Assassination Semantics: Why Every Market Carries the Risk of Violence
By Sean Guillory and Dan Zimmermann (Verse Gaming)
When we published our earlier writing on non-kinetic interventions, we warned that markets do more than reflect belief. They offer incentives, create pressure, and sometimes encourage actions beyond just placing bets. We said we would follow that up with a paper on kinetic interventions where death, incapacitation, or physical harm become not just possibilities, but embedded options in market logic. What happens when a market that seems innocent or generic becomes an implicit assassination market? Recent events make the question urgent.
We’ll admit: this is a spicy topic. Some folks in prediction market circles may think we are trying to “poop the party.” But ignoring this issue especially after what happened to Charlie Kirk (who was assassinated on September 10, 2025, while speaking at Utah Valley University) is dangerous. There had been markets on his running for political office (“Charlie Kirk running for office by 2029”) on platforms like Kalshi. No one thought at first that those prediction markets could resolve by assassination but folks need to learn that that possibility always looms.
If the “playing field” of prediction markets includes people’s life, health or survival matter, then everyone becomes a potential variable to be calculated in the forecast. Markets that resolve on whether someone stays in power, speaks publicly, shows up somewhere, or holds a certain job carry implicit incentives connected to their continued existence. Nearly every such market dealing with control, decision, or public appearance is technically an assassination market and that slip between semantic phrasing and real violence is the core risk we are discussing in this writing.
Assassinations by Another Name
There have been recent longer form X writings around concepts like Semantic Fragmentation (where slight wording differences in a market could be unnecessarily splitting up liquidity) and Semantic Fragility (looking at the hidden weaknesses in the wording of a market) that are getting people within the prediction market space to scrutinize possible vulnerabilities/loopholes not explicitly stated in event markets. Many now see how wording choices around resolution can make or break liquidity but we want to point attention to how wording choices also explain how the option of resolving with violence is often embedded in many event markets.
Consider Polymarket’s “Trump out as president in 2025” or Kalshi’s version of that market. On its face, it’s a political wager. But if “out” includes death, then death becomes a valid path to profit. Or take “JD Vance becomes president before 2029” or markets like “Will Trump complete his term in office?”. All of them open up, however subtly, incentives tied to incapacity or demise.
Then came Charlie Kirk. Before his assassination, Kalshi had markets up on his running for public office by 2029. After his death, these markets were closed and trades placed after news broke were voided. What was assumed safe (i.e., resolution by election or term expiry) is exposed to the semantic risk of kinetic intervention where betting platforms may not realize that they are marketing such an incentive.
Almost any market can become an assassination market if there’s enough liquidity behind it. Mitigating this concern is not as simple as slapping on a blanket rule that says “if the subject of a contract dies or is gravely injured, all bets are void.” In fact, that fix can backfire: if platforms guarantee refunds after a death, bettors who are about to lose may see an incentive in making sure the contract gets voided by force.
To be clear, world event markets didn’t invent assassins. Political violence and lone-wolf actors have been around long before prediction markets and without financial incentives, the people most often motivated to assassinate are extremists or ideologues. But bring in money, and operations become efficient, professionals may get involved, the emotional distance can widen, and planning becomes feasible (“Professionals have standards”). This is what makes the shift from theory (like Jim Bell’s “Assassination Politics”) to risk: the landscape of who can act becomes broader, and consequences grow heavier.
As prediction markets (both onchain and offchain) continue to emerge, the risk that tragedy could be profited upon by a bettor continues to grow. While there have been no claims of assassinations being incentivized via any prediction platform to date, the reality exists that these dangers could emerge with little to no foresight of the market provider.
Anomalous bet tracking is an emerging research vertical and alpha identifier in prediction market trading. While users may find great value in the value of tracking anomalous traders now, there may be more than just traders interested in these signals amongst the noise (what we’ve been calling betting intelligence or BETINT).
Prediction platforms that seek regulation will inevitably be tasked with compliance demands like user tracking, geolocation, and prohibiting specific organization employees from participating. Unregulated onchain platforms will not be compelled to take such precautions.
While liquidity will always be a constant consideration for platforms as big as Polymarket and as small as emerging permissionless markets, the opportunity to profit from tragedy will present itself to the most nefarious of bettors.
What once required financiers (be it the mob, gangs, or Deutsche Bank) could now be self-funded. Prediction markets and smart contracts create the possibility that those who carry out political violence could also directly profit from it, anonymously and without intermediaries. That marks a profound shift in incentive structures.
National Security, Platforms, and Responsibility
In our non-kinetic interventions paper, we urged betting platforms, prediction markets, and commentators to build awareness of how markets reflect power and influence. Now, because kinetic risks are more severe, institutions must do more than awareness: they must have capacity for risk analysis.
Event betting platforms need geopolitical risk officers: people with backgrounds in intelligence, structured analytic techniques, and/or counter-intelligence who are capable of evaluating resolution wording, market liquidity, participant behavior, and threat models around high-stakes markets. Regulated books that host markets on public individuals are particularly vulnerable.
Also governments and intelligence communities must integrate BETINT into early warning systems. Signals can be movement of odds, new wallets placing high bets just before an attack or killing, or semantic ambiguity in markets tied to a high-profile figure. Geopolitical risk officers tracking this kind of signal before tragedy can be meaningful.
[Not so shameless plug: BetBreakingNews is ready to partner with platforms that want to build internal guardrails, early warning capacities, and better transparency around what their markets are incentivizing (intentionally or not).]
Conclusion: Facing the Reality & Moving Forward
We don’t mean for this to be a depressing paper but we felt it imperative to point out how we think world event markets have the opportunity to actually be a security add (not risk) and potentially save many lives. If we may be so bold: We are of the belief that more people knowing about prediction markets AND people knowing about the assassination potential of prediction markets could have saved Charlie’s life. More people being aware of the markets and their kinetic intervention risks would likely keep both audiences and security teams more vigilant of threats. The markets wouldn’t be a perfect signal but it’s better than not having these markets at all (not measuring the signal doesn’t mean that the problem doesn’t exist).
Prediction market institutions have a chance now to become not just purveyors of betting, but sources of early warning intelligence. Getting rid of all risky markets isn’t feasible without shutting down large swaths of markets or pushing them offshore and that would further reduce visibility. But platforms can choose responsibility: explicitly define resolution clauses, engage risk teams, hire personnel with intel/security backgrounds, monitor high-stakes markets, build verification practices.
We hope to see the day where event markets are seen as a primary means of catching killers before they act and that the general public feels safer that they are present. Maybe someday.
