Polymarket bet settled as Biden becomes second world leader to lose to a lettuce
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The leader of the free world Joe Biden or a head of lettuce, which will last longer? Place your bets.
A bet worth over $100,000 on crypto prediction market Polymarket was settled yesterday as Joe Biden announced his decision not to seek re-election in the coming presidential race.
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Biden joins former UK prime minister Liz Truss in being outlasted by a lettuce. Lasting a mere 45 days, Truss announced her resignation on October 20, 2022.
Rather than opting to livestream the progressive wilting, as UK newspaper The Daily Star did, Polymarket went for a more strictly defined timeframe. Using an assumed 10-day shelf life, the bet’s expiry was set for July 28, 2024, 11:59 PM ET.
Biden’s sudden announcement via a post on X (formerly Twitter) came less than 24 hours after posting “It’s the most important election of our lifetimes. And I will win it.”
‘Unbiased forecasts’ or another crypto casino?
Prediction markets such as Polymarket allow users to bet on the outcome of certain events in categories such as politics, crypto, pop culture, sports, business, and science.
The fact that users have skin in the game has led some to believe that prediction markets could be more useful than traditional opinion polls. Indeed, Polymarket even boasts that its markets act as “live, unbiased 2024 election forecasts.”
However, others are skeptical, referring to markets at their current scale as “a few dozen pro forecasters, a few market makers, and a few hundred degenerate gamblers.”
Another X user, in a reply, points out that markets are often only a reliable indicator when the settlement deadline is imminent and, beforehand, are much more akin to trading overall sentiment.
When extended beyond the realms of ‘real world’ events like politics, prediction markets are, like all things crypto, prime targets for manipulation.
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A recent $4 million market on which cat-themed meme coin would be first to reach a fully diluted value (FDV) of $1 billion resolved to ‘Yes’ for POPCAT after a single $300k buy order on Raydium, the Solana-based exchange, briefly pushed the token over the line.
Accurate or not, nobody can deny Polymarket’s popularity, especially as the drama of US politics plays out in real-time on-chain. CoinDesk tallied almost $80 million to have been bet across a variety of questions over Biden’s prospects.
On one Polymarket wager concerning who would win the Democratic nomination, a user with the handle ‘AnonBidenBull’ lost $1.85 million, as spotted by X account Degen News. The account lost a total of $2 million across three similar bets.
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It’s not just Polymarket where users have lost money on backing the wrong electoral horse.
One unlucky trader bought a total of $8 million worth of Solana-based meme coin BODEN in mid-April, the price of which has since collapsed dramatically as Biden’s election prospects have worsened. X user ‘clippedtoby’ notes the trader is now down 98%.
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