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did he leak the information, or just speculate on it? is it leaking classified info when pentagon officials order lots of pizza and thus inform the world that a military operation is being planned?
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"A military operation is being planned" is very different from "Maduro will be kidnapped in the next x hours".

"Pentagon planning a military operation" is not exactly classified information as it is safe to assume that Pentagon is always planning a military operation.

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did anyone have any reason to believe that was classified information that was leaked, instead of just a random person speculating? if not, then he had no intent to leak that information. If a random soldier told you, "iran will be nuked tomorrow" do you believe them? especially on a speculation platform, for all you know he's also guessing based on the same activites and events the public is observing. laws are all about intent and state of mind, what actually happened is irrelevant, what was intended is what matters. For example, killing a person is not a crime in and of itself, if it was all soldiers who kill someone in combat would be in prison, as would people who kill in self-defense. Matter of fact, if no classified information was actually leaked, but it could be proved that he intended to do something to leak classified info (which requires others to believe it is truthful information, instead of speculation) then that in itself is a crime.

Saying anything at all on a speculation platform, especially if others don't even know your identity (or you have no reason to believe they do), can only be treated as speculative intent, not intent to disclose classified information.

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Yes, it seems in this case an adversary who was paying attention could have learned something very, very valuable.
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Yes. Especially if the casino (or "prediction market") has access to the identities of players via id verification, fingerprinting, or other means.
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You mean any non crypto payment system? :)
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Going to guess that anyone in the U.S. military has their crypto wallet aggresively profiled by various spy agencies.
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There have been some cases where fitness tracker data shows where some military installations are located. Or when they're jogging on a ship that's taking them to deployment somewhere.

The Ukraine war has shown that cheap intelligence tricks can be used against the average recruit, like pretending to be a dating website and getting the GPS locations of horny enemy soldiers so your drones can drop grenades on them.

It doesn't need to be crypto wallet tracking. The amount of spyware being built into phone apps is where those agencies would be putting some effort into obtaining access to.

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And literally every other thing they do on the internet.. remember that Strava shit? You have relatively technically unsophisticated people with high level access and not a lot of adult supervision. That seems like a juicy target. I assume there are a lot of well funded and staffed outifts around the world who have noticed the same thing.
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> "A military operation is being planned" is very different from "Maduro will be kidnapped in the next x hours".

IIRC, the bet was on "Nicolas Maduro out?":

> If Nicolás Maduro leaves office before February 1, 2026, then the market resolves to Yes.

So the bet wasn't specifically "Nicolas Maduro kidnapped?" or even "Nicolas Maduro out by January 3rd?" And IIRC there was a lot of Trump saber rattling about Venezuela in the days before, hence the creation of the bet. I could absolutely see a plausible way to link these publicly-available pieces of information into a winning bet:

* Trump talking tough about Venezuela

* Spike in DC pizza activity on January 2nd

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The site that he bought the crypto from to make a bet could trace it back to him, and many, if not all, crypto trading sites have shady ties with some governemnts around the world.
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Well, a lot of people got killed this way, too.
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But from the perspective of the US DoJ the right people got killed (assuming of course they've determined the operation was legal according to their own rules, e.g. US law). The issue here is this guy telegraphed operational plans to the entire world which could have gotten (from the DoJ's perspective) the wrong people killed.
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If that happened, could they retroactively classify it?
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Maybe I'm making an incorrect assumption, but I assumed the information was already classified. He was betting on an outcome of a planned military operation based on his knowledge of those plans. My assumption is that information is super closely guarded, and likely classified at a high level. Telegraphing your invasion plans is generally not something you do unless you want disaster, right?
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Yeah the DoJ proclaims,

“Our Office will continue to hold accountable those who misuse confidential or classified information in a way that undermines and exploits our national security.”

But isn’t wire fraud harder to prove than leaking classified facts?

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> But isn’t wire fraud harder to prove than leaking classified facts?

No. From the Justice Department's own criminal resource manual:

> the four essential elements of the crime of wire fraud are:

> (1) that the defendant voluntarily and intentionally devised or participated in a scheme to defraud another out of money;

> (2) that the defendant did so with the intent to defraud;

> (3) that it was reasonably foreseeable that interstate wire communications would be used; and

> (4) that interstate wire communications were in fact used

https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...

Generally, to be successfully prosecuted for a crime, the prosecutor has to show that each and every "element" of the crime has to have happened. On the above page, there were 3 different court precedents who ruled what elements that the prosecutor needed to prove were in those cases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Element_(criminal_law)#

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Unless the prosecution can prove that the trades meaningfully moved the market prices, it's probably going to be really hard to use the term "leaking".

I can't shake the feeling that there may be political reasons to not even attempt that angle. What legal precedent would it set if a judge actually ruled on that and the prosecution won? Which entities within the government would be financially inconvenienced?

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So in prediction markets I've heard a lot of times people will collaborate in order to make certain predictions pay off higher sums by having more people put money on a certain bet.

Is it true with these markets the more people bet on a specific day and time, the value will increase more, increasing the overall payout? If that is true, I wonder if they're looking at anybody else helping place the bets or a group of people trying to wager a higher amount of money to increase the return?

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It's a bit more nuanced than that, because we're not talking about outright market manipulation. Absent any other information, the market makers always assume that they might be trading against a better informed counterparty - so absent any other signal, the prices at which executions happen are themselves a signal.

Think about it: you have N market makers offering both sides of the trade with a spread between them. When there is no other meaningful activity, the best prices are more or less stable. Now someone comes in and buys one side of the trade. Each marker maker will, individually, make the same two decisions:

    1. "If you bought at that price, I should raise my price and charge you more"
    2. "Since you bought at that price, I must assume you have more information and I should get out the way to avoid an expensive mistake"
The magnitude of the decisions made depends on various factors, but as a short-hand the size of the made trades in respect to the overall liquidity available near the midpoint directs how strongly the market makers react. A tiny trickle of insignificant trades does not move the price in any meaningful way (unless the sizes are so small that the execution commission starts to make a difference). A sustained directional flood of trades will cause the midpoint (and volume) to move to the direction where the market makers can sell at higher prices and avoid accumulating any further losses.
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Well yes. Someone has the other side of the bet, and it’s not 1:1 long:short. That’s how folks could hypothetically hire somebody to kill me, by putting $5M on “floam will survive the month” - if I’m not killed conspirators get their money back, with interest. But if I am verifiably dead, whoever knew in advance a hit man will kill me, that man gets paid.
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It seems strange, but that must be why I'm not a lawyer :p
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You’re just seeing, clearly, the priorities of the US.

Is it helping sick citizens? No. Is it feeding the hungry? No. Free education, housing the un housed or protecting the environment? No, no , no.

To be perfectly clear, it’s not giving vets the benefits they deserve or keeping soldiers safe either.

Money. The priority is money.

Getting it. And making sure those that don’t have it don’t get it.

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The government is very big. They can have multiple priorities. The Dept of Justice does not provide medical care, education, or anything else you listed -- they prosecute crimes. And using classified military plans for personal gain while potentially putting fellow soldiers at risk seems like a crime that is worth prosecuting.
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God money's not looking for the cure God money's not concerned about the sick among the pure God money, let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised God money's not one to choose No, you can't take it No, you can't take it No, you can't take that away from me
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