#预测市场 Seeing this article about prediction markets facing AI manipulation, my mind instantly traveled back over a hundred years. The Washington Post in 1905 lamented — everyone was watching the betting markets, ordinary voters couldn't understand true public opinion, and could only blindly rely on those who placed bets. Fast forward to the 2016 Berlin state elections, where political parties directly encouraged members via email to manipulate prediction market prices. Then in 2024, with Polymarket, Trump's price soared, and The Wall Street Journal questioned whether it was manipulated, only to later discover it was a genuine bet from a French investor.

The irony of history lies here — the attempt to manipulate markets has never stopped, but true success has been rare. Rhode and Strumpf studied the Iowa electronic market during the 2000 election and found that manipulators invested heavily but suffered heavy losses, as the market exhibited strong mean reversion. But now the question has changed. In an era where AI can forge public opinion, prediction market data is reported in real-time by CNN, and false information spreads virally on social media, the goal of manipulation is no longer to truly change the outcome but to create chaos — to foster a sense of "there's definitely a conspiracy behind this."

I've seen too many such cycles. Markets themselves are good — they have strong information integration and clear incentive mechanisms. But once they become tools for politics and battlegrounds for public opinion, it’s another story. The key is not whether markets can be manipulated, but to what extent people's trust in the entire system will collapse when they are. The hypothetical scenario in 2028 is actually already playing out — just in a different form. The solutions are also on the table: raising liquidity thresholds, establishing monitoring systems, enhancing transparency, having news organizations focus on active markets, and policymakers clearly defining manipulation behaviors. But for these measures to truly take effect, all parties need to have the sincerity to maintain the market ecosystem. History has taught me one thing: the Achilles' heel of markets has never been a technical problem but a trust issue. When people start doubting everything, data becomes material for sophistry.