Prediction markets are online platforms that facilitate the buying and selling of contracts whose values derive from the outcomes of future events. These events may range from the result of a ball game to the occurrence or non-occurrence of a natural disaster. Prediction markets strive to “financialise” almost every aspect of the world we inhabit. But what happens when this phenomenon threatens to envelop democracy within its sweeping reach? What if prediction markets commodify elections, the indispensable mechanism through which democratic choice is expressed? Michael Auerbach, in his forthcoming book, The Big Bet, examines how these online platforms are already exerting a potentially pernicious influence on elections. The book appears poised to become an indispensable contribution to the sparse yet increasingly urgent literature on prediction markets. The exploitation of information asymmetries and imbalances in agency is hardly a novel phenomenon. In the early to mid-nineteenth century, John Van Buren, the son of Martin Van Buren, the eighth President of the United States, brazenly used his father’s political connections to become an accomplished gambler. He wagered freely on gubernatorial contests, state legislative races, and ballot measures. The American mathematician and computer programmer Eric Hughes is regarded as a pioneer of the “cypherpunk” movement. In A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto, Hughes argued that cryptography and privacy are essential to the preservation of an open society. Online platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket push the envelope of such ideal to the furthest tolerable limit, and at times arguably beyond them. On Polymarket for example, more than $3 billion was wagered on the 2024 presidential election. Elections on Kalshi and Polymarket have become speculative playgrounds where democratic integrity is sacrificed at the altar of conspicuous greed.