On Tuesday night, longshot New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani appeared close to pulling off the impossible. The vote count in the Democratic primary had him comfortably in the lead, and the prediction market Kalshi gave the 33-year-old, self-proclaimed socialist 99% odds for beating Andrew Cuomo, the presumptive favorite in the race. Tyler Winklevoss, the cofounder of the New York-based crypto exchange Gemini and one-half of the famed rowing/Mark Zuckerberg lawsuit team, was none too pleased. “New York City on the brink of becoming Gotham City,” he posted, sharing the Kalshi projection.
It was a sentiment I saw plastered all over my X feed (which, I should note, is heavily biased toward crypto accounts, as a peril of my beat) in response to a candidate who has proposed pilots of government-run grocery stores and freezing hikes for rent-stabilized units. One New York venture investor wrote using derogatory language about “libs” getting infatuated by young politicians fitting a certain profile, which I probably shouldn’t reprint in the newsletter pages of Fortune. And then there was the schadenfreude of those who had already decamped to greener pastures. “Congrats you morons turned nyc into Britain,” wrote a Miami-based VC. “Seasoned criminals roam free while ordinary people who post mean words go to prison.”
