After trying out hyperliquid recently (Link), I now also am trying out Polymarket with all the hype around Prediction Markets .
Prediction Markets
Prediction markets in crypto started out with one of the first big ICOs on Ethereum of the Augug project which I guess by now is as good as dead. I never really was sold on it as it always kind of felt like a gimmick for some betting on political outcomes. Polymarket has been around for a long time as a blokckchain project but it never had a token so it purely was just providing a use case without any speculative value it had to hold up. Especially with the US Election it turned out to have massive volumes and also showed to be way more reliable compared to the polls from the Traditional Media outlets.
Polymarket Airdop Hunting
To be honest, the main reason that I'm trying out Polymarket is because they have a ton of volume and users while it is conformed (or so I believe) that there will launch a token which at least partly will be distributed through an airdrop. So today I took some time to set things up to actually try it out.
Polymarket Onboarding Process
As someone who is familiar to use metamask with funds of different chains, the creation of an account and depositing of money is very straightforward. You basically log in with your wallet, create a username, sign a bunch of messages with your wallet, send sone funds over which can be done from different Chains and you are ready to start gambling.
I deposited just 100$ to try it out and from the looks of it a 0.05$ fee was taken as I only received 99.95$ in my wallet which is fine.
Before you actually can place a bet you need to complete multiple signings which is rather annoying when using a ledger so I would say it is much better to use a hot wallet while betting on Polymarket as that is way faster and much more convenient.
Placing My First Bet
Honestly, I'm not really planning to take any major bets unless it would offer an superios experience and more competitive odds compared to Sportmarket Pro which has been my go-to betting Broker for over a decade. I can safely say that Polymarket doesn't come close as what I used to test an initial bet was the Club Brugge vs Monaco match in the Champions League tonight.
I had no real idea what to think of it and didn't have any regular bets. However, seeing the pattern of odds on the asian market going down on the home team, it more than often indicates the winner so I ended up going for Club Brugge as the winner risking just 9.95$ to round down my balance to an even number.
The way the odds are listed is very confusing as someone who is used to decimal odds. They are listed in Cent which indicates the Percentage chance according to the bet that you take. So 42 cent = 42% or (1/0.42 = @ 2.381 odds). You can only take with a difference of 1 cent so if you want to take higher odds it's 0.41 (2.439) and lower odds it's 0.43 (2.325) which feels quite extreme in the odds difference since making profit in the Sports Betting market over a bigger sample really comes down to details.
I also saw how the odds first moved on the asian market and soon after they reflected that price on Polymarket. I'm quite sure you can catch some late movements getting a better price on Polymarket but you will need to be fast. It also very much feels like arbitrage bots are running a big part of the volume on Polymarket.
I did put in a higher odds offer at 41 cent but it didn't get picked up and it also disappeared soon after somehow. Eventually I tooke the 42 cent and Brugge ended up winning very comfortable. During the match I tried to get out of my position twice signing a message but it luckily didn't get picked up somehow.
Eventually after the match is over, you need to sell your position to claim your winnings manually.
So the 9.95$ bet at 42 cent won me 23.68$ so a 2.379899 return compared to the 2.38095 return that the 42 cent indicates. I guess that is just a tiny difference that occurs naturally because of the even numbers and the fee is actually already in the odds with a spread that is taken on both sides. Otherwise, the odds would have been a bit higher. I did manage to get slightly better odds on Polymarket compared to the asian bookies so I have to hand it out to them for that.
However, the experience is just total garbage I would say compared to a regular bookie and I don't really see me using this that often unless they would start offering the Belgian League with better odds which I don't see happening anytime soon. One of the handy things is that you can see how much certain accounts that bet are actually up for down. Since there is a spread that is hard to beat, most accounts that I click are actually losing money similar to how few actually are able to beat the bookies. I'm sure though that there are a couple huge winners on Polymarket.
Conclusion
To me, something like Polymarket and prediction markets in general are still more a gimmick. The main use case I would say is for whales to be able to speculate with big amounts on the elections and for the site to act like an accurate indicator of actual percentages of what will happen since money talks. In the end, I don't think it's realistically for many people to actually earn money on polymarket in the long run and I'm not sure that I will continue using it myself aside from doing an attempt to get my share of the upcoming airdrop.