Polymarket Company reveals that the four whales betting heavily on Trump are actually just one French man.
In a closely contested race, people were looking to betting markets as a stronger possible indicator of the expected outcome of the presidential elections in November. Surely those who put their money in the right place will have stronger convictions about what will happen, right?
However, it turned out that only one person had pumped over $45 million into bets in favor of Donald Trump on the Polymarket website, a cryptocurrency-based betting site. The company was forced to investigate after discovering that only four accounts were placing disproportionately large bets in favor of Trump winning the election.
In a statement to DelBoque, Polymarket confirmed that a merchant based in France controls the accounts, a result they reached after the investigation. Bets are placed on Polymarket using stablecoins, allowing users to remain somewhat anonymous – although with sufficient effort, blockchain analysis companies often can track the source of funds and reveal wallet owners.
Polymarket does not operate in the United States due to a settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and there have been questions about whether an American was circumventing restrictions to influence betting markets in favor of Trump. It appears this is not the case, but the results found by Polymarket show that predictive betting sites are easily manipulated and do not reflect reality.
One of the concerns raised by critics in betting markets like Polymarket is that voters could be influenced by false sentiments for or against a certain candidate. This is the same reason platforms like X (before Elon took over) take strict action against bot networks spreading inauthentic content – a flow of coordinated messages from accounts that appear real could influence undecided voters toward certain beliefs, such as Trump having more support among Americans than he actually does.
This kind of online signals could be used to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the outcome if Trump doesn’t win. Supporters could point to strong possibilities in favor of Trump in the betting markets, or to a large degree of (inauthentic) support on X. But this result from Polymarket should clarify that it’s just one individual pushing the odds in their favor, and betting markets should not be trusted.
X should also not be trusted as a reliable indicator, as Elon Musk used his platform to heavily advocate for Trump, including by seizing @America from a pro-Trump political action committee, and monitoring leaked internal campaign documents related to Gd Vand. Musk has 200 million followers on X, and last year Platformer reported he directed engineers at the company to boost his engagement.
The latest national polling average collected by Clear Politics shows Trump and Harris in a neck-to-neck competition with 48.7% for Harris and 48.5% for Trump
