Polymarket has been incredibly successful—prediction markets might just be on the verge of becoming the next industry boom.
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Polymarket has been incredibly successful—prediction markets might just be on the verge of becoming the next industry boom.
Gambling is one of the main themes of cryptocurrency, and perhaps one of blockchain's original sins.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Huang Shiliang
The total amount wagered on Polymarket for the Trump vs. Harris presidential race has exceeded $3.5 billion—simply too much. And this is just one single betting market; there are countless others related to this election, including bets on Senate and House outcomes, even whether Trump will mention a specific word during his campaign speeches. I estimate that in the past week alone, the total volume wagered on Polymarket has surpassed $10 billion (uh, I searched the site extensively but couldn't find any official statistics).
I couldn't find data on traditional casino betting volumes, but I did find the following.
I checked Macau's casino gambling data: "Daily average gaming revenue in October reached 1.08 billion Macau patacas (approximately $134 million) [1]."
Assuming Macau casinos have a gross margin of 10%, the average daily betting volume would be around $1.34 billion.
By this metric, Polymarket’s recent weekly betting volume—driven by the U.S. presidential election—has already surpassed that of Macau, a traditional gambling powerhouse.
In fact, gambling has been one of the most important applications of cryptocurrency from the very beginning.
Satoshi Nakamoto’s earliest Bitcoin code repository included a set of poker simulation code [2]. It’s possible that Satoshi intended decentralized digital currency to serve gambling as a core use case right from the start.
Bitcoin’s earliest major application was also a gambling platform called Satoshi Dice—a simple high-low betting game, fully decentralized and brilliantly designed.
This project significantly contributed to Bitcoin’s early adoption, becoming a favorite among early holders—and also the nightmare of many. I personally know prominent figures who lost large sums on it.
Satoshi Dice has a rich history and serves as a vital archive for understanding early Bitcoin culture. One of the most famous stories—though I can’t verify its authenticity—is that one of China’s largest mining pools used a 51% attack to profit from Satoshi Dice.
Later, due to high transaction fees, Satoshi Dice migrated to the BCH network in 2018. In recent years, after BCH activated Cashtokens, one of the biggest emerging projects on the network is a prediction market platform called Guru.
After Ethereum introduced smart contracts, gambling quickly became widespread on blockchains.
But since calling it “gambling” might seem unsavory, everyone started referring to it as “prediction markets.”
As early as 2015, Ethereum had a decentralized prediction market project called Augur, heavily promoted by well-known figures in the crypto space—including Vitalik Buterin (Vitalik is an investor), as well as A16Z.
Augur was likely the first decentralized casino built on a blockchain.
Augur is far more decentralized than Polymarket in every aspect. However, Polymarket offers a much better user experience. At first glance, Polymarket looks like a centralized online casino using cryptocurrency as stakes, with funds held in smart contracts—so the house can’t run away with users’ money.
Then in 2017, when EOS gained popularity, the main Dapps on the platform were mostly gambling mini-games.
Besides that, I believe this year’s most popular meme coin market is essentially another form of gambling—akin to lottery culture—disguised as cryptocurrency trading.
Polymarket’s success could make prediction markets the next big trend, potentially drawing traffic away from meme coins.
……
In short, gambling has always been one of the core narratives in cryptocurrency. Perhaps it’s also one of blockchain’s original sins.
To all my friends: try to avoid participating in these games as much as possible. Save your money for value investing instead.
Polymarket’s recent success may reignite interest and drive broader adoption of prediction markets. Web3 entrepreneurs are likely already spotting the next big opportunity.
This market could become even more fiercely competitive. Despite already having numerous existing projects, new ones will surely emerge.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
