[email protected]

Semi-retiredly shitposting online, on a different blue website

[Sam Stein @samstein]

NEW: Three years before he was tapped to be America's top intel official, Bill Pulte was a memestock "degenerate" pushing worthless Bed Bath & Beyond stock and sharing the stage with a presenter who slapped an attendee with a green dildo in the face.

@willsommer on a very Trumpian rise to power

https://t.co/pZ0Nvmo8kU

[paris martineau @parismartineau]

the current director of national intelligence is a guy who two years ago received a trophy declaring he “Fucks Only The Young” at an (oddly dildo focused) event he organized dedicated to the conspiracy that Bed Bath and Beyond never actually went bankrupt

[Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart]

This is a great story about the individuals who are crushing it on Kalshi and Polymarket https://t.co/ELr8yU2ShR

[[email protected] @adanthar]

@SarahLongwell25 This has a very good chance of being correct except the picture is of the wrong Jewish guy.

[Matt Liston @no__________end]

I co-founded Augur, the first decentralized prediction market, and was founding CSO of Gnosis, the second. Polymarket still runs on Gnosis contracts. I'm glad prediction markets finally broke through. But I'm not going to pretend that what's being scaled right now is what we built these systems to do.

[[email protected] @adanthar]

@StefFeldman The KamalaHQ account is extreme cringe.

This five levels of approval to send a tweet thing sent out as a What to Do helping manual in response to the cringe is democrats.txt and an exact microcosm of why everything about the party is broken beyond belief.

[Mintee 🍃 @OrDieMinting]

@tysonbrody Fresh polymarket accounts are gonna become the new pentagon pizza index

[Domer❤️‍🔥 @Domahhhh]

Let me give you a concrete data point that is in your wheelhouse: if prediction markets were featured more prominently on the news in 2024, I think it's likelier the Dems would have had a stronger candidate in that election.

Biden might've been out sooner, and I think there would've been a greater chance of a mini primary rather than a coronation. Why? Because the data was pointing strongly that both of these things would significantly help Democrats against Trump.

Prediction markets are not oracles into the future. But they provide at least slightly improved data, and with better data, you can make better decisions, and faster decisions.

I will also say that prediction markets came under great scrutiny and criticism for two controversial predictions last year. One was Trump winning. And the second was Biden having a very significant chance of dropping out. Both ended up happening.

[[email protected] @adanthar]

@amandalfischer @0xBalloonLover You know what, though? You're right. The industry is overwhelmingly full of fraud and memecoins.

Which is in large part because everybody trying to do something else shit the bed for four years because the most important regulatory body in the world was suing them.

Thanks.

[[email protected] @adanthar]

@amandalfischer @0xBalloonLover At one point, you decided that virtual baseball cards were a security, Wells Noticed every exchange -except- FTX, and tried to argue Ethereum became a security because it *stopped* wasting electricity. You fucked up so badly it openly cost Sherrod Brown his seat.

Great work.

[[email protected] @adanthar]

@amandalfischer @haydenzadams I am a committed Democrat and despise this administration...except at the SEC. Because you spent your entire term "protecting" UNI buyers and a thousand other token holders from ever realizing any value, while simultaneously almost making SBF the de facto rulemaking chief.

[[email protected] @adanthar]

election day PSA:

people trying to farm polymarket clout for airdrop bux on CT are all degenerate gamblers and their AI assisted posts today sum up to "bet on the underdogs and you can make 10x your money"

would advise not doing that unless you're actually good at this

[Domer❤️‍🔥 @Domahhhh]

My very long take on a potential Polymarket token, and the alleged $9b valuation.

(Kalshi also has a nosebleed valuation, but I'm going to focus on Polymarket specifically here because of the rumored airdrop for users)

I've been trading on Polymarket since January 2021, managed to do large volume. I trade on this site (and similar markets) because I really like it. It's my job and also my favorite hobby. I've traded stocks/bet sports/played poker, but prediction markets are the best fit for me for two reasons: (1) I can trade things that I care about/find fun and (2) these markets very much distill skill from luck in the long run.

On the topic of Polymarket's token specifically, people are always talking to me about valuations, and airdrops, and timing (especially whether it's the "right time" yet for an airdrop). I've been told unprompted by friends that my airdrop will be 'massive.' I usually just say "yeah maybe" and I don't think about it. It's not under my control in any way...plus, I can't know whether the amount I could get is minuscule or significant. Basing any decisions around it would be silly.

BUT, my personal hesitance to get excited aside, I do know one thing: if it did happen, I would be very reticent to sell any tokens. In fact, I would probably buy more. $9b to me (if that's the valuation of a token) doesn't seem high, at all.

Why's that? Well, the problem for prediction markets was always one thing: it was a niche product. It was gimmicky, for dorks. Average people didn't know what they were, barely cared. It was an oddity. You needed to educate people before adoption.

That is no longer the case. The average crypto person is very well aware of Polymarket, and we're approaching the point where the average non-crypto person has at least heard of this and at least loosely understands its conveying some meaning. Now that education is well on the way, it's a matter of making it easier to onboard users for mass adoption (something that Polymarket's competitor Kalshi is currently excelling at via fiat partnerships).

---

Even still, as hyped as prediction markets are right now, I think people underappreciate the full scope of all of this. And this is not a message from a shill. It's a message from someone who is doing this as my job in the world for a long time, and from thinking about what it is.

Polymarket is at the nexus of many valuable things:

(1) As a company, it is the nexus of the blockchain and financial markets. The blockchain wants to get into financial markets and be taken seriously -- and financial markets want to get onto the blockchain, and stay apace with new technology. Will Polymarket merge these two worlds to an effective degree? Maybe. If the answer is yes, $9b is stupid low.

(2) As a market for users, Polymarket is at the nexus of importance and fun. For instance: betting with a sportsbook when you get off work is fun, but not very important; and pricing bond default risk via an RFQ to your trading desk may be important, but it's not many people's idea of fun.

Polymarket is both a consumer product, for someone who is just making a bet on something not super serious (is Trump going to say the term "illegal alien" in his speech?), AND it is a professional product for very high-level traders trying to predict something that is more complex (like what the Federal Reserve is going to do 6 months from now). You can have a portfolio of $10.79 and be betting only on cricket matches. You can have a portfolio of $25m and be market making the next world leaders in various countries.

(3) These markets will be intertwined with AI to make us all smarter. And that's not AI as a buzzword. Artificial intelligence will be utilized to give us better ways to make preditions for the future, and then those predictions being tested in the real world will be utilized to make AI even more intelligent. It's a virtuous cycle of improving our forecasting, baby-step by baby-step.

And we need to get smarter, because humans and prediction markets are not even close to being great at forecasting. The term Prediction Market and the word efficient don't belong in the same sentence. Things are wrong all the time. Now, don't misunderstand, humans and markets are certainly better than we were 20 years ago at forecasting! But that's a very low bar. We need to get better at figuring out what's coming, and a market like Polymarket will legitimately assist with that.

This is not some inconsequential or theoretical problem -- if decisionmakers figured out that COVID was more serious a few days earlier (I think that was the indication from Polymarket and its users), would our quality of life be better today because of it? Would Trump have easily won re-election in 2020? If Powell, et al had figured out that inflation was NOT transitory two meetings before they did figure it out circa 2022 (another one where Polymarket traders had a strong inkling), would they have curtailed the worst of inflation? Would Biden have a decent chance at being re-elected?

Forecasting is legitimately very important, with large ramifications on the world for being slow or wrong. Polymarket, in an idealized world, will make us incrementally smarter and faster.

---

Finally, on timing: does Polymarket need to wait for a bull market to drop a token? I doubt that enters the calculus. This is not a fly-by-night operation. My read on the company/the founder is that the point isn't to get rich from a token and go sip drinks on an island somewhere. The vision is bigger. The token will underpin the site, and likely be intergrated into both market creation and market resolutions. It will be a necessary utility. The point of the token isn't a high valuation (although that matters obviously). The point is the effectiveness of the whole endeavor.

To me, the timing of when this all happens is probably moot: Polymarket dropping a token (and everything that will happen in relation to that) might just create or hasten a bull market by itself.

That take is rooted in a couple of things...my belief that stablecoins are the best technology on the blockchain. And also rooted in my other belief, albeit biased, that Polymarket is the best consumer-facing app in crypto (it utilizes stablecoins, to boot). So when your best app, with your best technology, launches a potentially massive consumer financial product and token, that's a big deal. It may go mainstream rapidly. You'll have a flotilla of new users being "on-chain" (and find out its not so scary). That's a scenario where the tide raises all the boats.

So...yeah, $9b is maybe way too low, and everyone in crypto should be rooting for Polymarket's success. To me, the big challenge for Polymarket was going from a $1m company to a $1b company.

At this point, it just seems inevitable. Fin.

--

Addendum to all this: Polymarket is a market with traders, yeah? And I think that's how people think about it. Some betting app or whatever. Which is not totally wrong.

But facilitating trading is not the product. The product of Polymarket is information.

Think about Wikipedia. Visitors vastly outnumber editors. Do you visit to learn or edit it?

Most people in the world will not interact with Polymarket to predict anything. They won't sign up, let alone deposit a single dollar. But they will interact with the product of Polymarket. They will hear the numbers on TV. They will read about the odds of rate cuts in a story. Or maybe visit the site and see whether some recent political scandal is going to lead a politician's resignation.

Which is not to downplay the opportunity here for prediction markets. There will be a ton of trading, on everything.

But the importance of this platform, the product it delivers, lives in the quality of the forecasts.

[Domer❤️‍🔥 @Domahhhh]

The ending of these probes into Polymarket is phenomenal news. Shayne is a real one. He's a genuinely good dude. I'm feeling like I should write a little about this guy, because I am sure his life was hell last November.

A few years ago, probably late 2020, in the first convo I ever had with Shayne, I came away from it that he was (yet another) big idea guy who had the silly notion to create a prediction market from scratch. I honestly thought it would fail and didn't take him or Polymarket seriously. Markets like this have been tried and mostly failed over and over and over again. Even on crypto, sites like Augur, Catnip, BetMoose (yes, that is a real name), along with dozens of companies you've never heard of. Some sort of succeeded, for short periods of time. But none of them ever REALLY lived up to the potential or vision. So my initial report back on the Polymarket team to friends was: idealistic kids, in over their heads, don't bother joining.

But what I didn't realize after that first conversation was how singularly obsessed Shayne was with bringing all of this to life. It wasn't just some random business idea from an incubator: he was a true believer in the whole enterprise. He had a vision for what he wanted this company to be, and he was implementing it. Brick by brick.

From when I made my first deposit to Polymarket in 2021 of $100 (still convinced it would probably fail) all the way through me doing hundreds of millions of dollars in volume in 2024, Shayne was messaging me on a constant basis: how do I make this site better. Over and over and over again. Always trying to improve. Always trying to grow. Never content. Focused on the big picture.

If you compare Polymarket in 2021 to how it exists in 2025, it is unrecognizably more professional, more sophisticated, and more complex. And the crazy part is: it is all on the blockchain. They had to invent half of the features and capabilities on the site, because it didn't otherwise exist (and shout out to the team of engineers who made it happen).

Shayne also told me in the early days, circa 2021 -- me, just a decently successful PredictIt bettor who fell into doing this as a mildly successful career -- prediction markets are going to be big, you're going to make a lot of money, and people are going to know who you are (relatively speaking lol). And my reaction was to laugh. What a dumb thing to say. This was such a niche space. It was an oddity. There was enough money for a decent living and that was it. In real world terms, the absolute pinnacle of the career would be a lightly used Audi and a mortgage payment.

But not only was he correct in his promises, but he is the one who built it.

Telling people I do prediction markets has gone from "...wtf is that?" to "...oh, like Polymarket?" in the span of a few years. Shayne did that.

So when this genuinely good dude had his door busted down in November, I was shocked. There's so much casual criming going on in the world that I couldn't believe that anyone had the time or resources for THAT. Ridiculous. I'm not normally one for conspiracies, but the whole thing did - and still does - seem at least a little politically motivated to me.

So full credit to this guy for weathering that storm, for getting through it. I am sure it wasn't remotely easy.

And if you're wondering whether it has deterred him or changed him at all? Answer: I've received 30+ messages in the past week from Shayne with ideas on how to further improve the site.

[[email protected] @adanthar]

Any/all $bbbyq baggies: would you like to donate some money to charity in 18 months?

[[email protected] @adanthar]

@mochabear69420 @HilsonValli @BobbyCat42 https://t.co/60QdsbHm60

I bet $100,000 at 100:1 with one of you 2 years ago and am happy to rerun it.

This time I'll give you 500:1 for any amount up to $1000 on your side. I win when you get nothing by EOY 2026. You win if your shares come back.

Send $ to Doctors w/o Borders.

[[email protected] @adanthar]

@MyTsla @HilsonValli @mochabear69420 @BobbyCat42 https://t.co/U7U0Y1G4qe

See above. Feel free to send them my way; if they chicken out it will be funny, and if not it’s a freeroll for DWB.

[[email protected] @adanthar]

@mochabear69420 @HilsonValli @BobbyCat42 https://t.co/60QdsbHm60

I bet $100,000 at 100:1 with one of you 2 years ago and am happy to rerun it.

This time I'll give you 500:1 for any amount up to $1000 on your side. I win when you get nothing by EOY 2026. You win if your shares come back.

Send $ to Doctors w/o Borders.

[[email protected] @adanthar]

@mochabear69420 @HilsonValli @BobbyCat42 https://t.co/60QdsbHm60

I bet $100,000 at 100:1 with one of you 2 years ago and am happy to rerun it.

This time I'll give you 500:1 for any amount up to $1000 on your side. I win when you get nothing by EOY 2026. You win if your shares come back.

Send $ to Doctors w/o Borders.

[[email protected] @adanthar]

I don’t expect it to happen quickly so I have 0 ethereum or any other L1 exposure rn. Whenever I hear that Vitalik, Anatoly, Emin, and some others went into one room together, I’ll buy a massive, permanent bag.

In the meantime, good luck.

[[email protected] @adanthar]

not back / never will be, but want to xpost something to CT for posterity. enjoy!

---

ETH and all other L1s are going to near zero in a global recession. This is not debatable or even a close call because all L1s have 3 use cases:

1/x

[[email protected] @adanthar]

There are no alternatives because nothing else ties the only big proven use case to the success of the protocol. It could be expressed in other ways, but w/o something similar L1s will end up like most open source projects: massively successful free apps w. 0 revenue.

5/x