some Columbia professors just published a study of how prevalent wash trading and manipulation are on #predictionmarkets like #Polymarket and #Kalshi where you can bet on things like elections and wildfires is (spoiler: it’s so prevalent it was actually the majority of all betting activity around the time of the 2024 #election, a time when the prediction market numbers were reported by the media as if they were as good as polling data)
> "We estimate that wash [trading] volume [on Polymarket] increased starting July 2024, until peaking at 60% of overall volume in December"
i would wager this is almost certainly an undercount but overall a very impressive stab at getting a real number on this kind of thing.
* thread summary of findings: https://x.com/allensirolly/status/1986573995051774044
* paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5714122
#crypto #USDC #cryptocurrency #uspol #elections #PredictionMarket