US President Joe Biden may have appeared more coherent in a television interview on Friday night compared to the debate a week ago, but his re-election chances haven’t changed much, according to traders at cryptocurrency-based prediction market platform Polymarkets.
In a contract asking who would win the November presidential election, Biden “win” shares were trading at 11 cents just after the ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos aired, a cent lower than just before the broadcast. If the prediction was correct, the buyer would receive $1 (USDC, stablecoin, or cryptocurrency that trades at the dollar’s equivalent) per share, and if not, zero. So a price of 11 cents means the market thinks the incumbent president has an 11% chance of winning.
A month ago, the stock was trading at 36 cents. It plummeted after Biden’s disastrous debate defeat against former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump. Now Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) is rallying Democrats together to urge the president to drop out of the race, The Washington Post reported Friday.
The presidential winner contract is the largest in the polymarket, with $229 million at stake.
The third contract, on whether Biden would drop out of the race, has $12 million on the outcome, with odds of that increasing by three points to 65%.
Polymarket, which is in its fourth year, has seen a surge in trading volumes this year as political betting fever kicked off in the wake of the US presidential election in November. June was the first month the platform’s trading volume exceeded $100 million. Polymarket was also recently praised for its early indication of concerns about the president’s cognitive abilities through trading levels on the “Is Biden Dropped?” contract, long before the issue was seriously discussed in the mainstream media.
“Prediction markets have long been sought as a primary use case for blockchain,” Galaxy Digital analyst Zach Pokorny wrote in a research note on Friday. “Social media, by its censorship- and manipulation-resistant, transparent and global nature, is ideal for this task because it allows unfiltered expression of opinion by anyone, anywhere, on any topic.”
But on-chain prediction markets have limitations, Pokorny wrote: “They only reflect the opinions of individuals active on the blockchain, which today is the opinion of a small minority of people. probably Similar beliefs. As cryptocurrency is increasingly becoming a partisan political issue, and because Polymarket only accepts cryptocurrency, the political market on Polymarket may be distorted by participants’ pro-cryptocurrency bias.”
Update (July 6, 02:00 UTC): Added details about Senator Mark Warner.
