Sick Players Won Thousands of Dollars Betting on Whether the Titan Mini Submarine Would Recover

Ailing players won thousands of dollars betting on whether the doomed Titan submarine would ever be found and whether those on board would survive, reports have reported.

Bettors bet more than $300,000 on whether the missing sub would be found before June 23, when the oxygen on board was supposed to have run out, and many bet it would not.

And that day, those sick players were proven right after rescuers discovered wreckage from the Titan which had suffered a ‘catastrophic implosion’ 1,600 feet off the Titanic’s bow, killing all five on board.

As a result, gamblers won thousands of dollars via cryptocurrency platform Polymarket betting that the submersible would not be found and that the people on board, including the British-Pakistani billionaire and his 19-year-old son, would be killed, it reports. mother jones.

On the Polymarket page, where players bet on whether those on board would live or die, it said: “For the purposes of this market, the vessel does not need to have been salvaged or physically recovered to be considered ‘found’.

‘If parts are located, but not the cabin containing the ship’s passengers, that will not be enough for this market to decide ‘Yes’.

Stockton Rush, the 61-year-old CEO of OceanGate, was at the controls

French Navy veteran Paul-Henri Nargeolet (left) was also on the submarine along with British billionaire and explorer Hamish Harding.

One gambler, identified only as Brian, told the news outlet that he won $8,000 betting that everyone on board, including British billionaire Hamish Harding and French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, would perish in the submersible.

Another player, Rich, said he won $3,250 and defended winnings and betting on whether those on board would die.

‘Markets are fundamentally immoral. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism,” Rich said before admitting that his partner had given him “pain” for gambling on the fate of the sub and those on board.

The move has sparked a backlash online, with some Twitter users condemning players for profiting from a tragedy.

‘What stage of capitalism is investing in someone’s death?’ wrote one Twitter user.

Another responded: ‘Really crazy. Imagine making money whether someone is going to die or not.

‘Humanity is running out day by day. Imagine betting real money on people’s lives,” wrote another.

But Rich argued that, unlike markets that the public considers immoral, such as buying defense stocks or oil, betting that the submersible would not be found had no impact on the outcome.

At the time, before the sub was found, Polymarket said in a statement: “If the families were aware of Polymarket, they could use the market as a way to get an unbiased, real-time probability that the sub would be recovered.” .

“That’s a much more valuable service to them than tabloid media coverage – with our markets at least they understand the true odds.”

It later emerged that the submersible had suffered a ‘catastrophic implosion’ which would have killed everyone on board instantly.

Earlier this week, it emerged that all five on board, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, had spent their final moments before the Titan imploded listening to their favorite music in total darkness to conserve power while watching bioluminescent creatures. in the deep.

Experts had warned Rush for years that his self-designed submersible was unsuitable for diving to the depths seen in the Titanic’s tomb due to its carbon-fiber hull.

The material is very rigid, has high chemical resistance, high temperature tolerance, and low thermal expansion, however it is also prone to delamination, the process by which a material fractures into layers while under pressure. .

The Titan submersible being towed out to sea before descending and imploding

And it has since emerged that Rush had used college-age interns from Washington State University to design the electrical system used on the doomed Titan submarine.

Deep-sea exploration specialist Rob McCallum said Rush ignored a series of safety warnings they had flagged after seeing interns “drinking Kool-Aid” and bragging about how a PlayStation remote was used to operate the Titan.

Rush had said that the system inside the Titan submersible was powered by Bluetooth, but McCallum explained that this was a real security issue. “All the subs in the world have hard-wired controls for a reason: if the signal goes down, you’re not screwed,” he said.

Other experts who worked at OceanGate, including chief pilot David Lochridge, who later left the company over safety concerns, described the Titan as a “mongrel” and a “lemon” that was “unsafe to drive.”