HYPER BURST

What is HYPER BURST?

Last week a committee made up of MPs from across the Netherlands’ political spectrum also raised concerns around the role of Meta and Google in supporting the black market.

Candidates from the VVD party urged the government to take a “harder stance” against these big tech platforms.

Van Bruggen told the gambling committee that both Meta and Google were open to maintaining a dialogue with the government on this.

What is HYPER BURST?

Strip away the language of contracts, order books and event trading and Bernard Marantelli has a blunt description of what is happening inside US sports prediction markets. “Kalshi is a sportsbook that’s just not allowed to have an in-house risk team,” says the founder of White Swan Data, one of the specialist firms now making markets on prediction exchanges.

The difference is all about the risk function. A sportsbook employs traders to price bets and manage its exposure. An exchange provides an API through which firms compete to quote prices and supply liquidity.

“Here’s an API. Bernard and 88 other people can market-make all these request-for-quotes (RFQs),” Marantelli says. “Some people might come in and just do esports because they’re esports experts. Others do everything. Some focus on same-game parlays. But it’s a sportsbook.”

About HYPER BURST

Cleopatra’s Barge opened in September 1970 in what is now the Nobu Hotel tower, replacing the earlier Nero’s Nook lounge. The 180-seat lounge featured as its centerpiece a “floating” stage designed as a replica of the vessel aboard which the Egyptian queen is said to have bewitched Mark Antony.

The pleasure craft, installed in a shallow lagoon, featured a gold-painted, topless figurehead that extended far into the public walkway. Guests quickly turned rubbing the statue’s golden breasts for luck into a classic Vegas tradition; staff regularly repainted the most-touched areas.

Vital Vegas ranked the display No. 4 on his 2014 list of “10 Things You Can Rub for Good Luck in Las Vegas Without Getting Arrested,” a list that featured three other Caesars Palace entries: the hand of the Caesars statue (No. 1); Joe Louis’s boxing gloves (No. 8); and the toe of Michelangelo’s David replica (No. 9).

The barge itself never actually floated, by the way. That was just a myth. It sat on a fixed platform that created a mild rocking motion. That piece of Vegas engineering, like the statue’s original perch, is now history.