Hold onto your hats, folks! The world of blockchain betting is getting spicy as Polymarket, the big kahuna of the betting platforms, finds itself under the microscope. This platform, known for being cited left and right in the media, is now facing a bit of a pickle.
It seems like Polymarket's got a bit of a problem: its odds as an election forecaster are being questioned. Why, you ask? Well, a couple of smarty-pants from Chaos Labs and Inca Digital have been doing some digging and found a whole lot of “wash trading” going on. For those not in the know, wash trading is like playing ping-pong with your assets, buying and selling them like there's no tomorrow just to make it look like there's a ton of action happening. Chaos Labs thinks that a whopping third of Polymarket’s election trades are this kind of funny business, while Inca Digital says it's a big chunk too.
The reported transaction volume of $2.7 billion isn't quite adding up with the actual $1.75 billion, according to these researchers. And on top of that, they say the platform's been counting share prices as full dollars, no matter what the real cost is.
Chaos Labs went all Sherlock Holmes on this one, analyzing the on-chain data to spot those high-volume traders. They tried to weed out the regular Joes from those sneaky wash traders by looking at their buy-sell habits and comparing their holdings with their trading volumes.
But fear not, a spokesperson from Polymarket assures us they're all about giving users a fair shake and letting the market do its thing with transparency.
Founded back in 2020, Polymarket had to move its operations offshore thanks to some regulatory hiccups in the US. It's been on the hunt for a cool $50 million in new funding and is even thinking about launching its own token. The buzz around the US elections got the platform buzzing with a trading volume of $533 million in September alone!
As for the latest election odds, Polymarket’s got Trump leading Harris with a 66% chance to her 34%. But hold your horses, because AtlasIntel polls show Trump ahead with 55% to Harris's 45%. Meanwhile, FiveThirtyEight and YouGov have Harris neck-and-neck or slightly ahead. It's anybody's race, folks, and we’re all just along for the wild ride!
