American politics have always been culturally important. But now, it’s also become a big business for betting.
What’s happening:
- The upcoming presidential election in the United States of America has become enormously controversial and sparked record breaking amounts of betting on the eventual outcome
Who is making moves:
- Robinhood (NASDAQ: HOOD) recently rolled out a new feature that allows users to directly wager on the upcoming presidential election, which marks their first ever foray into prediction markets and betting on the outcomes of events
- Polymarket has continually seen record breaking betting volume on their platform as well as a massive surge in new users
- Kalshi recently landed the first ever approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to become the first ever regulated financial exchange solely focused on trading events contracts in the United States of America
By the numbers:
- The total combined betting volumes on Polymarket and Kalshi has exceeded $4B USD for the upcoming presidential election
Going deeper:
- The cultural excitement around prediction markets has grown so large that Robinhood has publicly stated they plan to roll out more events for users to be able to bet on in the near future that are completely unrelated to politics
The intrigue:
- Both Polymarket and Kalshi have landed some of the most prominent venture capital funds as investors, including Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator and others
