Markets
Polymarket Hires Nate Silver After Netting $265M in US Election Bets: Report
As the US presidential election enters its final phase, cryptocurrency-based prediction market platform Polymarket has struck while the iron is hot by hiring renowned statistician and author Nate Silver as an advisor, according to a Axios Report.
Silver has been forecasting US elections for years, initially through his FiveThirtyEight service (which he later sold and no longer works for). And Polymarket has seen big business in this year’s presidential race, with $265 million already invested in the election. Its prediction market shows Donald Trump as a absolute favorite with a probability of 70% to win the vote.
The acquisition of Silver means that users can expect a diverse range of prediction markets based on news events. In addition to elections, Silver also analyzes baseball and basketball.
Founded in 2020, Polymarket has has raised a total of $70 million from investors including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund (who was an early investor in CoinDesk’s parent company, Bullish) and Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin.
Polymarket Vice President David Rosenberg told Axios that it will eventually start charging fees for transactions made on the platform.
So far this year, Polymarket has raised more than $400 million in bets across its markets, which cover politics, pop culture, sports and science.