Vice President Kamala Harris’ odds of winning the White House on crypto prediction market platform Polymarket rose Wednesday as a newly registered user backed her with millions of dollars.
Since October 4, the once neck-and-neck Polymarket odds have increasingly tilted toward Republican Donald Trump, ascribing the former president a 66% chance of victory as of Tuesday. However, Trump’s Democratic opponent saw some gains, bringing his odds down to 63% for a second term.
Conducting their first transaction on Polymarket Tuesday, a user named Ly67890 built up a $2 million position predicting that Harris would win. The fresh face quickly became Polymarket’s top holder of “Yes” shares for Harris, climbing past established users.
Ly67890’s betting activity was broken up across dozens of transactions, but the user placed six bets worth more than $100,000. Some punts made were as small as $0.87, while the user’s highest wager was worth around $148,500.
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Still, Harris’ biggest backer on Polymarket had much less skin in the game than Fredi9999. In total, the Polymarket user has wagered $13 million on former President Trump, while participating in several other election-focused markets since joining in June.
Despite the big early spend, Ly67890 is already nursing a loss on paper. The value of their positions on Polymarket—solely focused on the presidential election’s winner—have lost more than $31,000 in value, representing a swift 1.5% drop.
The digital wallet linked to Ly67890 received $2 million worth of the stablecoin USDC less than a day ago, per PolygonScan. The funds came from a wallet labeled as “Binance: Hot Wallet 2,” suggesting they were withdrawn from the crypto exchange.
With 12 days left until Election Day, Polymarket has witnessed a burst of election-focused activity among bettors. As daily active users hit an all-time high of 26,500 on Tuesday, some 94% of bets covered politics, according to a Dune dashboard.
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The crypto money is coming in hard and fast ahead of next month’s election. The latest comes from Ripple’s co-founder and executive chairman, Chris Larsen, who said Monday that he has donated another $10 million in XRP, the seventh biggest digital asset by market cap, to support Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign for U.S. president. Ripple confirmed to Decrypt that Larsen had made the personal donation, following his tweet on the matter. The New York Times reported Sunday that Larsen had d...
As the presidential race hits its home stretch, the usefulness of prediction markets has been questioned by some of Harris’ campaign surrogates. Earlier this week, billionaire investor Mark Cuban dismissed Polymarket’s odds as being driven by “foreign money,” and added that he doesn’t think that they are “an indication of anything.”
Meanwhile, Polymarket is reportedly vetting some of its biggest bettors. U.S.-based users are excluded from the platform following a settlement with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in 2022, and the company has reportedly checked to make sure top accounts like Fredi9999 conform with the standard, per Bloomberg.
Mark Cuban Dismisses Polymarket Election Odds as Result of 'Foreign Money'
Billionaire investor Mark Cuban has dismissed the usefulness of the decentralized prediction market Polymarket when it comes to predicting the 2024 U.S. presidential election winner. “From all indications, most of the money coming into Polymarket is foreign money, so I don’t think it’s an indication of anything,” he said in an interview with CNBC Squawk Box. Polymarket’s odds give Donald Trump a 64.1% chance of defeating Vice President Kamala Harris, with the Democratic candidate sitting at 36....
While a divisive U.S. election has provided ample betting fodder for Polymarket over the past few months, some of its competitors are eyeing elections overseas.
On Monday, the prediction marketplace Kalshi—a non-crypto platform that recently won a long-running battle with the CFTC to offer election markets betting—added contracts covering elections in 2025 for Ireland, Ecuador, Canada, and Australia, according to filings with the regulator.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
