outcomes danger encouraging misuse, together with arson, and will not be appropriate with our mission,” a spokesperson for the US Forest Service mentioned.
“Think about what a nasty actor may do,” mentioned Ann Skeet, the senior director of management ethics on the Markkula Middle for Utilized Ethics at Santa Clara College. “A market which may assist that type of exercise, I feel, is a harmful market.” Firefighters or land managers with unique details about a hearth’s habits or an company’s firefighting plans may even be tempted to guess on a hearth, which might be thought of insider buying and selling.
