Polymarket Reassessing User Locations Amid Market Manipulation Concerns

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Julia Smith

Author

Julia Smith

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Julia is an experienced editor with a passion for covering a wide variety of beats. She loves all things politics and regularly covers regulatory updates on emerging technology here for Crypto News.

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Last updated:

October 23, 2024 15:44 EDT

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Polymarket is going through its user base to ensure no United States-based bettors are operating on the decentralized prediction platform amid marketing manipulation concerns following Republican nominee Donald Trump’s sudden surge in popularity over Kamala Harris, a new report from Bloomberg reveals.

Donald Trump Leads Kamala Harris, Prompts Polymarket Worries

“Polymarket is in the process of re-checking the details of users of its platform, particularly those making large wagers, to ensure compliance with its rules,” Bloomberg cited an anonymous source as saying.

News of the digital betting site’s user inspection comes as an alleged Polymarket whale known as “Fredi9999” recently waged more than $20 million on Trump’s odds of becoming president, potentially skewing the validity of the poll’s results.

Currently, Trump leads Harris by a whopping 63.7 percent to 36.2 percent in Polymarket’s official “Presidential Election Winner 2024” poll.

National polls paint a much narrower picture of each candidate’s popularity, with Trump trailing Harris 46.1 percent to 48.1 percent.

Elon Musk, Mark Cuban Share Their Takes

The betting platform has drawn significant attention for its politically themed polls, with X CEO and tech billionaire Elon Musk falsely hailing them as “more accurate” than traditional polling methods given that “actual money” is involved.

However, only some are convinced that prediction markets are accurate in evaluating political odds.

“From all indications, most of the money coming into Polymarket is foreign money, so I don’t think it’s an indication of anything,” billionaire businessman Mark Cuban said in an October 21 appearance on Squawk Box.

Cuban has been a staunch supporter of Harris since she launched her campaign this past July, alleging that she may be friendlier to crypto assets than her potential predecessor.

“She is pro-business,” Cuban said in an August 2024 X post. “She is her own person. She is not an ideologue.”

Musk, meanwhile, has vocally supported right-leaning candidates in the runup to the 2024 elections, most recently unofficially endorsing crypto-friendly Senate candidate John Deaton in his quest to defeat staunch Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Warren, for her part, has long spoken out against prediction markets. The Massachusetts senator joined fellow U.S. lawmakers in urging the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to ban election betting in the U.S. in an August 5 letter to Chair Rostin Behnam.

“Election gambling fundamentally cheapens the sanctity of our democratic process,” U.S. lawmakers wrote. “Political bets change the motivations behind each vote, replacing political convictions with financial calculations.”