Polymarket Trading Explodes as 2024 Election Enters Uncharted Territory

The choice made by Joe Biden not to run for re-election is not without precedent in the history of the United States. Presidents such as James Polk, Harry S. Truman, and Lyndon B. Johnson have all decided against seeking a second term for various reasons.

“What sets this apart is Biden’s unexpected withdrawal from the race, happening just a month prior to the Democratic National Convention and following his assurance to party supporters that the ‘elites’ would not manage to force him out.”

The announcement led to a significant increase in wagers on political forecasts through the Polymarket prediction market, reaching unprecedented volumes.

Based on data from a Dune Analytics-driven dashboard, daily transactions on the platform surpassed the previous record of $28 million, with users swiftly placing wagers on an unprecedented presidential contest.

A month ago, the platform saw an average of $4 million to $5 million in daily trading volume following the highly publicized debate between Biden and Trump, during which there were renewed calls for Biden’s resignation.

Over the past month, the number of daily active accounts or wallets has nearly doubled, increasing from around 3,000 to almost 6,000.

A significant amount of money, surpassing $500 million, has been amassed in political bets on the platform: The market for the winner of the U.S. presidential election holds $319 million in wagers, with $212 million invested in the Democratic nominee (Vice President Kamala Harris being the clear front-runner). An additional pool of $10 million is dedicated to wagers on the identity of the Democratic candidate’s vice presidential running mate.

At present, the record-breaking figure to surpass stands at a staggering $744 million. This colossal amount represents the total wagers placed on Betfair, the leading betting site in the U.K., during the 2020 election.

July isn’t over yet, with approximately 3.5 months remaining until the election, the query is whether Polymarket will reach a valuation of one billion dollars before then.

A meme coin cat topped $1 billion

The Polymarket agreement posed an intriguing query: Which meme coin featuring cats as its theme would reach a market capitalization of one billion dollars first?

The market racked up $4.6 million in trading volumes since going live in March.

In the running were tokens from several blockchains, such as Base, Ethereum and Solana.

The vote on the resolution generated some excitement, but controversy ensued when a large purchase of $630,000 worth of the token reportedly triggered a surge, propelling it above the $1 billion market capitalization mark – prompting accusations of market manipulation by certain parties.

As a seasoned trader with years of experience under my belt, I find the situation surrounding Popcat particularly intriguing. It appears that market manipulation has taken place – a tactic used by some to artificially inflate or deflate the price of an asset for their own gain. However, it’s essential to clarify that the digital asset did indeed surpass the $1 billion threshold on one specific platform. This revelation comes from the user @The_Guru55.

“Literally a 1 second pump with 1 order on 1 website is pretty questionable,” the person added.

The market thought the CrowdStrike Windows snafu would be an easy fix. It was wrong.

A problematic update for CrowdStrike’s security software, released on Friday, caused widespread disruption. It rendered Windows computers globally inoperable, starting with those in Europe and Asia during their active business hours. Subsequently, affected systems in the United States were also impacted as the day began there.

As the business day ended in Asia and Europeans began to turn on their computers, only to encounter blue screens of death, a Polymarket prediction held that this issue wasn’t catastrophic and a solution would materialize by Friday evening, giving it an 89% probability.

Despite the market’s misjudgment, CrowdStrike engineers provided solutions to initiate repairs, which demanded a considerable amount of work for each affected computer. The predicament worsened, leading to over 2,500 canceled flights and approximately 8,000 delayed ones as of Monday. Delta Airlines continued rebooking passengers.

For two decades, the thought of any antivirus software unexpectedly pushing an update with such problematic behavior has been my own personal nightmare as an analyst in the tech industry. – Steven Sinofsky (former president of Microsoft’s Windows division) posted on X.

The opposing party in the contract, who wagered against a resolution being reached by Friday, had a weak hand. Only three individuals held a combined 45 shares of this bet. The total amount at stake came to approximately $90,000.

Meanwhile, the largest holder of the “yes” side lost $2,800.