In Peru, shamans chant over candles whilst traders click on odds for the same outcome. Politics now lives somewhere between ritual and real-time betting. Peruvian shamans gathered on a Lima hill on 29 December 2025 to announce that Nicolás Maduro will soon fall and global conflicts will spread.
Reuters filmed them chanting, blowing conch shells and sprinkling flower petals over photos of leaders, a ritual they repeat each New Year. Nearby, on prediction platforms, users placed money on very similar questions.
On 3 January 2026, Operation Absolute Resolve delivered exactly what both groups had forecast.
Old Rituals, New Audiences
For years, these shamans have offered prophecies about elections in the United States and Latin America.
Their ceremonies attract cameras because they feel theatrical and exotic, yet they also mirror a familiar impulse. People want to know what comes next, especially when politics feels unstable.
In much of the world, such rituals sit on the edge of tourism and belief. Locals may treat them as part of cultural life, whilst foreign viewers turn them into viral clips. The detail that matters is not whether the predictions prove accurate.
It is the desire to turn uncertainty into a narrative that feels manageable. This year, the shamans’ timing proved eerily prescient, though whether through insight or coincidence remains open to interpretation.
Betting on Everything, All at Once
That impulse now has a digital version. Crypto-based platforms such as Polymarket allow users to trade on questions ranging from Venezuelan power struggles to European elections.
During the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Polymarket handled over $3.6 billion in trading volume, dwarfing traditional prediction markets.
On 2 November 2025, Romania’s National Gambling Office blacklisted Polymarket for offering unlicensed political betting, calling it unregulated crypto gambling. The site had already paid a $1.4 million penalty to U.S. regulators in January 2022 for operating an illegal futures venue without proper registration.
Defenders say such markets can improve forecasting by aggregating information. Critics see a new way to monetise anxiety and blur the line between democratic choice and spectator sport.
Information, Belief and Responsibility
There is a difference between a shaman’s ceremony and a blockchain market, yet they share a convenient escape from responsibility.
If the prediction fails, believers can blame fate, flawed polls or unexpected events. The money lost on a political contract disappears into the same shrug that used to greet a bad horoscope.
The danger comes when markets start to feel more real than institutions. Surveys already show that many citizens trust platforms more than parties. Opinion polls, trading odds and influencer commentary can merge into a single feed that feels like objective truth, even when it is speculative.
Prediction markets also raise awkward ethical questions. When users trade on the likelihood of coups, conflicts or assassinations, they treat other people’s instability as an asset class.
The practice is legal in many places, yet it shifts public life towards a spectator model where the most profitable outcome is not necessarily the safest one.
Europe’s Regulatory Gap
European regulators have moved slowly.
Some countries treat these sites as gambling, others as financial products, whilst others have yet to decide. The result is a patchwork in which traders can easily bypass national rules.
The contrast with more traditional betting is stark. Horse racing and sports books operate under strict licensing, monitoring and anti-money-laundering rules. Crypto prediction platforms often sit in a grey zone, especially when servers and users are scattered across jurisdictions.
At the same time, European media outlets still give space to astrologers and annual prophecies about the year ahead. The combination produces an odd landscape in which superstition is treated as entertainment, and speculative markets are sometimes treated as insight.
What Politics Is For
Seen together, Peruvian shamans and Polymarket traders look less like opposites and more like neighbours on the same spectrum. Both convert uncertainty into performance. Both offer the comfort of feeling prepared for whatever may occur.
Democracies, however, are not meant to be prediction games. Elections and negotiations exist so that citizens can participate in shaping outcomes, not only gamble on them. Culture will always contain ritual, belief and speculation, but the health of public life depends on keeping those impulses in their place.
It is one thing to watch shamans bless a photograph on a beach. It is another to turn every crisis into a line of odds to refresh on a phone.
As prediction markets grow, Europeans will have to decide whether politics is something to take part in or something to bet on from a distance.
Keep up with Daily Euro Times for more updates!
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