How prediction markets are bracing for post-election user drop-offs
The post How prediction markets are bracing for post-election user drop-offs appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
Today, enjoy the Lightspeed newsletter on Blockworks.co. Tomorrow, get the news delivered directly to your inbox. Subscribe to the Lightspeed newsletter. Howdy! If you want some interesting (and somewhat alarming?) morning reading, check out this University of Toronto and University of Miami study on the political and psychological makeup of crypto users. Owning crypto “is more strongly related to experiencing negative emotions…than positive,” according to the paper. You don’t say! Anyways: Prediction markets brace for a post-election lull Crypto is trying to manifest its app era, and Polymarket may be its poster child. The crypto-based prediction market — which slogged through three years of “meh” volume numbers — has had a banner 2024. Its users and volume have both skyrocketed, and its wunderkind CEO Shayne Coplan disclosed two funding rounds netted the business $70 million from investors. Polymarket topped $400 million in trading volume from over 50,000 traders in August. The platform makes use of Ethereum and Polygon, but Solana has also caught some of the hype. The derivatives exchange Drift launched a prediction market last week that has already logged more than $2.6 million in bets. There are fiat-based prediction markets too, but crypto enables Polymarket and its ilk to run globally (except in the US, technically speaking), mitigate chargeback risk and more easily coordinate across banking regimes and regulatory jurisdictions, Founders Fund’s Bridget Harris wrote. It also should be said that Polymarket boasts a prettier and easier-to-use website than its current competitors. These halcyon days may be coming to an end, however, as most prediction market volume is being spent on the US presidential election on Nov. 5. “I’m struggling to understand crypto’s obsession with prediction markets,” Solana-based BetHog co-founder (and former prediction market co-founder) Nigel Eccles wrote on X yesterday. “We’ve had them for over 20 years and…
Filed under: News - @ August 27, 2024 6:16 pm