November 3, 2020 is the date of the next presidential elections in the United States, and such a significant event affected many areas of the economy. The cryptocurrency market was no exception, mainly a part of it that is responsible for forecasts and predictions.
According to representatives of the Polymarket platform, which deals with various predictions, on Monday, November 2, the volume of bets on the outcome of the question "Will Trump win the elections in 2020?" rose to about $ 2.8 million. Moreover, the value of each of the rates did not exceed a dollar. And this indicates a huge increase in public interest in forecasting markets.
Moreover, both centralized and decentralized. With the first, everything is relatively simple - these are classic systems of betting on the outcomes of events. The central regulator accepts them, calculates the coefficients and guarantees the veracity of the information used. An example of such a service is PredictIt. It is a well-known and respected platform that reviews about 200 different "markets" or "betting scenarios". Not only on the outcome of political events, but also on other changes in the field of culture, art and foreign policy. Bets are accepted in dollars, and the vote in the US election collected about 116.7 million.
Decentralized ones are even more interesting. At least because this market is new and actively growing. And the following projects are of particular interest.
Augur. One of the first decentralized forecasting platforms launched over 5 years ago. But the impetus for its active rise in popularity was given by the mid-term elections in the United States, held in 2018.
Polymarket. A relatively new project that has just recently entered the market. So fresh that just a week ago another round of its financing ended, which made it possible to collect about $ 4 million in investments. And this project has already begun to actively attract the attention of forecast lovers, even those who have no idea how cryptocurrencies work. At the moment, it has about 19 betting scenarios. Bets are accepted in the form of USDC stablecoin backed by USD.
YieldWars. Anonymous cryptocurrency betting platform. Uses either ETH or its own WAR token. They also launched a vote on the outcome of the elections, and literally in a day collected about 50 thousand dollars. According to the co-founder of the project, acting under the pseudonym Owl, this is not surprising, especially given the interest of ordinary people in the elections. But whether the popularity of prediction platforms will continue after them is a big question. However, YieldWars may have a solution that will keep users interested - prediction tournaments in the "Battle Royale" style, dedicated to various sports events.
The mechanism of forecasting using cryptocurrency platforms is a very interesting, but rather controversial thing. The problem is that it relies on "collective wisdom" or "crowd intelligence". But such mechanisms are far from always being right, thus the outcome of events is far from being able to predict with great accuracy. However, the election results are another matter. Everyone will vote with a money bet for the same option as in the ballot, which turns such a vote into another “Exit call” and gives an approximate idea of who a certain category of people is voting for. Yes, this is also an important point - not all layers of the United States work with cryptocurrencies in general and forecasting in general, so the real picture may differ drastically.
Anyway, the elections are actively stimulating interest in cryptocurrencies, even among those who were not interested in them at all before. So, at least, says the founder of Polymarket - Shane Copland. And each one new "interested" is a potential active user of the cryptocurrency market.
Published on the EXBASE.IO based on materials from coindesk.com