It has emerged that gamblers made thousands betting on the outcome of the search and rescue mission involving the OceanGate Titan submersible, which imploded and resulted in the death of all five passengers on board.
Obviously, for them to have won their bets, they’d have to have picked the right outcome, meaning that loads of people were betting that the small craft would never be seen in one piece again, which would – broadly-speaking – mean the almost certain death of everyone on board.
It’s not exactly a great bet to make, all things considered, is it?
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Still, according to Mother Jones, people placed wagers totalling at least $300,000 – which is about £235,000 – through cryptocurrency platform Polymarket, quite literally gambling on the fate of those on board.
Those five were OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, French diving expert Paul-Henry Nargeoloet, and British billionaire Hamish Harding.
They were all killed after the experimental submersible suffered a ‘catastrophic implosion’.
After that, people working on the huge search and rescue mission found debris from the Titan which all but confirmed the death of everyone on board.
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On the page where the bets were being placed on whether they lived or died, it stated: "For the purposes of this market, the vessel need not have been rescued or physically recovered to be considered ‘found'.
"If pieces are located, but not the cabin which contains the vessel’s passengers, that will not suffice for this market to resolve to ‘Yes'.”
Some of the gamblers even tried to defend their wagers, with one named Rich claiming he made about $3,250 (£2,550) through the betting.
"My answer would be that markets are fundamentally immoral,” he said. “There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.”
It’s a defensible point, but it is still a bit ghoulish, nonetheless.
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Obviously, loads of people disagree with his statement.
On Twitter, one person wrote: “Actually insane. Imagine making money off of if someone is gonna die or not.”
Another person said: "Humanity is ending day by day Imagine betting real money on people's lives."
As for the platform that was hosting the betting, Polymarket released a statement that read: “If the families were privy to Polymarket, they could use the market as a way to obtain the real-time, unbiased probability of the submarine being recovered.
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“That is a far more valuable service to them than sensationalist media coverage: with our markets at least they understand the true probabilities.”
Topics: World News, Titanic, Gambling, Money
Tom Wood