And the final piece of the package: a reminder that as a liberal paper The Economist has long argued that prediction markets could be useful - if only they are operated fairly. What will it take for Wall Street to start placing bets? economist.com/finance-and-ec…

Polymarket’s system for settling bets, which relies on holders of a cryptocurrency UMA to vote, is broken. I worked with a blockchain forensics firm to trace wallets trading on Polymarket then adjudicating their own bets. Our Leader on why rules matter: economist.com/leaders/2026/0…

In fact, the bigger risk to prediction markets lies with the exchanges themselves. They are creating trades more ambiguous than any that have existed before. Did Ronaldo “cry” at the World Cup? Did Zelensky wear a “suit”?

As prediction markets have taken off, the coverage has been focused on traders’ wrongdoing. Stories of US soldiers trading on classified information related to their missions or Frenchmen manipulating temperature gauges to win weather bets certainly grab headlines…

I went to On's lab in Zurich, where designers cut and paste bits onto old sneakers to make them faster, lighter, more comfortable. They call the prototypes "monsters". It got me thinking about how the sneaker industry is growing - and being shaken up: economist.com/business/2024/…

We rarely write about ourselves at the Economist. But this week, my column about trying to delete myself from the internet. It is the story of my life, from shuttered London nightclubs to Addis airport. Read it and weep: economist.com/1843/2024/11/0…