Cumulative open interest on Polymarket’s 2024 U.S. presidential election market has surpassed $200 million, according to The Block’s data feed. This represents a quadrupling of derivative bets taken since the beginning of the month, as the country nears electing either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump next week.
Open interest is the total number of unsettled outstanding derivative contracts for an asset. It is a key indicator for options traders because it provides information about how easy it is to buy or sell options — in other words, it’s a metric that represents how liquid a market is.
Polymarket is an Ethereum-based betting market that has grown in popularity during the election season. Betting markets, also known as prediction markets, provide an alternative view of the election than polls which show the share of likely voters.
Anyone with access to Polymarket can place a bid, meaning in theory the platform provides a probability of some future event happening because bettors are incentivized to vote for what they believe if they have money on the line. For instance, if a candidate is running unopposed, they could conceivably poll at only 50% because not all residents intend to vote for them, but they could have 100% odds on Polymarket.
This is the first year betting markets have played a major role in the election. Polymarket odds are often cited in mainstream media, and the company has taken on election savant Nate Silver as an advisor. Several other regulated companies including Robinhood and Kalshi, which went to court with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for the right to list election contracts, have entered the fray.
There is $91.5 million in open interest betting on Trump to win and $48.5 million on Harris on Polymarket. Though both candidates have a similar amount of open interest in winning the popular vote at around $30 million. The Block is one of the only sources for these election-specific figures.
On Polymarket itself, Trump is nearing all-time highs in favorability at over 66% while Harris is at her lowest odds since she took over the ticket from President Joseph Biden in August. There is a cumulative $2.6 billion riding on the outcome of that market.
According to The Block data, Polymarket trading volume has quadrupled to over $2.1 billion in October while the number of traders has doubled to around 200,000.
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