Crypto gamblers have bet more than $592 million on the 2024 election

08/14/2024 21:40
Crypto gamblers have bet more than $592 million on the 2024 election

Many see Vice President Kamala Harris as the frontrunner, but crypto bettors are pouring money into the odds of a Trump presidency.

Users on popular crypto gambling platform Polymarket have more than $592 million bet on predicting the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, with a higher volume of money bet on Donald Trump winning the electoral contest than Vice President Kamala Harris. Gamblers have already poured more than $74 million into the possibility of Donald Trump winning the presidency.

According to Polymarket bets, there is a 45% chance of Trump emerging victorious this November, while his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, has a 53% likelihood of winning, according to live polling on the betting platform.

Despite Harris’ comparatively higher odds on the prediction market platform, more cryptocurrency has been dumped into Trump’s odds of victory, with crypto enthusiasts only spending $64.8 million on Kamala Harris’ chances compared to more than $74.6 million on Trump’s – representing an almost $10 million difference.

Trump also participated in a live conversation with Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday evening on Twitter, now known as X, though he made few allusions to cryptocurrency. Despite Musk’s current putative support of Trump, Musk has been critical of Trump in the past, even voicing support for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in a prior election. Moreover, Musk has attempted to woo politicians of all stripes. In 2015, Musk attended a fundraiser for former President Barack Obama in San Francisco, and personally gave Obama a tour of SpaceX facilities while pushing for the government to invest in private sector space exploration.

Despite Polymarket’s early success in predicting President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, recently Polymarket failed to accurately predict Kamala Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz. The crypto universe was instead placing bets on Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro taking up the position, with crypto gamblers betting Shapiro had a more than 60% probability of being chosen.

In contrast to this, Polymarket users expected Walz’ odds to be paltry, at one point wagering just 4% on his odds. Although crypto bettors did recover and eventually place a 73% bet on Walz – the overall crypto prediction markets were relatively slow in expecting Walz’ surprise win.

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