Polymarket raised $45 million in a round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, with participation from existing investors like 1confirmation and ParaFi, as well as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Dragonfly and Eventbrite co-founder Kevin Hartz.
Polymarket is a decentralized prediction market platform that leverages the Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts to allow users to speculate on the outcomes of various real-world events in a transparent and trustless manner, using stablecoins for transactions.
“Polymarket is finally bringing the vision of prediction markets to life, an opportunity we’ve been passionate about for years,” said Joey Krug, partner at Founders Fund, in a statement. “Inside Founders Fund, we’ve made a habit of checking Polymarket when news breaks. Using Polymarket as a supplement to social and mainstream media news has clear practical benefits. It’s clear to us that Polymarket is a winner in this market.”
The prediction market platform company also confirmed a previously unannounced $25 million Series A funding round led by General Catalyst, with participation from Airbnb’s Joe Gebbia and Polychain, among others.
The new investment comes despite the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Friday proposing a crackdown on so-called event contracts that allow derivatives betting on political campaigns and sports games. Polymarket reached a $1.4 million settlement with the CFTC in 2022, agreeing to stop offering the Polymarket.com front-end website service in the United States.
Polymarket claims that $202 million worth of predictions have been made through the platform so far in 2024. According to its website, more than $125 million has been bet on the outcome of the US election alone. On the platform, Donald Trump currently leads Joe Biden with odds of 49% to 44%.
