Vice President Kamala Harris appeared to have beaten former President Donald Trump in the first U.S. presidential debate on Tuesday, according to forecasts on Polymarket, but crypto policy was not mentioned.
Despite Harris’s strong performance, the Polymarket contracts showed both candidates to have virtually equal odds of winning the actual election, with Harris’ odds increasing slightly over the course of the debate.
This was the second presidential debate of the 2024 election. After Tuesday's event, Harris' campaign called for a third debate, which would have been the second between Harris and Trump. It was also the second debate that did not discuss cryptocurrencies in depth, or even general technology or financial issues beyond the economic section.
As he has done in recent weeks, Trump touted the benefits of tariffs during his testimony and said he would impose "big tariffs."
Harris countered that Trump had left the Biden administration with a trade deficit "one of the highest we've ever seen in our history."
Like the debate between Trump and President Joe Biden before the latter dropped out of the race, fact-checkers including CNN reporter Daniel Dell said Trump’s comments were more inaccurate than Harris’. At one point, Trump claimed — falsely, according to the Wall Street Journal — that immigrants were “eating dogs” in Springfield, Ohio. (The quote has inspired a number of new memecoins on the token launchpad Pump.fun, including EATING DOGS AND CATS.)
A busy night at the Polymarket
It was a busy night for punters at Polymarket following a surprise handshake between the two candidates.
The market priced in about a 30% chance of a handshake, with about $360,000 in bets. At the start of the night, Trump and Harris shook hands — something that hadn’t happened since the first debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Bettors were fairly skeptical about whether cryptocurrencies or Bitcoin would be mentioned that night, giving Trump a 26% chance and Harris a 14% chance.
A user named “trumpisreal” won more than $10,000 in the stablecoin USDC by correctly guessing that Trump would mention “Springfield” and “cats,” referring to a rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their pets. The debate moderators noted that city officials said there was no evidence that this was happening.
On Harris’s side, bettors cashed in early on in the night when the Democratic candidate mentioned the “2025 Plan” and “artificial intelligence” at the start of the debate.
Bettors believe the poll will show Harris winning the debate at 98% and that there is a 59% chance that Harris will be the Polymarket election contract favorite the day after the debate. If an Ipsos/538 poll conducted on the same day shows Harris doing better, Harris will be the contracted debate winner.
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