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Abu Dhabi-backed World Cup prediction market is mostly trading with itself
According to the WSJ, nearly all trading volume on ADI Predictstreet is circular trading. Brexit residency paperwork now threatens a seriously ill Briton in Sweden
Mark Smith, 60, who has a history of heart attacks and strokes, was told by phone to leave Sweden by 17 October as an “alien” without permission to stay, according to the Guardian.
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Transcript
MARY: Welcome to The Gist. I’m Mary.
JOHN: And I’m John. It is Saturday, October 17th, 2026.
MARY: We are your smart friends on the go. Let’s get right to the news.
JOHN: Today’s Gist View looks at the World Cup. Or rather, the bets placed on it. The Wall Street Journal reports a betting market called ADI Predictstreet paid close to 150 million dollars for advertising rights. The platform is backed by Abu Dhabi’s royal family.
MARY: But here is the catch. Nearly all the trading on this platform is fake. It is what regulators call “circular trading.” That means the platform is just buying and selling bets to itself.
JOHN: Right. A prediction market really only sells one thing. It sells a price. That price is supposed to show what the crowd thinks the odds are. But if there is no crowd, the price just reflects whoever is funding the loop.
MARY: So, who benefits here? The sponsor. Volume is the metric everyone uses to judge a market. High volume says to advertisers, regulators, and ordinary users: “Hey, this is a safe, established place to place your bet.”
JOHN: Exactly. They are buying credibility in public. And the circular trading itself costs them almost nothing. Any fees they pay just return to their own platform. It is like moving money from your left pocket to your right pocket. The real cost was the 150 million dollars in ads.
MARY: It is an old playbook. The crypto industry did the exact same thing years ago. Back in 2019, a crypto fund manager admitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission—the market regulator—that 95 percent of reported Bitcoin trading volume was totally fake.
JOHN: Moving to the Global Overview. We have an update on the Starlink situation in Ukraine. President Zelenskyy is now calling the speed limits on Starlink satellite terminals a “planned operation.”
MARY: Remember, Starlink is the satellite internet system controlled by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Ukraine relies on it to communicate. The Financial Times reports that these speed restrictions only apply inside Ukraine.
JOHN: Specifically, the system stops working if the satellite antenna moves faster than 161 kilometers per hour. That is about 100 miles per hour. That limit completely neutralizes Ukraine’s fast-moving drones.
MARY: The power dynamic here is stark. Kyiv relies on a single, US-controlled supplier for its national defense. They have no contract that lets them override these limits. As we mentioned recently, Ukraine is scrambling for European satellite options. But right now, one company holds the off-switch.
JOHN: Next up, science. And this one might change how we package our food. Wired magazine reports that microplastics—those tiny fragments of broken-down plastic—might actually react chemically with water.
MARY: For decades, the industry treated plastic as totally inert. It doesn’t react. That is why we use it for water bottles. All our safety tests are built on that exact assumption.
JOHN: If plastic does react, those tests are flawed. It means we might be completely missing how plastic behaves inside living tissue. Who loses if this holds up? Plastic producers and packaging buyers. Regulators could demand entirely new, very expensive safety testing.
MARY: Finally in global news, an interesting bottleneck in Artificial Intelligence. Wired and Quanta magazine point out that AI models cannot yet decode the three-dimensional folding of DNA.
JOHN: You might think we just need bigger computers. We don’t. The AI is limited by a lack of physical, biological data. We just haven’t measured enough real-world DNA folding yet.
MARY: Right. Throwing billions of dollars at more computing power will not solve this. The real power right now is held by the experimental biology labs. They hold the exact data that AI desperately needs to grow.
JOHN: Turning to the European Perspective. A very human cost of Brexit paperwork is unfolding in Sweden. According to the Guardian, a 60-year-old, seriously ill British man named Mark Smith has been ordered to leave the country by today, October 17th.
MARY: Officials are calling him an “alien” without permission to stay. But Smith says Swedish officials told him three different times that he didn’t need to do anything to remain after Brexit. He is now in hiding.
JOHN: Here is the structural problem. Post-Brexit residency in many EU countries requires being listed in a specific national database. When a desk clerk gives verbal advice that skips that step, the burden falls entirely on the resident.
MARY: Cases like this are starting to hit the press. That puts immense political pressure on both Stockholm and London to figure out who is responsible for the bad official advice.
JOHN: Staying in Europe, let’s look at the UK’s National Health Service, the NHS. They have a massive 330 million pound contract with Palantir. That is a huge US data company. Palantir built a shared data platform to manage hospital waiting lists and schedule surgeries.
MARY: But the Guardian found that many NHS trusts—the local bodies that actually run the hospitals—are rejecting it. Places from Gateshead to Truro are either refusing the system outright, or trying it and dropping it. Greater Manchester’s care board called the platform “duplicative.”
JOHN: Some hospitals do say it helps them schedule faster. But here is the power angle. Using the Palantir system is completely optional. The 330 million pound value of that contract only becomes real if hospitals actually adopt it.
MARY: Exactly. If the local trusts keep saying no, Palantir’s revenue in the UK stalls out. And the existing local software suppliers get to keep their contracts. It is a quiet rebellion by local administrators against a top-down tech mandate.
JOHN: Let’s take the temperature of the day. Across the board, we are seeing the hard limits of purchased power. Abu Dhabi can buy betting volume, but not a real crowd. Tech giants can buy supercomputers, but not the biological data they need. And massive government contracts mean very little if the people on the ground simply refuse to log in. In every case, real leverage sits with the people holding the actual resources.
MARY: Well said, John. That is all for today’s episode. If you like how we break down the news, you should really get our daily newsletter. It is completely free, and it is the exact same accessible, no-nonsense analysis delivered right to your inbox. Just tap the link in the show notes to subscribe.
JOHN: Thanks for listening. We will see you tomorrow.
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