Nicco

constant thinker
focused on crypto & prediction markets

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

@variance_lover @Polymarket @shayne_coplan great post! it feels frustrating when you enjoy the platform and the opportunity but team execution feels disinterested

[Variance Lover @variance_lover]

Open letter to @Polymarket and especially @shayne_coplan:

I've been trading on Polymarket for a long time. I am one of the biggest traders on the entire platform and I interact with it on a daily basis.

And at this point I'm seriously questioning whether the team has simply given up.

I'm not even trying to be dramatic. Wtf is actually going on?

Has everyone made enough money that nobody cares anymore? Is the team completely overwhelmed? Are priorities completely broken? Is there no leadership? Is it incompetence?
Because the current state of the platform is honestly embarrassing.

Every maintenance seems to follow the exact same script:

announce 10 minutes of downtime
start 20 minutes late
stay down for an hour
deploy changes that break multiple existing systems
leave the bugs in production for weeks

And somehow nobody seems concerned.

Example:

~1.5 weeks ago an update broke tick sizes. The matching engine started rejecting orders that matched the correct tick size after a tick size change was published.

This was immediately visible after deployment.

It's still broken.

Nobody seems to care.

Then for the last two days Polymarket's own RTDS feed, the feed used for all crypto markets, has been broken.

The issue was marked "resolved" 10 hours ago.

It still isn't resolved!

Did anyone spend literally 5 seconds checking whether data was actually being published before closing the incident?

Because it sure doesn't feel like it.

Communication is somehow even worse than the bugs.

Half the changes never get announced.

The other half are hidden in random Discord side conversations.

Major trading-impacting changes get silently rolled out with zero documentation.

You ask support.

They say they'll ask the team.

Then you never hear back.

Or you get the same canned response you've already received three times.

The team keeps saying communication will improve.

It never does.

Then there's the rebate and fee situation.

Taker tiers were supposed to launch on May 28.

A week later they still weren't live.

Nobody acknowledged the delay.

The docs still said May 28.

To this day there still hasn't been a single taker rebate payment.

And the official position is apparently that missed rebates won't be back-paid.

How is that acceptable?

How are traders supposed to adjust strategies, thresholds, and risk when nobody knows what fees they are actually paying, what rebates they are actually earning, or how much of the promised rewards the platform simply decides not to distribute?

That isn't transparency and it is clearly destroying trust.

The craziest part is that every update creates fresh opportunities for exploiters.

Just in the last couple weeks we've had:

queue position jump exploits
taker delay bypass exploits
ghost fill exploits
various matching and infrastructure bugs
order spam exploits

Millions of dollars have been extracted from legitimate users through platform failures.

The response?

Increase rate limits.

Seriously.

A huge amount of latency issues today are caused by order spam that is directly incentivized by broken infrastructure and exploitable mechanics.

Fixing the root causes would help.

Instead we get band-aids.

Which raises another question:

Does Polymarket have a testing environment?

Does it have staging?

Can updates be rolled back?

Because from the outside it honestly looks like production is the testing environment.

Every maintenance introduces new failures.

Every maintenance gets partially reverted.

Every maintenance creates more issues than it solves.

This shouldn't be happening at a company valued in the billions.

Meanwhile manipulation that has been repeatedly reported for months continues largely unchecked while manipulators keep extracting money from normal users.

And surprise:

Volume is declining.

Prediction markets as a whole are growing.

Yet Polymarket just posted its second consecutive month of declining volume.

Meanwhile Kalshi has become the clear market leader in many categories and is now outperforming Polymarket by large multiples in areas where Polymarket used to dominate.

Honestly?

It's not hard to see why.

Every serious trader I've spoken to says the same thing:

Kalshi feels stable.

Polymarket feels like you're one deployment away from disaster.

I know multiple people who would happily trade Polymarket full-time if they trusted the platform.

They don't.

Not because of competition.

Because they don't trust Polymarket itself.

My trust in this platform is at an all-time low.

And I genuinely don't understand what is happening internally.

Maybe the response will be that the team is busy with the World Cup or other initiatives.

Fine.

Then stop shipping half-finished features.

Stop deploying untested fixes.

Stop breaking live trading.

Slow down.

Focus on fewer things.

Do them properly.

The most concerning part is that so many decisions feel like they were made by people with no actual trading experience.

The product decisions show it.

The infrastructure decisions show it.

The market structure decisions show it.

Building the future of prediction markets requires understanding how markets actually function.

Right now it often feels like nobody is steering the ship.

I want Polymarket to succeed.

But from the perspective of someone who uses the platform every day, this is bordering on unusable.

@Polymarket
@shayne_coplan

What is going on?

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

@LuxAlgo @DeItaone bloodbath

[Jerry the Martian @jerry543]

So if we actually take a look at API prices from @OpenRouter, GPT 5.5 Pro is actually 3x more expensive than Fable 5 ? What am I missing here…

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

@bridgemindai challenge accepted 😂😂

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

@QuintenFrancois he bought 32 btc

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

@QuintenFrancois what if the model is broken?

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

@mustafap0ly @JMLMKJ @devjoshstevens @Polymarket wait what? is not live yet? it said 28th lol

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

@stonychambers Micheal Saylor bought 32 BTC for $2 million at average price of 63000 😂

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

@QuintenFrancois @HeroDividend Won’t make it, we’ll get there at $0.02

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

If you are watching $STRC trade near $94 and feeling uneasy, you are not alone. Plenty of investors are hitting the panic button right now.

But take a breath. This is not a collapse. It is simply how preferred stocks often behave.

Preferred shares sit between bonds and common stock. They offer fixed or adjustable dividends and a liquidation preference, but they do not come with the same growth upside as common equity.
One of their most common traits is trading below par value for long stretches. Whether the par is $25 or $100, it is completely normal to see them discounted for months or even years.
For STRC, the $100 par is not a hard price floor. It is primarily the reference point for liquidation preference and redemption calculations. What sets this security apart is its built-in monthly dividend rate adjustment mechanism. That feature is specifically designed to create buying pressure when the stock drifts too far below par. It helps pull the price back toward $100 over time by making the yield more attractive.
Right now, the roughly 6 percent discount simply reflects the market demanding a higher yield to compensate for interest rate risk, credit perception, or broader sector sentiment. That is not a flaw. It is the market doing its job.
Preferred stocks are not meant to act like common stocks that chase hype cycles. They trade on income, safety, and yield spreads. A temporary dip below par does not mean the dividend is at risk or the structure is broken. It means investors are being offered a better entry yield.
So if you bought STRC for its unique mechanics and monthly payout, stay grounded. This is preferred stock doing exactly what preferred stock does.

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

https://t.co/oaQXhHeTKi

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

https://t.co/oaQXhHeTKi

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

@DonAlt they bought back 32 btc and 4% discount not too bad

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

@drippy_eth @nursexxl @Polymarket @PolymarketTrade give them time

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

what do clippers actually need on a clipping software?

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

@based16z how? why? is the only protocol that make money, etf is killing it, why would it go to 10?

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

@BMNRTracker wouldn't you be, the only asset going down since 2021?

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

@MitchMartan98 There's this wave of bearish sentiment coming from ETH being at 2021 levels, the idea that on the long term could do well is not enough anymore. Retail is more involved in substance that make profit like HYPE. I'm holding Sharplink and BMNR, but i'm starting to doubt

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

@fabioricotta it's terrible, the quality is off

[Nicco @VCapitalM]

https://t.co/dpgtVrY8jL