Separate investigations from Chaos Labs and Inca Digital reportedly found that about 30% of the activity related to the 2024 U.S. presidential election on Polymarket was the result of wash trading – a market manipulation method to inflate fake trading volume.
According to reports from Fortune magazine, both companies claimed that the actual trading volume on this prediction platform only reached $1.75 billion, compared to the $2.7 billion reported by Polymarket.
Analysts from Chaos Labs explained this discrepancy in trading volume as Polymarket counting the number of shares for candidates in whole dollar units, despite the actual value of each share on Polymarket being less than $1.
Data from Dune also revealed that the total open interest (OI) for the 2024 presidential election on this platform is just over $150 million. This open interest figure differs from the billions of dollars in trading volume, as traders continuously sell their positions to other participants on the platform.
Open interest of Polymarket | Source: Dune
Concerns about market manipulation envelop Polymarket
Until the beginning of October, the gap between the two candidates for the U.S. presidency remained very close and competitive. However, this changed when Trump led Harris by 10 points on October 12.
This gap continues to widen, with the former president now leading Harris by about 30 points – a rare gap in traditional U.S. polling.
Allegations of market manipulation began to spread as the gap between the two candidates grew larger, prompting Polymarket to conduct an investigation to screen users from the United States and individuals likely to manipulate the market.
After the investigation, Polymarket announced that it had identified a single individual operating four separate accounts – Fredi9999, Theo4, PrincessCaro, and Michie – and responsible for bets totaling $28 million in favor of Trump.
Although this individual's identity has not been disclosed, a spokesperson for Polymarket stated that they are an experienced trader and a French citizen.
Shortly after Polymarket announced the investigation results, another 'whale' placed an additional $2 million on bets supporting Trump; however, this individual did not appear to be related to the French citizen identified by Polymarket.
Source: https://tapchibitcoin.io/ty-le-cuoc-bau-cu-tong-thong-tren-polymarket-tran-lan-giao-dich-rua-tien.html