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Young Men, Easy Money, and the New Parlour of Speculation

Prediction markets have become a peculiarly modern male amusement: part exchange, part casino, part internet pageant. Their clientele are overwhelmingly men and mostly under 45; polling suggests more than a quarter of American men aged 18-24 used a prediction market or gambling app in the previous six months, against 14% of the public.

Cameron George, 26, from Utah, once stacked shelves at Walmart and now lives as a crypto trader and online personality, complete with lime green McLaren, wife and five children. He has long promoted trading content and follows prediction markets largely for crypto pricing and news. Recently he let an AI bot place bets for him and is down a couple of thousand dollars.

The business is enormous. Kalshi is valued at $22bn, Polymarket at $9bn. Fans treat these sites as sharper than bookmakers and even more revealing than polls. Critics note that they are styled like finance platforms, softening the uglier fact that most users lose while a tiny elite prospers. Since early 2025, Bloomberg found nearly twice as many Polymarket accounts staking over $1,000 lost as won; the Wall Street Journal reported 67% of profits went to 0.1% of accounts.

The atmosphere is aggressively masculine: sports, crypto, memes, influencers, the cult of being cleverer than the next man. Meanwhile, suspicions of insider trading have followed wagers on Iran and Venezuela. Even so, users such as George, half-disgusted and half-enchanted, keep playing. Posted on 22 May 2026