Trump Bets Push Polymarket to Record Volume as Nate Silver Joins

As activity on crypto prediction market Polymarket sets a new monthly all-time high halfway through July, the blockchain-based prediction platform is tapping Nate Silver, a renowned statistician and journalist, as an advisor.

First reported by Axios Monday, Silver is the founder of 538, formerly referred to as FiveThirtyEight. Silver left the ABC News-owned poll and data analysis website last year amid layoffs at parent company Walt Disney, per The New York Times.

“Prediction markets are playing an increasingly vital role in helping people understand and plan for the future,” Silver said in a written statement. “Polymarket's scale and structure are providing for considerably more robust and efficient trading than we've seen in the past.”

Silver’s addition to Polymarket comes as an uncertain political backdrop in the U.S. provides traders with ample betting fodder. Predicting who will win the upcoming U.S. presidential election has traders wagering $262 million, so far.

Overall, $400 million in bets have been made through Polymarket this year, the company said, describing itself as “the world’s largest prediction market.”

“Nate's guidance will be critical in helping us take our offering to the next level,” Polymarket founder and CEO Shayne Copelan said in a statement. “It’s a dream come true to welcome [Silver] to Polymarket's advisory board.”

At least $94 million in total wagers were settled Monday as traders tried to predict who former President Donald Trump would announce as his running mate. The frontrunner on Polymarket, Sen. J.D. Vance, was the ultimate pick. At the same time, daily active wallets on Polymarket climbed to 4,200 amid the spectacle, according to a Dune dashboard.

As the U.S. presidential election draws closer, surging activity on the platform has pushed monthly trading activity past recent heights. Notching a record $111 million in trading volume last month, according to a separate Dune dashboard, Polymarket’s trading volume for July already stands at $113 million, as of this writing. With two weeks left in the month, that figure will likely be much higher.

Though Polymarket’s political punts have gained outsized attention as a potential gauge for the future come November—Trump’s victory odds on the site are currently over 70%—a myriad of markets exist on the platform, spanning a wide range of topics and issues.

A snippet of back-to-back bets Tuesday offers insight: 0xobama wagered $2.50 that July will be the hottest month on record, sdiff123 ponied up $144 that a Democrat will win New Mexico in the presidential election, and DumbMoney1 wagered $95 on the upcoming flick “Twisters,” predicting the film will not gross more than $56 million at the box office opening weekend.

Effectively serving as a digital water cooler, Polymarket’s discord server has meanwhile cultivated 11,300 members. As of this writing, 1,600 of them were online.

“We have seen tons of new regular traders, who have come to the site for both regular betting, and some who have become small market makers,” pseudonymous crypto trader Fhantom Bets, a prolific trader on the platform, told Decrypt.

The surge in activity can be traced to May, Fhantom Bets added, when Polymarket announced that it had raised $80 million in a Series B funding round that saw participation from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The following week, 69% of traders were indeed new users.

After registering 29,400 active users last month, that figure already stands at 22,000 halfway through this month.

Polymarket’s roots as a crypto-based platform likely influence traders’ thinking. For example, bettors missed the mark last month after penciling in a 61% chance that the former president would mention “Bitcoin” during a debate with President Joe Biden. 

While Polymarket hasn’t indicated whether an airdrop could be coming, Fhantom Bets said he felt would-be farmers are emerging on the platform, and that their activity is not too dissimilar from wash trading. Within the context of law, wash trading is described as an entity buying and selling an asset simultaneously to create misleading market information.

Polymarket isn’t available to traders in the U.S., but its projections are being cited increasingly by news outlets outside the crypto sphere on political matters. Those include the publication Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal within the past week.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa. Updated to include comments from Polymarket.