This week’s presidential election introduced many people to the prediction markets.
Kalshi was the one number one app in the App Store on election day. CEO of Polymarket claims The Trump campaign first realized they were winning from his startup’s statistics, which showed they won by a landslide hours before news networks called the race. There is a feeling in some tech and financial circles that these betting markets are now a better “wisdom of the crowd” indicator than surveys.
Robinhood joined the fray just in time. A week before the election, the company announced that its first-ever prediction market would be for the midterm presidential election Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. It turned out to be a huge hit, with over half a billion bets. Now, CEO Vlad Tenev sees a future where Robinhood’s millions of users can bet on all sorts of things, including the performance of the stocks they trade on the platform. He believes the wider interest in prediction markets reflects a growing “distrust of traditional news” that is changing the way people seek information about the world.
