The 2020 Elections Are Boosting Crypto Prediction Markets

In just over three weeks, the trading volume on decentralized betting platform Polymarket went from zero to almost $3 million.

As of Monday, Polymarket’s “Will Trump win the 2020 U.S. presidential election?” had over $2.8 million worth of bets placed, with each bet (for possible answers “yes” or “no”) costing less than a dollar. The platform allows users to place crypto bets on highly-debated current events and public topics including politics, pop culture, business and health, according to its website.

Polymarket is a non-custodial platform, meaning it does not hold or store user-funds, and bets can be placed in the dollar-backed stablecoin USDC.

Polymarket Trading Volume Growth

Prediction markets, where users can bet on the outcome of future events, are a key application of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), which allows users to conduct financial transactions with low fees and without a middleman. Elections and political debates attract high numbers of traders to these platforms; decentralized prediction platform Augur launched five years ago, but struggled to take off until U.S. midterm election betting gave it a push in 2018.

“To me, the presidential election is the Super Bowl for prediction markets. Every single one is experiencing a massive uptick in volume. It’s only natural that crypto follows suit,” David Liebowitz, vice president of business development at decentralized encyclopedia Everipedia, told CoinDesk via Telegram.