Prediction markets are becoming a new arena within the crypto economy, where well-informed traders are vying against casual retail bettors for profit.
Many users act more like sports gamblers than disciplined traders, according to a report from 10x Research published on Tuesday. The report states that users are trading “dopamine and narrative for discipline and edge.” “Accuracy and profit are influenced not by the crowd, but by a small, informed elite who price probabilities, hedge exposures, and make use of retail-driven longshots.”
The increase in liquidity and retail participation is prompting professional trading desks to step up their activities in prediction markets, taking advantage of the spreads and misinformation asymmetry that this market structure brings, 10x noted.
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This report is a troubling indication for casual traders hoping to make easy money in prediction markets, as blockchain data suggests that most users end up losing their initial investments.
Only around 16.7% of wallets on Polymarket show profits, with the remaining 83% reporting losses, according to blockchain data from Dune.
Related: Prediction markets are evolving into speculative ‘arbitrage arenas’ for crypto traders
Perfect win rates raise insider concerns
The impeccable performance of certain prediction market accounts has sparked worries regarding potential insider trading, as some users seem to win consistently.
A Polymarket user known as “pony-pony” claims a 100% win rate with over $77,000 in realized profit by betting on events related to the artificial intelligence development company, OpenAI, according to prediction market data aggregator Polymarket Money in a Monday X post.
Another user, “AlphaRaccoon,” has also sparked insider allegations after earning over $1 million in a day by successfully winning 22 out of 23 bets tied to Google search trends.
Additionally, there are growing concerns regarding the accuracy of Polymarket data on third-party data dashboards after a researcher at Paradigm found a bug that double-counts the trading volume in prediction markets, as reported by Cointelegraph earlier on Tuesday.
This bug inflates the main volume metrics used to assess prediction market activity, including notional volume, which counts the number of contracts traded, and cashflow volume, which assesses the dollar value traded at each transaction, as noted by Paradigm researcher Storm in a Tuesday X post.
However, the inflated volumes observed on data dashboards stem from inaccuracies in data interpretation, rather than wash trading, an illegal practice where entities buy and trade the same instrument to create a false impression of increased market activity.
The recently discovered bug by Paradigm was “validated” by various data dashboards, including AlliumLabs and DefiLlama, which are now updating their Polymarket dashboards to rectify the double-counting issue.
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