Too Weird to Check: Did Someone Bet $30M Just to Tweak Polymarket on Election?

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Senate Democrat Bob Casey may be desperate enough to spend seven figures on a bet that Donald Trump will win, but it’s not a million dollars of his own money. And at least the money went to something of value — ad time on TV for his own re-election campaign. 

Casey didn’t spend $30 million on “Bliss,” though, or just push the money into a betting market. Four people — or maybe just one person — apparently did just that in Polymarket, one of seven key betting markets providing forums for gambling on election outcomes. The total of $30 million in crypto bets pushed the odds in Trump’s favor:

Over the past two weeks, the chances of a Trump victory in the November election have surged on Polymarket, a crypto-based prediction market. Its bettors were giving Trump a 62% chance of winning on Thursday, while Harris’s chances were 38%. The candidates were in a dead heat at the start of October. 

Trump’s gains on Polymarket have cheered his supporters, and they have been followed by the odds shifting in Trump’s favor in other betting markets. Elon Musk flagged Trump’s growing lead on Polymarket to his 200 million X followers on Oct. 6, praising the concept of betting markets. “More accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line,” Musk posted.

But the surge might be a mirage manufactured by a group of four Polymarket accounts that have collectively pumped about $30 million of crypto into bets that Trump will win. 

“There’s strong reason to believe they are the same entity,” said Miguel Morel, chief executive of Arkham Intelligence, a blockchain analysis firm that examined the accounts.

But is this someone playing games, or a legit bet on a sure thing? The Wall Street Journal isn’t really sure:

The big bets on Trump aren’t necessarily nefarious. Some observers have suggested that they were simply placed by a large bettor convinced that Trump will win and looking for a big payday. Others, however, see the bets as an influence campaign designed to fuel social-media buzz for the former president.

Polymarket is investigating the transactions, but at least for the moment, it appears that real money (in crypto form) was put into play. Could someone have put $30 million at risk just to grab a news cycle or two about momentum? It’s possible, but that stretches credulity. Any activist could do so much more with that kind of money, including funding GOTV efforts that would really have a material impact on the actual election rather than just some momentary buzz. Or even just buy TV advertising to push Trump and move the needle and the buzz with an ad campaign. 

Or hey … buy a VIP Platinum membership for about 2 million Hot Air/Townhall Media readers! (You knew I was going there, right?)

One reason to take this with a grain of salt: Polymarket didn’t actually become an outlier. RCP includes Polymarket in its aggregation of seven betting markets, and they have all moved in Trump’s direction, and on the same scale. Here are the current odds that each market has produced based on the betting taking place within each (as of 2:30 ET or so):

About the worst one can say about the manipulation of Polymarket — if indeed that’s what happened — is that it made Harris’ odds slightly lower for a few days at most. That would make bets on Harris more lucrative, however, as the odds on those bets would generate increased revenue if she wins, and again it would only impact the one market. Arguably, I suppose the market psychology could infect other markets, but not for a sustained period, and not equally across all markets. 

The same manipulation could be happening at all of these markets, at least theoretically, which could produce similar distortions. But that would require hundreds of millions of dollars, all for a momentary trendline that bettors would reverse quickly enough if they saw good reason to bet on Harris to win. Instead, bettors all seem to be more or less where Polymarket is at the moment. And that’s another reason why this kind of alleged manipulation doesn’t make much sense as an explanation for this shift in direction of all the betting markets over the last ten days; the markets are likely too distributed and decentralized for that kind of systemic corruption of the outcomes. 

If someone really dropped $30 million of their own money into Polymarket, they’re probably hoping to roughly double it on November 7. Again, I could think of lots of ways to better spend $30 million, including offering a bonus to your favorite blogger or two. I can set up a Venmo pretty quickly, I would guess. (Don’t give it to David, though.) But assuming the money’s legit, I guess they can spend it any way they want. 

Finally, the real test of these markets will come soon enough, and maybe sooner than you’d think. Thus far, the aggregate direction of the betting markets has been largely prophetic of polling shifts. If this is a manipulation, then expect the polls next week to disconnect from RCP’s trendlines. If it proves predictive, then manipulation isn’t the explanation for the apparent preference cascade in the markets over the last two weeks. 

Wanna bet which way it turns out? I kid, I kid … but send me your $30 million anyway.