"On December 31st, a brand-new account on Polymarket placed a bet: Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela, would be out of office by the end of January. It was the first in a series of increasing bets. On January 3rd, the US bombed the Venezuelan capital, kidnapped Maduro and his wife, and killed at least 80 people along the way. The account cashed out with almost half a million dollars."
"We have now arrived at the logical end state of financial nihilism. Meme stocks are sentiment only; whatever happens to the underlying company is irrelevant at best to what happens with the stock price. And despite the death toll, this administration is treating the war on Venezuela as all sentiment, in-jokes, and degen memes. That's why the war room (war nook?) is just a big TV screen of X.com and war profiteering now consists of Polymarket bets."
A new Polymarket account placed escalating bets that Nicolás Maduro would be out of office, then cashed out nearly half a million dollars after US forces bombed Caracas, kidnapped Maduro and his wife, and killed at least 80 people. The incident is characterized as the culmination of financial nihilism in which meme-stock sentiment overrides material reality and predictability. The administration is portrayed as pursuing attention-driven gambling thrills while treating war as in-jokes and market sentiment. Oil companies remain wary due to Venezuela's sour crude requiring significant refining, and prediction markets enable war profiteering amid real fatalities.
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