When the Eaton fire swept through the Los Angeles neighborhood of Altadena last year, it claimed 19 lives and incinerated thousands of buildings — one of which was the home of Kaitlyn Trudeau’s grandfather. His house burned to the ground; he lost everything. But while he grappled with trauma, others saw dollar signs in the disaster.
In January 2025, as the LA wildfires raged, people placed bets on Polymarket, one of the leading prediction market platforms. They waged money on how how many acres the fires would consume, which locations the flames would reach and when they would be contained.
It was “pretty dystopian,” said Trudeau, a California-based climate scientist, who works at the non-profit Climate Central. “It’s not just easy to start a fire — now there’s potentially a financial incentive,” she told CNN this week, as she traveled to Altadena to see her grandfather’s house for the first time since it burned down.
Polymarket is part of a booming, multibillion-dollar industry, which allows people to bet on the outcome of almost any future event, from the results of football games and elections, to the number of social media posts Elon Musk makes.
Some prediction markets also allow people to bet on wildfires, as well as other climate change-fueled extreme weather events, and experts are sounding the alarm. They fear it risks incentivizing arson and, more generally, that it will distance people from the suffering fires bring.
