Someone with the ability to register .gov domains is trying to make a sneaky buck.

It used to be anyone with a fax machine could register any .gov but they fixed that when there was a news report about it.

I was curious about this, so for anyone else who’s interested, here’s a KrebsOnSecurity article from 2019 about how easy it was to fraudulently register a .gov domain:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/11/its-way-too-easy-to-get-...

I haven’t seen any follow-up reporting, but it looks like the process now requires some semblance of identity verification:

https://get.gov/domains/before/

It's because of the time value of money. Buying no is much like buying a bond.

It doesn't mean there's a 16% chance.

It's probably more attractive to gamblers when presented like this.

That's just gambling without any basis for reality though. Not sure if you're actually attributing any weight to random gamblers lol.

Taking the opposite side of this bet feels like a free 19% return on your money.

It's based on what Donald Trump (or any other US president, should it come to that) says, not on any evidence or ground truth beyond that.

The are motives for lying on this - for a start, if a president knows definitively they're going to say it, it's a free 81% return. Secondly, it's a pretty big dead cat to throw on the table to distract from any scandal and/or to keep themselves in the news cycle on a different topic.

Ah, the wisdom of the crowds (of gamblers.)

I mean, fair, but who says he'll be appraised and knowing about it at all?