Exclusive: Nate Silver joins prediction market startup as more people bet on news
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Nate Silver, 2018. Photo: Krista Kennell/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
Polymarket, a venture-backed predictions market, has hired statistician and journalist Nate Silver as an adviser while it looks to build out more forecasts around news events.
Why it matters: More Americans are flocking to prediction markets to interpret crazy news cycles. And more news outlets are beginning to cite prediction odds for the outcome of news events, particularly the election.
- "Probabilities really matter when you're trying to make plans," Silver said in a phone interview.
- He cited the dilemma facing Democrats and Joe Biden about whether the president should remain on the ticket as an example of how high-stakes decisions can be determined using probability calculations.
How it works: Prediction markets allow users to buy shares in the outcome of an event.
- Polymarket is in growth mode and doesn't yet monetize the hundreds of millions of dollars in trades happening across its platform, Polymarkets vice president David Rosenberg told Axios. Eventually, it will probably charge a fee for those transactions.
Between the lines: Founded in 2020, Polymarket has quickly risen to become one of the world's most popular prediction markets for U.S. elections, but it doesn't yet allow U.S. users to make trades off of its predictions.
- "All of the trading is happening outside the U.S.," Rosenberg said. "But we are exploring offering a regulated U.S. product soon."
By the numbers: The firm, which has raised $70 million in venture capital since launching in 2020, produces more than 80% of global predictions made around U.S. elections, by its estimates.
- Over $260 million worth of predictions related to the outcome of the 2024 election have been made on its platform in the past four years, per Rosenberg.
- More than $400 million of trades have occurred on its platform in 2024, including $8 million of trades made on the day of the first U.S. presidential debate last month.
Zoom out: While Polymarket is experiencing a massive engagement spike around the U.S. election, it also sees a fair amount of trade volume around other news stories, Rosenberg said. Last year, the outcome of Sam Altman's fate at OpenAI was a popular prediction trade, he noted.
The big picture: The rise in prediction markets mirrors a broader adoption of sports betting and online gambling, which have become more popular amid regulatory rollbacks and advances in blockchain technologies.
- Silver said he expects more of the investor class to leverage prediction markets to assess the risk of politics on their businesses.
What's next: Silver will continue to author his Substack newsletter in addition to advising Polymarket. He is also working on a new book.
