2020 US Election drives crypto-powered markets. Ethereum’s co-creator Vitalik Buterin took to Twitter during the counting of votes to praise the success enjoyed by crypto-powered prediction platforms amid the election season. He said “Regardless of who wins from here, I definitely think that the prediction markets have proven themselves more accurate than the polls/models this time around.”
Since the start of November, conventional polls have shown Biden with an eight-point lead, but presidential futures tokens have swung wildly in reaction to events.
The election markets on major cryptocurrency derivatives exchange FTX saw wild volatility in the past day, with TRUMP futures spiking from $0.38 to $0.80 when the vote-counting began before steadily crashing as Biden’s electoral college lead extended.
Redeemable for $1 each, TRUMP tokens are now trading on FTX for less than $0.09 should the incumbent president win re-election. During election day, traditional centralised bookmakers often saw broad swings, with Trump spending most of the day as the favourite before Arizona was called in Biden’s favour.
Roughly $16 million worth of TRUMP tokens were traded on FTX yesterday, while BIDEN tokens pushed nearly $6 million. FTX’s TRUMPWIN and TRUMPLOSE tokens also drove an additional $10 million in combined volume.
Ethereum-powered decentralized predictions platform Augur also saw significant action, reporting $8.6 million in total election volume, and $4.75 million in open interest. On Nov. 4, the project posted “This years election markets have surpassed Augur v1’s previous OI and trading volume records from the 2018 House market ($2.5M & $6M). Thanks to everyone who used or tried Augur for the first time, we hope you stick around!”
Ethereum influencer Anthony Sassano noted the opportunity that the election provides for decentralized prediction platforms to attract users, saying “It seems that prediction markets finally found their stride because there was a market for people to bet on that they actually cared about.”
The decentralised prediction network Polymarket, powered by Matic, also saw substantial trade, posting a new volume record of more than $10 million. Polymarket helps traders to bet on novel occurrences, such as whether a tweet calling the election winner before Nov. 6 will be posted by the Associated Press.
