Written by Weilin, PANews
As the discussion of the US election becomes more and more intense, Polymarket has "gone viral". As of August 14, the amount of bets on the "US election winner" prediction on Polymarket reached $589 million, and when combined with other election-themed predictions, the total amount far exceeded $600 million.
From breaking the mainstream election narrative and bringing the possibility of 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Biden withdrawing from the race to the public's attention, to predicting that JD Vance has a high probability of serving as the Republican vice presidential candidate, and predicting the words that Trump and Musk might mention in their conversation, the prediction market Polymarket has brought more suspense to the competition between the two parties in the United States for the presidency, and has also vividly presented more real opinions of users.
Recently, Polymarket officially announced that Nate Silver, a well-known data expert in the election, has joined. In today's era of social media algorithms, Polymarket aggregates information from various channels and displays users' views through bets and probabilities, which can more vividly and accurately reflect people's opinions and the possibility of reality. It has also been cited by more and more professional media and people. By excluding content that people post to attract attention for traffic, Polymarket may become an "antidote" to algorithms in the social media era.
Polymarket successfully predicted Biden's withdrawal and JD Vance's nomination, and it went viral
On August 13, Polymarket users spent nearly $5 million betting on what former President Trump would say when he spoke with Tesla CEO Musk. Overall, there were 11 relevant markets on Polymarket with significant trading volume, covering cryptocurrency-specific terms such as "bitcoin" and "cryptocurrency" as well as more political topics such as "civil war" and "censorship."
On July 30, nine days after Biden announced his withdrawal from the race, Polymarket’s prediction market saw some hot topics emerge, such as “Who will be the Democratic Party’s vice presidential candidate?”, with a 37% probability for Mark Kelly and a 34% probability for Josh Shapiro. “Will Biden be able to successfully complete his term?”, with a 74% probability. These new topics provide unique and interesting angles and new topics for users who follow the US election.
On July 21, the current US President Biden suddenly announced his withdrawal from the 2024 US presidential election. Before that, Polymarket had already predicted this topic, although Biden repeatedly denied the relevant news and the mainstream media's reports were vague. In the end, the amount of bets on Polymarket reached 21.12 million US dollars. Users expressed their views through betting, successfully breaking the mainstream narrative, and surprised users and voters who did not know about this platform before, and they also paid more and more attention to this prediction market.
Before July 15, Polymarket also successfully reflected the possibility of JD Vance being one of the Republican vice presidential candidates. There were $6.45 million bets on Vance, and Vivek Ramaswamy had about $6.67 million bets, which was comparable to Vance. If there was no Polymarket, Vance's chances of winning might have been reflected through lengthy polls, and polls and media interviews often cannot dynamically reflect a large number of personal opinions due to the influence of political parties.
In principle, Polymarket users aggregate all available data, including polls and other data, and then they can synchronize them with their own views on probability. This is also the advantage of Polymarket over polls, because it aggregates information from almost all aspects.
Well-known election data expert Nate Silver joins, and trading volume hits new highs
On May 14 this year, Polymarket announced that it had raised $70 million through two rounds of financing. The latest round of financing was led by Peter Thiel's venture capital company Founders Fund. Polymarket's investors also include Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. This news also attracted some attention in the crypto industry at the time, and PANews also wrote an article introducing the growth history of Polymarket.
On July 17, Nate Silver, a well-known data expert in the election, joined Polymarket as an advisor. The founder of the election prediction platform FiveThirtyEight was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2009 because his election prediction system successfully predicted the results of 49 out of 50 states in the 2008 US presidential election. The election prediction system he subsequently developed predicted the results of the 2012 and 2020 presidential elections with a high degree of accuracy. His model gave Trump a 28.6% chance of winning in the 2016 presidential election, but this probability was higher than many other prediction competitors.
On July 17, Nate Silver, a well-known data expert in the election, joined Polymarket
Nate Silver will now advise Polymarket on strategy, media relations, and include Polymarket data in his writing. In addition, his arrival is expected to bring greater quality, professionalism, and focus to Polymarket’s election betting.
As heavyweight consultants arrived and election talk continued, Polymarket's trading volume exceeded $1 billion on July 25, according to Dune data. The trading volume from July 1 to 30 exceeded $300 million. David Rosenberg, Polymarket's vice president of strategy, said, "We are very proud that our vision has become a reality."
Bets on Polymarket are not limited to elections. On this platform, users can discover new opinions, topics and hot spots. The platform also has multiple sections such as cryptocurrency, sports and pop culture.
Polymarket is widely cited and may be the antidote to algorithms
As a result, Polymarket continues to break the narrative of mainstream media and information channels, and has gradually become a source of citation and investigation tool for professional and traditional media such as Bloomberg. The Polymarket team's vision is that it is a platform for finding the truth in media narratives and social media algorithms.
“On social media, people are incentivized to create the most ‘engaging’ content, but this is often the most inflammatory and often untrue. These incentives are anti-truth. On Polymarket, people win bets when they are right and lose bets when they are wrong. This creates the right incentives for the truth. It is also the ‘antidote’ to the algorithm,” Polymarket told PANews .
As founder Shayne Coplan recently said on LinkedIn, “What’s most gratifying is seeing widespread adoption of Polymarket as an alternative news source. The trend is clear: people are better informed about what’s going on in the world because of Polymarket. Enough with pundits and algorithmically generated news. In an age of rampant misinformation, Polymarket offers a new form of information driven by financial incentives to tell the truth, rather than bait and switch for clicks. People want unbiased information. Polymarket is providing it.”
Based on these, Polymarket has also become an innovative fusion of current social media, betting markets, and entertainment platforms. Crypto users can place bets by recharging USDC, and the interaction is convenient.
Polymarket is also integrating with content platforms. On July 30, the well-known content subscription payment platform Substack announced the launch of the prediction market embedding function from Polymarket, marking the launch of its new Substack THE ORACLE by Polymarket. In The Oracle, readers will find insights and analysis from thousands of active markets on the Polymarket trading platform. Polymarket's The Oracle will regularly summarize some noteworthy markets and their key statistics, and conduct in-depth analysis of some of the hottest issues at the moment.
On August 13, Polymarket announced a partnership with AI-driven search engine Perplexity to provide users with news summaries of real-time events. Perplexity will use Polymarket’s data (such as election trends) to generate visualizations, which will be generated through the AI platform Tako.
In the future, Polymarket may have a token generation event (TGE), but the date has yet to be determined. PANews will closely follow the progress of the project and bring you the latest news.
