Donald Trump reportedly discovered he was ahead in the US presidential election race after checking for updates on crypto betting platform Polymarket.
That’s according to Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, who described the “surreal” moment someone tipped him off that Trump HQ found out their candidate was winning based on his platform’s figures.
Polymarket’s numbers are based entirely on betting sentiment and favored Trump for most of the election. Indeed, on election day, he was given a 62% chance of winning while Kamala Harris remained at 38%.
Some users on X (formerly Twitter) even theorized that large Polymarket bets on Trump winning the election may have been trying to influence Polymarket odds and present Trump in a more favorable light.
As reported by Protos, traditional polling methods had Kamala Harris narrowly ahead and put the overall outcome closer to 50/50.
Media outlets and right-wing commentators, including Elon Musk, repeatedly referenced Polymarket as an indicator Trump may have been leading at various points throughout the campaign. This ultimately appears to have been the case with Polymarket betting being closer to the end result than most polls could have predicted.
This is despite bettors supposedly being based outside of the US. Despite Polymarket being officially unavailable to US users, it can still be accessed via a VPN, and the platform invested heavily in US-based influencers and ads to promote it.
The ‘Presidential Election Winner 2024’ market was reportedly resolved after Fox, Associated Press, and NBC confirmed the result. A whopping $3.6 billion in volume was sunk into this particular bet while one of its largest bettors has reportedly made $49 million.