u/EmbarrassedStudent10

Polymarket's market on Putin leaving office by year-end sits at 97% No, with ~$23M traded.

Holding No to settlement returns about 3% in under three months. That's why markets like this draw big volume: a lot of it is capital parked for yield, plus repeated trading, rather than people actually expecting a Yes.

The trade-offs are capital locked up until December 31, the tail risk the 3% is pricing, and the resolution wording itself.

Anyone actually run near-certain No positions like this as a strategy? How do you size the tail?

Source: Predictbook

Interesting post from ChaoticAna9 on X with some Dune data (charts below).

Her argument: Polymarket pricing is getting more efficient, which also means it's getting harder to make money there. Volume is shifting away from extreme long shots and concentrating in the middle of the probability range. Her read is that there are fewer price-insensitive gamblers around, especially this year.

She also points out it could partly be that there have been fewer tradable events in entertainment and politics, and that volume still jumps when big news breaks. So she's not especially bearish on it.

And she thinks some of the meme coin crowd moved into prediction markets, and some of them may be leaving again.

I think the two explanations lead to pretty different conclusions. If it's real efficiency, the easy edge from fading long shots is shrinking for good. If it's just a quiet event cycle, the degens come back with the next election or big news story.

Which is it, in your experience? Have long shots stopped being as mispriced as they used to be?

Nithya Raman now sits at the lead on both platforms with a projected 58% chance to win the elections.

Prior to the flip on Wednesday, Karen Bass had been the favorite since the June primary, sitting around 61-65%.   

What moved it - A new UC Berkeley IGS/LA Times poll: Raman 39%, Bass 28%, 33% undecided. Online survey of 2,150 likely voters, Sept 15-20, margin of error about 3 points.

No new public polls or runoff debates are scheduled yet, so the biggest factor is where Pratt's voters go.

Pratt finished third in the June primary at 25.5%, behind Bass at 34.3% and Raman at 29.0%.

63% of his June voters still haven't picked between Bass and Raman, per the Berkeley poll. Among those who have, 22% back Bass and 16% back Raman.

The pollster linked the unusually large undecided group to Pratt's elimination.

It is important to remember that the election is November 3rd, and a third of the voters still haven’t picked a side for this election, so it is possible for the numbers to fluctuate before the election.

This started small on Sep 19 and turned into a real data dispute by this morning. Laying out the whole thing because the headline version ("exchange accused of fake volume") undersells how much of this is actually checkable.

How it started

IcoBeast, Kalshi's crypto lead, posted a chart claiming 96.7% market share. Beni, a former quant, replied that it's easy to have high share "when 3/4 of your volume is washtraded." IcoBeast dismissed it. Beni escalated into a full thread the next morning.

Beni's core claims (Sep 20)

A few distinct arguments, not just one:

• Rebate math: Kalshi's self-clearing-member rebate program pays makers +0.3bp and charges takers -0.3bp are net zero. Beni's argument is that this removes any real cost to wash trading between two accounts.
• Turnover ratio: ETH-PERP open interest was $3.1M against $538.6M in 24h volume, a ~174x turnover, meaning the entire outstanding position base would need to change hands roughly every 8 minutes to be organic. For context, the largest single open position on Kalshi's own leaderboard was $17,598.
• Accounting method: Beni claimed Kalshi's UI displays contract count with a "$" sign, implying dollar volume when the number is actually a contract count, e.g. 100,000 contracts at $0.30 would show as "$100,000" instead of the actual $30,000 paid.
• Conflict of interest: cited a Bloomberg article on Jump Trading taking a stake in Kalshi and Polymarket, arguing market makers have an equity incentive to inflate reported numbers.

Kalshi's response (Sep 20, evening)

IcoBeast's rebuttal, point by point: the original 96.7% chart was prediction-market share, not perp volume, different product, different claim than what Beni was arguing against. No rebates exist for crypto prediction markets specifically. The contracts-to-notional convention Beni flagged is the same one Polymarket uses, industry standard, not a Kalshi trick.

"SCM" (self-clearing member) status isn't hand-picked; any entity meeting CFTC requirements can qualify, and fair access is a regulatory requirement, not a favor. And rebate/incentive programs are standard across exchanges, CME, Hyperliquid, and Binance all run them, some with negative maker rebates, with the added point that Kalshi has to file its programs publicly with the CFTC, unlike offshore venues.

Beni wasn't satisfied, replied asking why perps still weren't addressed, and said he had more (unspecified) evidence coming.

The escalation (Sep 21, 4:18am): "Part 1.5"

Beni posted raw trade-data screenshots: the same $5,500 trade size recurring on ETH-PERP, accounting for 48–58% of all ETH perp volume across four separate days. He also mentioned, sourced to an anonymous tip he says he can't share, a rumor that Kalshi has volume deals with market makers that effectively force this behavior. That specific claim has no supporting evidence shown and should be read as unverified.

The part that matters most: independent verification

Twenty-eight minutes later, a separate account (PhinTotten) pulled Kalshi's own public /margin/trades API independently, not using Beni's files, and reconstructed notional per trade as count × price. Across 7 days and 529,318 unique ETH perp trades (~$2.217B total notional), roughly $1.23B (55.47%) clustered around $5,500 (rounded to the nearest $10). Day by day:

• Sep 14: 65.45%
• Sep 15: 38.32%
• Sep 16: 40.31%
• Sep 17: 62.19%
• Sep 18: 58.22%
• Sep 19: 54.40%
• Sep 20: 48.22%

This is the piece that moves the story past "trader makes accusations on twitter", a second, independent party used Kalshi's own public data and landed on a comparable number.

What's confirmed vs. not

Confirmed, and reproducible by anyone with API access: the $5,500 trade-size clustering pattern, roughly half of ETH perp volume across a week.

Not confirmed: the claim that this reflects a deliberate scheme or that Kalshi has volume-incentive deals forcing MMs to behave this way. Kalshi's structural defenses (rebate programs, contract accounting convention, SCM access rules) are also legitimate industry-standard practices on their own, clustering at a single trade size doesn't by itself prove intent to defraud, though it is a genuinely unusual pattern that a market maker acting normally wouldn't typically produce at that scale.

Account's only 7 days old. Already +$5.2M PnL, 75% win rate, ranked #25 all-time on Polymarket by PnL per arkm.

Today he went big on Deportivo Alavés to beat Valencia (moneyline). He's the largest Yes holder on that market by a wide margin, 2,519,806 shares, more than 7x the next biggest holder (348,029). Built the position at an avg 59.7¢, which pays out $2,519,888 if Alavés wins, roughly $1M profit on top of his ~$1.5M cost basis.

Except right now, live, it's not going his way. Price has dropped to 41.5¢, putting him down $458K unrealized before the match has even finished.

Big track record, currently underwater on his biggest live position. Guess we'll see how it resolves.

Anyone else tracking this wallet, or seen it show up on other markets?

OC: datadashboards

The Super Bowl and CFB champion markets get the attention:

SB: $28.9M to $66.9M (+131%)
CFB: $3.1M to $18.8M (+506%)

Together, they actually shrank as a share of the total, from 69% of all football OI in June to 55% now.

End of 2025: $9 billion
May 2026: $47 billion
August 2026: $65 billion

That is a 7x increase in 8 months.

Prediction markets give the company a 73% chance of an IPO before November 1.

Apple's "Surprise and Shine" event is September 9, 2026, and they're expected to drop the foldable iPhone.

While degens gamble on whether it ships in September or 2027, the mispriced yield curve on Polymarket's laddered contracts is where the real play sits.

The Polymarket Ladder

• Sep 15: 11¢ (Impossible)
• Sep 30: 46¢ (Needs a perfect rollout)
• Oct 31: 93¢ (The sweet spot)
• Dec 31: 97¢ (Not enough juice)

The Two Scenarios

Standard Rollout (Gurman): Apple usually ships 10 days post-event (Sep 19). If so, Sep 30 @ 46c hits for a 2x.

The "iPhone X" Delay (Kuo): Supply constraints delay shipping by 52 days (Nov 1). If so, Sep 30 fails, but it lands right around Oct 31.

The Edge: Buying Oct 31 @ 93¢

Buying October 31 "YES" at 93¢ pays out under BOTH scenarios:

• If it ships in September? You get paid.
• If it gets hit with iPhone X-style delays? You still get paid.
• The Return: 93¢ to $1.00 is a 7.53% net return in 54 days (~50% annualized) for taking almost zero real delay risk.

Source: [Predictbook]

There’s a brand-new whale on Polymarket trading under the name BillyGating who has quietly climbed into the top 250 all-time leaderboard in less than two weeks.

His strategy? Zero pre-match bias. He takes no views on an event before it starts. Every single dollar he deploys is bought live, mid-match, into a price that has already moved, on a side that is currently winning.

The Receipts ($821k Profit)

• BLAST Porto CS:GO Final (+$259k): Spirit dropped to 62¢ after losing Map 2. He dropped $436,459 mid-match. Spirit dominated the next two maps, and he cashed out $703k.
• US Open (+$100k+): Bought Emma Navarro at 61¢ live (pre-match was 46¢). She won in straight sets 7 minutes later.
• Across 15 markets, he’s 10-5 (67% win rate) with a 1:2.69 risk-reward ratio, sitting on $1.39M in cash.

Why He’s Going to Zero

While the win rate looks god-tier, his position sizing is purely unhinged:

• When Marcos Giron took Set 1 against Ignacio Buse, Billy bought in at 56¢. When Giron started choking, Billy caught the falling knife all the way down to 15¢. Buse won in 5, wiping out $134k.
• 30%+ Portfolio Risk: His $436k Spirit trade was 31% of his entire account value at the time.

Live momentum betting works great until you run into a live comeback. One blown 30% position, and he wipes out half his lifetime gains in two hours.

Source: [Predictbook]