Former President Donald Trump's odds of winning the 2024 presidential election have jumped past 53% on cryptocurrency prediction market Polymarket.
Former President Donald Trump's odds of winning the 2024 presidential election have jumped past 53% on cryptocurrency prediction market Polymarket and have moved ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris.
At the center of some such speculations is one mystery trader going by the name "Fredi9999," who has reportedly amassed an astonishing 7.8 million shares of Trump, arguably making him the largest position holder on the platform.
To some market participants, the timing of big bets, combined with pro-Trump statements from Elon Musk's social media accounts, has sparked speculation of a connection between the billionaire and the whale trader.
No direct evidence supports this theory, but the trader's big bankroll and focused interest in Trump fit the profile of a wealthy, committed supporter of the former president.
Polymarket is based on a very simple principle: share prices between $0 and $1 reflect perceived probability of an outcome. Yet this recent rise in Trump's odds doesn't seem particularly pegged to polling or major campaign news.
Nate Silver, the founder of FiveThirtyEight and a Polymarket advisor, says that the bump is more due to market dynamics than manipulation. "Sometimes market sentiment has a mind of its own, and that can especially happen when traders are bored and angsty because they're in the doldrums," Silver wrote in a recent newsletter.
He notes the current liquidity in the market makes it prohibitively expensive to artificially move the price for any period of time, indicating most bets come from "true Trump believers" or opportunistic traders.
