Markets
Trump’s odds of victory hit all-time high at Polymarket after shooting
The likelihood of former US President Donald Trump retaking the White House hit an all-time high on Saturday after he was wounded in a shooting at a Pennsylvania rally, according to traders at Polymarket.
A Secret Service spokesman said the Republican presidential candidate was “safe” after the shooting, according to The New York Times. A suspected gunman was killed, and a bystander also died, the newspaper said.
Photos and videos of a defiant Trump with blood on his face and raising his fist in the air circulated on social media, after two weeks in which the national conversation focused on fragility It is gaffes of his opponent, current President Joe Biden.
“Yes” shares on Polymarket Contract The odds on whether Trump will win the presidency rose ten cents after the incident, to 70 cents, meaning the market now sees a 70% chance that he will prevail in November. Each share pays $1 if the prediction comes true, and zero if it doesn’t. Bets are programmed into a smart contract on the Polygon blockchain and settled in USDC, a stablecoin or cryptocurrency that trades 1:1 with dollars.
“PolyFi“Meme tokens named after Trump also surged after the shooting. MAGA, for example, rose 34% on a 24-hour basis to $8.38, according to CoinGecko Dataand satirical TREMP rose 67% to $0.6471.
BODYa joke asset named after Biden, fell about 15% in 24 hours to $0.0333115. These meme coins have become a sort of “de facto betting market on the election,” as one proponent described them This year, though unlike prediction markets, PoliFi tokens pay nothing to holders if the associated candidate wins.
As observed by writer Noah Kumin in the Mars Review of Books, the shooting also inspired (if that’s the right word for it) a crop of new meme coins, many of them in bad taste, on Solana token creation website Bomb.fun“Resurrection of Trump” (ticker: ROT) and “Hero Trump” (HERO) were two relatively innocuous examples.
The CoinDesk 20 Index, a proxy for the overall cryptocurrency market, rose 3.31% on a 24-hour basis. Bitcoin, the oldest and largest cryptocurrency by market cap, rose 3.26% to $59,735.17.
Polymarket, founded four years ago by Shayne Coplan, has seen boffo trading volumes in 2024 amid enthusiasm for political betting ahead of the US election. The US presidential winner contract has a total of $252 million in bets placed, a record for the firm and for all cryptocurrency-based prediction marketsif not all prediction markets.
PredictIt, a more traditional betting site where bets are settled in fiat currency, showed a similar trendwith Trump’s shares rising from 59 cents before the shooting to 66 cents before stabilizing at 65 cents.
Prediction markets are often called a more reliable indicator of sentiment and superior forecasting method than polls or experts because people who make predictions are putting money on the line and are therefore incentivized to do thorough research and express their honest opinions.
UPDATE (July 14, 2024, 01:55 UTC): Adds BODEN token price, links, and history.
UPDATE (July 14, 2024, 02:36 UTC): Adds details about newly minted meme coins.