The chances of former US President Donald Trump returning to the White House jumped to a record high on Saturday after he was shot and injured at a rally in Pennsylvania, according to Polymarket traders.
A Secret Service spokesman said the Republican presidential candidate was “safe” after the shooting, which the New York Times reported killed the suspected gunman and also killed a spectator.
After two weeks in which the nation was focused on the weaknesses and gaffes of his opponent, incumbent President Joe Biden, photos and videos of a defiant Trump, his face covered in blood and his fists raised in the air, circulated on social media.
Polymarkets’ “yes” shares in contracts predicting whether Trump will win the presidential election rose 10 cents to 70 cents after the incident, indicating the market sees a 70% chance of Trump winning in November. If the prediction is correct, bettors are paid $1 per share, and if not, they get nothing. Bets are programmed into smart contracts on the Polygon blockchain and settled in USDC, a stablecoin or cryptocurrency that trades 1:1 for the dollar.
“PoliFi” meme tokens named after President Trump also soared after the shooting. For example, MAGA rose 34% in 24 hours to $8.38, while the satirical TREMP rose 67% to $0.6471, according to CoinGecko data.
BODEN, a joke asset named after Biden, fell about 15% in 24 hours to $0.0333115. These meme coins have become a kind of “de facto election betting market,” as one supporter put it this year, but unlike prediction markets, PoliFi tokens don’t pay out anything to holders if the associated candidate wins.
As writer Noah Kumin points out at Mars Review of Books, the shooting also inspired a number of tasteless (if that’s the right word) new meme coins on the Solana token creation site Pump.fun. “Return of Trump” (ticker: ROT) and “Hero Trump” (HERO) are two relatively innocuous examples.
The CoinDesk 20 Index, a gauge of the overall cryptocurrency market, is up 3.31% on a 24-hour basis. Bitcoin, the oldest and largest cryptocurrency by market cap, rose 3.26% to $59,735.17.
Founded four years ago by Shane Coplan, Polymarkets has seen a surge in trading volumes in 2024 amid a growing craze for political betting ahead of the US elections. A total of $252 million has been bet on US presidential winner contracts, a record for the company and for all crypto-based prediction markets, for that matter.
A similar trend was seen at PredictIt, a more traditional betting site where bets are settled in fiat currency, with Trump shares rising from 59 cents before the shooting to 66 cents before levelling off at 65 cents.
Prediction markets are often touted as a more reliable gauge of sentiment and a better method of forecasting than opinion polls or expert forecasts, because the people making the predictions have money at stake and therefore an incentive to do thorough research and express honest opinions.
Update (2024-07-14 01:55 UTC): Added price, link and background on the BODEN token.
Update (July 14, 2024 02:36 UTC): Adds details about the newly minted meme coin.
