If youre not a degenerate gambler, then you may not even know what Polymarket is.
Polymarket is hot right now.
The Wall Street Journal issharing its modelingand breathlesslyreporting on its predictions.
A look at Polymarket’s prediction for the 2024 election as of August 26, 2024.© Polymarket screengrab.
Famed prognosticator Nate Silversigned on as an advisorand Peter Thielhelped raise$70millionin venture capital for the site.
If you want to gamble on the U.S. election, Polymarket is the hot site to do it on.
But how, exactly, does it work?
Every outcome on Polymarket has a binary answer.
Will it beTrump or Kamala in 2024?
Will the U.S. have acase of MPoxby September 30?
WillTrump ever say mog?
Will an EU country ban Telegrambefore October?
Questions whose answers have more variation are broken apart into multiple yes or no binaries.
Whats thebox officeforBeetlejuice Beetlejuicegoing to be?
Less than $75 million, yes or no?
More than $105 million?
Will the Fedcut interest ratesby September 18?
What about after the election?
Buying a share of Trump will win the presidency costs 49.8 right now.
If he wins, the user gets the difference, up to a dollar, back.
So a Trump win would earn you 50.2 if a user locked in at 49.8.
Users can even sell off shares as the prices rise and fall.
A lot of cash is moving through the site right now.
And, weirdly, Polymarket doesnt take a cut of any of those bets.
Then how does Polymarket make money?
Well, right now, it doesnt make much at all.
See, Polymarket sees itself as something other than just a gambling website.
It wants to be the future of news.
Shayne Coplan, Polymarkets founder, has not been shy about this.
Enough of the talking heads and news-by-algorithm.
People want unbiased information.
A Bet on the Demise of Mainstream Media
But what Polymarket delivers isnt unbiased information.
Its the chattering of gamblers laying bets.
As they lay more bets, the odds change.
Thats why prediction markets are the best source of real-time event probabilities.
Polymarket is the future of news.
Coplan has hammered this in interviews.
Coplan seems to believe Polymarkets path to profitability is through the news.
Polymarket is transforming how people engage with the news.
The Oracle reads like youre listening to Polymarket talk to itself.
That changed last week and Trump has begun to edge Harris out by fractions of a penny.
Why is this happening?
According to Polymarket, its because of Harris recently announced economic policies.
The market reacted sharply to Fridays rollout of Harris economic plan, The Oracleexplainedin an August 19 post.
The Oracle is full of links and context provided by more traditional news outlets.
Which is fine, thats how the business works.
Everyone is reading everyone elses pieces, referencing each other, and linking back to original reporting.
But thats hardly the future of news.
Perplexity is one of the dodgier large-language models on the market.
Forbes accused it of plagiarism and threatened to take legal action.
Wired didextensive reportingon the AI, calling it a bullshit machine.
Hours after Wired published its expose on Perplexity,Perplexity had plagiarized it.
Prediction markets arent new and neither are websites that let people gamble on the outcome of an election.
Its not, strictly speaking, legal in the United States.
You probably should talk to your accountant about future taxes before jumping in.
That kind of thing has happened before, recently, in other countries.
It was the gambling equivalent of insider trading.
Last week, the cops announced they hadnt turned up sufficient evidence tocharge anyonewith a crime.
Imagine the fallout if something similar happened in the United States.
No Future
Polymarkets current version of The Future of News is a depressing one.
At the click of a button, users can generate a summary of the race provided by Perplexity.
RFK JR officially endorsed Trumpduring his concession speech.
Kamala reminds me of the energy of when Obama was running for office.
I wonder if shell win as many states as Obama?
Says another account with 23,700 shares of yes for Harris.
News from the future, delivered to your present.
