offshore platform<\/a>, for instance, generated over $600 million in trading volume, far more than most political markets typically attract. Most of the activity took place buying and selling contracts tied to long-shot candidates who ultimately did not win.<\/p>\nThis summer, Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed\u2019s Prosperity Party cruised to victory in federal elections, winning 438 parliamentary seats and paving the way for him to serve another five-year term. The closest competitor won 13 seats. On prediction markets, trading volume\u2014the total value of contracts bought and sold\u2014typically tracks roughly with the odds of a given outcome; frontrunners attract far more volume than long shots. But in this case, the trading patterns deviated sharply from the norm. Just $173,000 was wagered on Ahmed winning, compared to more than $41 million traded on his chief of staff, Shimelis Abdisa, becoming the country\u2019s next leader. Altogether, the volume traded added up to over $285 million, nearly all on losing candidates.<\/p>\n
Even odder? \u201cNearly all of it\u2014about $284 million\u2014came from pairs of accounts repeatedly buying and selling with each other,\u201d says former Polymarket trader Chris Park, who now runs the prediction-market forensic analysis firm MSR Decode.<\/p>\n
Such a high volume of seemingly pointless back-and-forth transactions has raised eyebrows among experts. \u201cIt’s obviously some form of volume manipulation,\u201d says Rajiv Sethi, a Barnard College economics professor who researches prediction markets.<\/p>\n
When asked about these markets, Shana Bautista, Polymarket\u2019s head of global intelligence and investigations, told WIRED that the team \u201cimmediately flagged this activity, investigated, and blocked the accounts from trading.\u201d Polymarket did not respond to follow-up questions about why the accounts were able to trade such a high amount of volume before it took action.<\/p>\n
The timing of these trades made things even weirder. Polymarket\u2019s rules stipulated that the Ethiopia market would be resolved in October after the prime minister was formally appointed and sworn in, which meant that it stayed open for several months after Ahmed\u2019s victory was all but a foregone conclusion. For 123 days after the election, bursts of seemingly irrational trading continued, prompting Polymarket users to leave comments like \u201cTHIS NOT RESOLVED?\u201d and \u201cfuckkkk.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prediction market boosters often tout the platforms as barometers of public opinion, or even \u201ctruth machines\u201d offering a clearer picture of where things are headed than polling or other data. In 2024, for example, Kalshi beat many pollsters in forecasting the outcome of the US presidential race. But their trading activity can also tell more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[633,1512,656,414,415],"class_list":["post-8712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gadgets","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-ethiopia","tag-kalshi","tag-polymarket","tag-prediction-markets"],"yoast_head":"\n
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