30s Summary

Polymarket, a cryptocurrency-based prediction platform, accurately predicted Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 U.S. election. Despite polls and mainstream media suggesting a close race, Polymarket consistently showed strong odds in Trump’s favor. The platform’s founder, Shayne Coplan, suggests that prediction markets and traditional polls can work together for more accurate forecasting. Despite initial fears that Polymarket was biased towards Trump, Professor Koleman Strumpf confirmed these were unfounded. The platform predicted a 98.8% chance of Trump’s victory by Election Day, advocating for the reliability of prediction markets.

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Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan has hit the big time in 2024. Along with Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and the crypto industry, prediction markets are celebrating a major win from the recent U.S. election. The fact that the GOP rocked the boat on Tuesday night was a massive shock to folks who only tune into mainstream media or heed the advice of pollsters and pundits.

If you took a gander at the odds on Polymarket and similar betting sites like Kalshi and PredictIt throughout the year, then the results aren’t a surprise at all. As Koleman Strumpf, a professor of economics at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, states, “The markets were far and away the best forecast of the 2024 election”. While most polls showed that the race was too close too close to call, the markets were already singing Trump’s victory tune.

This win comes after weeks of mainstream media buzzing with theories that Polymarket, a decentralized prediction platform that runs on cryptocurrency and has seen billions in trading volume this year, was being played by pro-Trump forces to boost his odds. But those fears of markets damaging democracy or causing other harms were simply unfounded, according to Strumpf.

By Wednesday morning, Polymarket was betting on a 98.8% chance that Trump would return to the White House, rising from 60% in just 24 hours. The summer polls that gave Democrats a slim advantage now seem irrelevant as even The New York Times was predicting an overwhelming win for Trump.

But wait! Let’s not chuck traditional polls and forecasting methods out the window. Even those in favor of prediction markets know they have their worth. As Haseeb Qureshi, a managing partner at Dragonfly and investor in Polymarket, points out, markets and forecasts both have their place. They’re not opponents, but teammates, each bringing something unique to the game.

However, those who made bang-on predictions in these markets are likely feeling “told you so” vibes right now. Hart Lambur, co-founder of UMA Protocol, an oracle service that helps ads keep score for Polymarket, puts it simply, “Prediction markets work”. Our lesson from this election is crystal clear: for the most accurate information, ditch the traditional polls and follow the prediction markets.