30s Summary
Prediction markets grew by 565.4% from July to September 2024, largely due to increased betting on the outcome of the US presidential election, jumping from $463.3 million to $3.1 billion. CoinGecko attributes this surge to more people engaging in election betting. These markets, like Polymarket, may offer more accurate insights than traditional polls, with betting on this platform increasing by 713%. Current stats suggest ex-President Trump leads Vice President Harris by eight points.
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Guessing the results of the upcoming US presidential election has gotten pretty popular – and it’s giving the prediction markets a big boost. From July to September 2024, these markets grew by a whopping 565.4% with betting going up to $3.1 billion across the three biggest of these marketplaces. That’s a huge leap from the $463.3 million in the second quarter of the year.
According to a report from CoinGecko on October 14th, the main reason for this jump in betting is more and more people placing bets on who’s gonna win the US elections. Based on the growth, it looks like these prediction markets could be better at telling who’s gonna win the election than the regular polls. That’s what the super-wealthy Elon Musk seems to think too.
One of these platforms is Polymarket, which lets people use stablecoins like USD Coin to bet on specific events. Polymarket’s making waves with a 99% market share as of September 2024. Almost half of its bets for this year have been on the US elections – that’s about $1.7 billion. In fact, the amount of betting on Polymarket saw a 713% increase, while the number of transactions rocketed 848% during the third quarter of 2024.
As of now, the platform is holding on to over $172 million, according to data from DefiLlama. Looking at the stats on Polymarket, former President Donald Trump is leading Vice President Kamala Harris by eight points. The numbers shifted in favour of Trump on October 4th – quite a sharp turn around from the situation in September. Looks like we’re in for an interesting election!
Source: Cointelegraph