Polymarket close to locking $100M on political bets

Demand for political bets is lifting the value locked on Polymarket. The US elections season is driving the leading bets, raising the value locked on the protocol. 

Polymarket remains the most successful Web3 betting market. In the past month, the value locked on bets continued its steep rise, setting a record at nearly $100M. The rising value coincides with near-peak trading volumes. The outsized performance of Polymarket is expected to continue at least until Q4.

The Polymarket betting saw a mix of small-scale bets, as well as million-dollar positions on the US presidential elections. Activity also rose after users flocked to the betting platform for information on the Venezuelan presidential elections. The activity surge offset the slowdown of bets after the end of the European soccer championship. 

New markets opened for bets in July

In the past month, this led to 43K active wallets making bets, for a total of $380M in new positions. The past month boosted premarket trading, leading to cumulative volumes above $1B for the first time in Polymarket’s history. 

In addition to more bets, Polymarket also opened new types of active markets. In July, active markets expanded from around 700 to nearly 1,000. New users remained around 30% of all bet makers. Whale positions on Polymarket cover around 40% of all bets, with the remainder spread across smaller retail positions. 

Polymarket also grows its value by adding assets in the form of personal betting pools. The growth in value locked comes from personal portfolios, which grow based on correct bets. Data on those personal vaults is measured at $88M as of August 2. 

Personal vaults require USDC deposits, with a small share of USDT, WETH and MATIC. The sum of all vaults is also known as the open interest for the project, which serves as the basis for new bets.

Polymarket retains advantage on political bets

The Olympics are one of the topics for Web3 betting markets. Projects like Hedgehog used the sports event to renew their pooled prediction markets with multiple betting options. 

For Polymarket, the US elections are still the big driver for top bets. The most active market position is the final winner of the US presidential elections in November. More than $474M have been pledged to the various odds. 

The riskier side of the bet, Kamala Harris, has odds of 44%. The position invited a vault holder known for smart money bets. The high-risk, high-return position may expand to $500K if the bet is realized. 

Compared to the political market, the Olympics have $3.1M locked on its leading bet for which country gets the most medals. 

Polymarket is still a tokenless app

The success of Polymarket arrived despite the fact that the app has no native token or incentives. The ease of betting and the usage of widely accessible USDC meant Polymarket managed to move ahead of other prediction and betting startups. 

The other big advantage is the ability to tap the US market, where interest may continue to grow, based on Google searches . Even top prediction tokens like Gnosis (GNO) and Augur (REP) are lagging behind Polymarket. The entire market cap of prediction tokens reaches only $519M , as most of the assets cannot repeat the performance from previous bull cycles. 

Polymarket taps both mainstream betting markets and niche crypto topics, which are the source of smaller bets. The betting space also serves as a source of potential news for the crypto market, as in the case of airdrops. At this point, it is still uncertain if Polymarket would have its own token generation event, and there is no betting market open on the possibility. 

To compensate for the lack of a token and trading, Polymarket has tapped into venture capital. The election year helped bring new liquidity, leading to a $45M funding round in May. The growth opportunities drew in DragonCapital, as well as Vitalik Buterin among the backers.

The round came after Polychain drew in a Series A round from General Catalyst in January. Polychain raised its seed round with added influence from top VC backers Naval Ravikant and Balaji Srinivasan, giving the project additional social media exposure.

Cryptopolitan reporting by Hristina Vasileva