Make Money from the Future with This Crypto Platform
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| By Bruce Ng |
The U.S. election season is back. And it has already started dominating global news headlines in a spectacular way.
And it’s having an impressive impact on the crypto markets, as Juan Villaverde and Marija Matić have pointed out.
Juan mentioned that we can’t predict black swan events like these. But Polymarket is a betting market that allows you to do just that: bet on future global events like …
- Politics
- Sports
- Crypto
- Pop Culture
- Business and
- Science
And lately, it’s been killing the journalists and political pundits by out predicting them.
One of the main reasons it can be quite accurate is that, unlike the typical political polls, bettors stake real money on the line. So, they are incentivized to get predictions right … including through means like obtaining insider information.
And large sums of money are involved. Just look at the betting volume in the prediction market that President Joe Biden would drop out — something that proved true this past Sunday. In this pool, $21 million of bets were processed.
So, how accurate was it? Well, by cross referencing points 1-4 on the diagram above with news events on those days taken from NBC news, we can see …
- Point 1, June 28: Confidence that Biden would drop out sits at 43%. This is the day after the first presidential debate. I should note, this data point is likely more a reflection of Biden’s poor debate performance.
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Point 2, July 5: Belief that Biden will drop out rises to about 60%. In an interview with ABC News, Biden insists he will remain in the race. Yet Polymarket seemed to say the opposite, as the spike indicates.
Sure enough, just three days later, four congressional Democrats called for Biden to exit the race. And, just a week later, his Republican opponent Donald Trump survived an attempted assassination, increasing his odds for winning the presidency significantly.
- Point 3, July 19: Probability that Biden will drop out spikes to 85%. At the same time, members of Biden’s campaign begin discussing what an exit might look like.
- Point 4: July 21: Finally, the betting market had a resolution with the announcement of Biden’s drop out from the presidential race.
As Marija said yesterday, Polymarket isn’t an official poll. But it does allow you to get a snapshot of sentiment among crypto enthusiasts.
It also lets you make money from the process. Revenue in the for the online gambling market is projected to reach over $24 billion by the end of this year, according to Statista. And as crypto itself becomes more mainstream, I can see Polymarket taking its share of that growing pie.
For more betting markets on the U.S. election — or any of the above categories — check them out here.
Personally, I find the crypto betting markets even more fascinating because it allows me to hedge my crypto trades. I’ll talk more about that in a future issue. But you can take a look at Polymarkets’ crypto betting here in the meantime.
But even more exciting is that Polymarket may launch a token soon. With that, you can get leveraged to this interesting and popular crypto betting world … without needing to bet yourself.
That could be an impressive opportunity, especially when you consider that Biden's exit from the presidential race alone spurred $28 million in daily volume on the platform.
That may still be a while off, however. So I suggest you keep up with your Weiss Crypto Daily updates. I’ll be following up on this opportunity as information is released.
Best,
Dr. Bruce Ng
