Polymarket's 2028 presidential election is the traffic king of LeBron James

Original Odaily Daily@OdailyChinaI'm not sure

By Azuma@azuma ethI'm not sure

Nick Devor, a journalist for the Baron Weekly, posted a very "wrong" phenomenon on X this morning - in the prognosis of the presidential election of 2028 in Polymucket, where he was shot dead in the morningAbout 70% of the transactions are concentrated on candidates who are almost impossible (real-time probability less than 1%)。

For example, the highest volume of transactions was in NBA, LeBron James, 48.41 million dollars in volume, followed by Kim Kardashian, 33.8 million dollars in volume, and then even some candidates who had no United States citizenship (not meeting the rules of the election), such as Elon Musk, 23.14 million dollars in volume, Mayor of New York, Zohran Mamadani, 18.39 million dollars in volume

As for the real high-probability candidates, such as JD Vance, with a real-time probabilities lead, California Governor Gavin Newsom, with a turnover of $1.571 million, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with a turnover of $9.32 million, the volume of transactions is much lower than the above-mentioned “red candidates”。

According to official Polymarket, the total transaction volume for the “Presidential election of 2028” has now reached $549 million, which has long been the platform's most popular bet-on event, but looking at the trade volume data of 36 candidates shows an anomalous knowledge, as described above. Why? Are people crazy to bet on candidates that are almost, if not impossible

Naturally, that is not the answer. Earlier this year, Odaily wrote a bookWho's betting on market anomaliesIn the text, for example, the words “Christ come” and “Lippin say” explain that groups trading in or providing mobility in the midst of these absurd events can be grouped into three main categories, namely, the lotteryman, the robot, the wool party, etc。

Nick Devor's own interpretation of this is also consistent with the third logic that we have outlined, finding that multiple head addresses hold the same amount of YES and NO shares on the same candidate, essentially for the purpose of earning a risk-free benefit - & nbsp from Polymark;In order to maintain the accuracy of long-term pricing, Polymark will provide a 4% annualized hold on the value of total positions in some marketsA hold-up rewardThe presidential election of 2018 was one of these subsidies。

In this regard, Nick Devor states that 4 per cent of annualized returns are higher than real-time US debt returns (at 3.98 per cent for a five-year period) and that giant whales prefer this low-risk hold-up, such as buying James or Kardashian's NO (which, anyway, is the same, who buys whom), in order to obtain this share; if they both hold YES and NO shares, they can achieve a risk-free return。

As to why some users would unilaterally hold small numbers of such low-probability candidates, another X user, A5 (@probablythenuts), explained that there was a lack of information about the potential of the candidates, and that there was a lack of information about the potential for the candidatesIn this multi-option market, Polymarket provides a function that allows users to convert a group of NO shares to a corresponding group YES shares。

Many users use this feature for reasons of liquidity depth or merit  - is not directly buying YES from candidates they believe will win, but buying NO from candidates they believe will not win, and then converting these NOs into a set of YES shares. In addition, they can buy multiple candidates ' NOs at the same time and, upon conversion, hold another group of corresponding candidates, including future additional candidates for the event。

So, it is neither crazy nor stupid to trade James Kardashian users in Polymarket’s 2028 presidential election, either for a stable annual gain or for a better implementation path, but the operation is still rational。