“A report from The Wall Street Journal released last week found that Polymarket may have been “manipulated” by a small group of users to support Trump. According to the Journal’s research, four mysterious accounts spent around $30 million betting on Trump in recent weeks, which tipped the platform in the former president’s favor.”
The “manipulation” is normal bookmaking. Adjust the odds to entice gamblers to wager their money so the losers of a wager payout the winners of a wager and the bookmakers make money on the spread. So if there is a few big bets for Trump, Polymarket will readjust the odds to balance the equation.
I would think that’d be self-defeating. Wouldn’t this news push Democrat-aligned voters to show up to the polls all the more? Assuming these rumors are true, maybe they didn’t intend to distort the numbers in a possibly self-defeating way. Maybe they’re just dumb crypto bros with more coins than sense.
maybe they’re going for induced apathy; if it’s close you’re motivated, but if it’s not at all close maybe that’ll just make you depressed.
Or maybe they just really believe in the orange fascist, and have enough money to burn for betting on him.
It’s also possible the market isn’t as distorted as they think; it’s not easy to quantify how much one individual bet has affected others’ decisions.
