Domah: Prediction Markets, Insider Trading, Advice and More | TG Podcast
Prediction markets grew beyond their election-cycle narrative because their real product is information, not merely wagering. Domah says the election established them as a credible alternative to punditry, while sports, politics, entertainment, and user-requested niches created a “choose your own adventure” product. Thread Guy notes that Polymarket volume has returned to election-era peaks rather than disappearing until 2028.
Insider trading is simultaneously an integrity problem and a mechanism for making prices more accurate. A trader with advance information can exploit ordinary users, but someone who figures out the answer through research is exactly whom the market should reward. Domah’s practical response is reactive: when someone changes the odds after he has a position, he reassesses. He expects future insiders may disguise themselves as “a complete fool.”
Domah’s roughly $110,000 week featured a Gaza ceasefire trade based on Trump’s statement, Netanyahu’s constraints, and the Nobel Peace Prize as a deadline. Contacts who were bullish on a July agreement turned bearish just as Domah believed the setup had improved: “This will definitely happen.” His advantage was rapid updating and connecting political leverage to a time-bounded incentive.
Position size follows measurable edge, producing concentration that would look extreme in conventional portfolio management. Domah had more than $1 million—over half his roughly $2 million prediction-market portfolio—exposed to Taylor Swift first-week album sales and made about $250,000. Spreadsheets got him within 1% of the result, while consultation with smarter specialists made it “completely a team effort.”
Prediction markets remain deeply inefficient, but the durable skill is disciplined belief revision rather than finding one permanent formula. Domah argues that a reasonably intelligent trader who avoids senseless bets can still make money because many odds are essentially invented. His own losses often come when fresh evidence arrives and he decides, wrongly, “I can ignore that.”
More sophisticated competition may compress edge per market while expanding total opportunity. Domah compares the setup with online poker: individual markets became harder, but the boom created enough players and markets for skilled participants to earn more overall. Prediction-market traders may likewise work across 30 markets instead of 10.
The long-term bull case combines passive information consumption, sponsored price discovery, and potentially valuable ecosystem assets. Domah imagines a Japanese bank spending $25,000 to subsidize a prime-minister market because its probabilities inform rates and other decisions. He concedes Polymarket could fail, but says that in most future scenarios, it exists and is much larger than it is now.
Domah does not want to convert his reputation into a startup because trading itself is the destination. Even if prediction-market activity fell 99% and only 15 other people remained, he says he would continue: “I have found my calling and I will follow it.” That commitment stretches from high-school stock simulators through poker to nearly 10,000 markets.
1. Prediction markets escaped the election-cycle trap
Domah has traded prediction markets since 2007, when he was grinding for scattered $50 bets. Polymarket’s 2021 rise began the expansion; in 2024, “everything went supersonic,” and he believes he now leads its trading volume by a wide margin after trading in nearly 10,000 markets.
His explanation for the post-election acceleration starts with credibility: the markets called the election correctly enough that politicians noticed, including Trump citing Polymarket odds at a rally. That helped establish probabilities as potentially more useful than “what you hear from pundits on TV.”
Breadth supplies the second engine. Sports offer emotional engagement and resolution within hours, while politics, films, chess, and other interests let users select their own adventure—or ask platforms to create the missing market.
2. Market prices increasingly influence the events they predict
Domah expects more reflexivity: a Polymarket market on whether the company launches in the US this year could pressure the company’s team to deliver. “You want those who bet on you to be on your side,” creating an incentive that becomes more immediate once the people responsible see the odds.
The host’s sharper example was Sam Altman watching live odds about what he might say. Domah’s framing: a 10% probability for ChatGPT-6 creates little expectation, but 90% could make the pressure feel immediate—once the subject sees the market, impartiality becomes difficult.
That reflexivity complicates prediction markets’ claim to passive measurement. Odds communicate collective expectations, but the people capable of resolving a contract may then alter their behavior because those expectations are “stuck in your head.”
3. Insider flow improves information while threatening fairness
The host raised an account that some people believed might be connected to the Trump administration; it allegedly shorted $190–200 million of Bitcoin on Hyperliquid before a China-tariff announcement and repeatedly captured nine-figure outcomes. His provocation: if insider trading exists everywhere, a transparent prediction market may expose it faster.
Domah’s answer stayed deliberately two-sided. Someone who already knows the result can exploit users, yet informed trading makes the product more accurate for the much larger audience that may never open an account and visits only to learn, “What are the chances?”
The decisive distinction is often unknowable: illicit access and exceptional research can generate identical order flow. Rewarding the latter is central to prediction markets because that trader moves probabilities toward the truth.
Today’s suspicious pattern is conspicuous—a new, fully funded account bets too much and moves the line. Domah worries the next generation will establish a history of foolish bets first, then hide informed trading behind the persona of “an idiot gambling addict.”
4. The market is inefficient because many probabilities are guesses
Domah’s blunt assessment: “We’re not even close to being efficient.” A contract on a Russia–Ukraine agreement by December 31 might properly be 5% or 80%; without deep research, much of the displayed precision is invented.
He nevertheless expects efficiency to improve as forecasting tools and causal models improve. A recession probability that was once unknowable might now be estimated at 23% when the true number is 20%—still wrong, but much closer.
Prediction markets should accelerate that process because they directly pay people for forecasting skill. His verdict is both categorical and temporary: forecasting “is terrible” now, with a long way to go.
The broader cultural shift matters too. Sports viewers now see odds, plus-minus, and other metrics that reveal value beyond visible scoring; Domah sees the same analytical habits spreading into politics and society.
5. Fast updating produced the Gaza ceasefire trade
Domah traced the setup to July, when optimists focused on Israel’s desire for an agreement while neglecting whether Hamas would accept it. He rejected their confidence because “the terrorists have to approve of that,” and they had not.
The setup reversed when Trump posted that Israel would stop bombing Gaza. Domah bought ceasefire shares immediately: Trump was, in his view, more popular in Israel than Netanyahu, while US weapons, money, and security support left Netanyahu politically cornered.
The same contacts who had been bullish in July became bearish that weekend. Domah concluded they were backward again, while Friday’s Nobel Peace Prize award supplied Trump with a personal deadline—“like a student taking a final exam.”
His postmortem rule extends beyond the winning trade: every meaningful fact must change the odds, whether by two points or 20. When he loses badly, he can often trace it to receiving new information and refusing to update.
6. Measurable edge justifies extreme concentration
Domah separates markets that can be modeled from those that cannot. A $1,000–$2,000 position can express a modest discrepancy—say, 25 cents versus his 30-cent estimate—but $50,000, $100,000, or $500,000 demands systematic analysis “from all possible perspectives.”
Taylor Swift’s first-week album sales were measurable enough for extensive spreadsheets, which finished within 1% of the outcome. Listening mattered little: ordinary listeners mistook album quality for purchasing behavior, while dedicated fans would buy regardless.
The scale was extraordinary: more than $1 million of his roughly $2 million portfolio sat in the Swift markets, generating approximately $250,000. Yet Domah rejected the lone-genius framing; expert consultations were “extremely important,” and he owed collaborators bottles of wine.
Unlike tomorrow’s relative performance of ETH and BNB, an album-sales question has a finite answer whose inputs can be investigated. In an extreme case, Domah would put every available dollar into a sufficiently mispriced, fully understandable contract.
7. A thousand positions arrive as a sequence, not a single crisis
Domah has no formal system for managing his many open positions, though he concedes he probably should. The workload remains tractable because six-month and week-long markets do not all receive decisive news simultaneously.
His attention scales with disagreement. If a 25-cent market looks worth 30, a small bet may suffice; if an 80-cent market looks worth 30, he investigates why others see 70–80 and may commit heavily once he understands their error.
The approach still carries operational risk: a missed tweet can be expensive, and capital may remain tied up in unresolved contracts for a month or two. His current portfolio size also makes it difficult to close one position and redeploy funds, even though he says he would be willing to invest every dollar in an extreme case.
8. Growth could offset shrinking edge, as it did in poker
Prediction markets become intuitive once framed through a familiar example—“what Trump will say,” sports, or South Park. The host saw actors and crew members move from total unfamiliarity to immediate comprehension once the concept had context.
Domah’s online-poker analogy cuts both ways: each market becomes harder as professionals and high-frequency firms arrive, but an expanding universe lets skilled traders play 30 markets instead of 10. Smaller unit edge can coexist with greater total profit.
Poker’s boom began when Chris Moneymaker made viewers think an ordinary person could win. Domah says he watched that coverage near the end of college and later used his college graduation gift to make his first poker investment. The host lost his first $100 in 30 minutes, then decided, “I think I can figure this out”; the second $100 launched his career.
Poker’s collapse was regulatory, not simply competitive: “Black Friday” destroyed US access and trust almost overnight. Having watched two prediction platforms closed by governments, Domah uses a pseudonym and says today’s companies must use a supportive administration and powerful partners to become legally difficult to dismantle.
9. Information may become the ecosystem’s most valuable output
For beginners, Domah recommends depositing only what they can lose, scanning broadly, and choosing one market where personal knowledge reveals a nonsensical price. Even a loss can purchase subject expertise; scaling capital and market count comes later.
Thematic indices could eventually package contracts like an ETF—$100 allocated by a trusted manager across Republican outcomes—but mismatched resolution dates complicate construction. Domah liked the idea while doubting current liquidity is large enough.
His larger thesis is that most users will consume probabilities without trading. A Japanese bank might pay $25,000 to subsidize market making around the next prime minister because that information feeds expectations for interest rates and other exposures.
Domah personally bought about 50,000 “no” shares when the eventual prime minister traded at 99.9%; after the country started having problems, her odds fell to 75%, though she ultimately won and he roughly broke even. He avoided celebrating during the move because posting early invites arrogance: “put the cart before the horse.”
After discussing potential tokens, data, sponsored markets, and tools, Domah said he has “absolutely zero interest” in building a company. If activity fell 99%, he would still trade with the remaining 15 people: prediction markets are not his growth strategy but his lifelong calling.
Full transcript
I’ll tell you this: it’s been a crazy 4 months, especially in terms of prediction markets, since you were last here. First of all, congratulations on the partnership you have. Secondly, I just watched your interview with CZ. Was that about 2 weeks ago? That was cool, man.
Hey, thanks. Did you just watch it by chance?
Yes, I watched it live. That was cool.
Oh, that’s cool.
Damn, it was a weird day—3 or 4 hours after the market crashed, and we had, I don’t know, the worst day of liquidations in crypto. But at least it was a good morning, you know?
Yeah. Sorry about that ending.
Everything is fine. I appreciate your support. But, man, I’m glad to see you again. A lot has happened since you first appeared 4 months ago. It seems that, especially in my field—the crypto world—everyone only wants to talk about prediction markets.
Of course, there’s a struggle going on in this space. A lot is happening, and there’s a lot to talk about. A lot has really happened in the market, so I’m happy to discuss some of this with you.
I was listening to that interview you gave a couple of days ago. It was actually very good. Did you give it about 3 or 4 days ago?
Yes, yes.
I’ve been performing a lot lately.
You know what surprises me the most about how this has exploded? I remember in 2023, venture capital firms were calling me and saying, “Oh, we’re thinking of investing in this, but what happens after the presidential election? Will it just collapse?”
And I said, “I don’t think so, because it will expand into all these other areas.” Anyone who thought the market was going to crash was completely wrong. It’s crazy how it all turned out.
I guess to start, we’ve grown a lot since you were last here. For beginners, can you briefly introduce yourself—who you are—and then we’ll move on to the most interesting part?
I am known as Domah. I’ve been involved in prediction markets for too long—since 2007. It’s my main job. Literally, I don’t do anything else anymore.
There were a few years when prediction markets didn’t exist at all, and I traded stocks. But other than that, it’s been prediction markets all the time.
When I started, it wasn’t very popular. I worked hard, taking $50 bets here and there. That’s how empty it was. Now the universe has become much bigger.
The real explosion occurred in 2021, when Polymarket gained popularity. In 2024, everything went supersonic.
I think I’m the trader with the highest trading volume on Polymarket. I got off to a quick start and am constantly engaged in market making. I trade in many markets. I think I’ve made trades in almost 10,000 markets in total. I’m just a fan of my job.
For some reason, when you were here last time, I thought you might have been number 5. Maybe that’s not true.
No, I’ve always been first.
First?
First, by a wide margin.
Today I was watching and thought, “Wow, you’re first by a wide margin.”
What do you tell people when they ask what you do for a living?
I tell them I’m a trader. It’s funny, because I used to play poker. There used to be this stigma if you were a poker player or someone who made bets. Twenty years ago, it was associated with someone who smoked in the front yard or wore gold chains.
Now, I think if you say you’re a poker player, people will think of you as some kind of nerd. The image has changed a lot.
I talk about it openly now and tell people that I trade and try to predict events. Sometimes people find it very interesting, and sometimes they stare indifferently into the void. It all depends on the person.
Yes, I understand it better now. It’s crazy how mainstream it’s become in such a short period of time.
I have a lot of college-age friends who just graduated from college, and they’re all addicted to sports betting. All my friends are addicted to sports betting, and I’ve always thought and said that sports betting is, so to speak, the entry ticket to the crypto world. That has always been part of my way of thinking.
Everyone I show Polymarket and prediction markets to is simply delighted with it. They say, “Oh, yeah.” They just absorb it. Whereas in crypto, there seems to be another barrier that has to be overcome to fully understand everything.
It’s been interesting to watch the developments. Going back to your opening story, the narrative seemed to be that after the election, prediction markets would have their heyday, and then it would all be over. We’d move on. See you in 2028.
The exact opposite happened. I think they’re bigger than ever now. Trading volumes are actually back to election-time peaks, and in terms of attention, there are so many traders on my feed who weren’t previously interested in prediction markets and are now constantly talking about them, opening positions, and posting results.
What do you think caused this explosion of prediction markets in the last year after the election?
I would say there are several reasons. First, I believe that Polymarket and prediction markets in general correctly predicted the election results. It didn’t just make politicians pay attention to them. Even Trump once said, “Oh, the Polymarket odds show I’m ahead,” or something like that. This was during a rally, so millions of people heard it.
That solidified the idea that prediction markets are a real thing, arguably better than what you hear from pundits on TV or elsewhere. I think a lot of people paid attention to that.
The other thing is sports betting. If you want to register on Polymarket and place bets on sports, you can do that. If you’re not interested in sports and want to bet on politics, you can bet on politics. If you want to bet on movies, you can bet on any of your interests, because people have very diverse interests.
Whatever your interest, you’ll probably find it on the prediction market. If there’s an interest they don’t have markets for, you can ask, “Can you add, say, chess markets?” If there aren’t any, you can say, “Create chess markets,” and maybe they’ll become popular.
It’s kind of a choose-your-own-adventure format, which I think is really cool.
Do you consider it a bottleneck that sports now occupy such a large share of the volume?
Not really. If you think about it, what are prediction markets? They’re about trying to predict an event. Some events are very important, others are not so important. Some will happen in 2 hours, and others in 3 months.
For a lot of people, sports are attractive because it’s something they care about, something that’s going to happen in, say, 3 hours, and they’re going to watch it anyway. I feel like sports will always be an important factor because they’re interactive, people care, and they give you instant results.
You must be feeling quite a bit of recognition right now, looking back at how you’ve spent the last 18 years of your life.
It’s weird because I’ve always done things that I really, really enjoy, and I feel like people have finally realized that what I do is actually really interesting. For me, it was interesting for 18 years, and you guys are just now starting to understand this.
It’s nice to see.
It’s like Peter Schiff is coming to me tomorrow. I watched his interview where he says, “Now Jamie Dimon wants to say it’s time to buy gold.” He’s been saying it’s time to buy gold for 35 years now.
When you talk about something for 3 decades and then it becomes mainstream, it’s really cool to watch.
Listen, it was really fun to watch that episode of South Park. It was crazy, first of all. I’m a big South Park fan. How crazy was that to see?
I grew up on South Park. The guys from South Park have been doing this for a very long time. If you want to talk about how to do something for a long time, they’ve been on TV for quite a while.
I grew up on the show.
You know what was funny about that episode? It was humorous, and the story itself was kind of a joke, but I heard you talk about it a little bit in the last interview.
I’m probably not putting it very well, but it was a phenomenon where a lot of people started betting on the market and raising the line, which actually turned the event into a reality. The market influenced what happened in the real world, rather than the other way around.
Do you think this will happen more often, where people bet on something and it suddenly becomes reality because of the perception that it’s already true in the market?
Yes, I really think that will start to happen. It will be interesting to see how far this goes.
If you think about one market right now, for example, there’s a bet on Polymarket about whether they’ll launch in the United States this year. That market has been affected by the closures and everything else.
But if you work at Polymarket and have all these people counting on you, you don’t want to let them down. You want those who bet on you to be on your side. You want them to win.
So this probably puts a fire under their asses. It’s like, “Okay, we’re going to launch this thing this year. It will happen.”
You know what’s even weirder? I’m sure you saw Sam Altman on TV saying he couldn’t stop watching the market. I think they created a market predicting what he would say, and he said live that he was watching it, looking at the odds.
Yeah, it’s probably somewhere in the background if you’re one of those people who does something in the world that everyone pays a lot of attention to. It gets stuck in your head: What are the expectations?
A really good way to find out what the expectations are is to check something like Polymarket, where you think, “Okay, these people think there’s only a 10% chance that I’ll release ChatGPT-6 this year.”
So it’s not exactly an expectation. But if it was 90%, it would be, “Oh my God, the pressure is rising.”
“We need to release this thing.”
This is a strange situation. I can’t imagine watching the market during an interview, keeping it open and thinking, “What the hell am I supposed to do?” because you can’t be impartial when you’ve already seen it and know it’s there.
Yes. Yes. Yes. This affects you.
Yes, definitely. This completely affects you. And I think a pretty relevant theme after that is that every time prediction markets are mentioned in the mainstream media, it’s immediately followed by the word or phrase “insider trading.” There was this whole controversy about the Nobel Peace Prize, and today I saw a few posts about an OpenAI release. What do you think about insider trading and its possible growth in the context of prediction markets?
And I’ll even pause for a second longer to mention that there’s been a lot of controversy recently in the crypto community, where there’s one account that people think is possibly connected to the Trump administration that essentially opened a huge short position, I don’t know, somewhere on Hyperliquid. He bet $190–200 million on Bitcoin falling right before the announcement of tariffs on goods from China. And he essentially wins every one of these bets, with amounts reaching 9 figures. I mean, the profit from this is just disgusting, what this account is making.
And since it’s on a DEX, the address is public. Everyone sees it. Everyone is watching this. It’s almost like a demonstration: “Look at me.” And this just goes to show that insider trading happens in all markets. There’s a lot of talk about prediction markets right now. Don’t you think this is more of a feature than a bug? If someone is going to engage in insider trading, it’s better to do it in the public prediction market, where you can get results faster?
Yes, this is a tricky question, because you don’t want someone who already knows the answer to just take advantage of your users and exploit people, right? So that’s a minus. But on the other hand, if we look at prediction markets, many who browse Polymarket probably don’t have an account there. They most likely don’t trade at all. They probably just go to the site to find out: What are the chances that this person will do this? They’re just trying to stay up to date with the news.
So if you look at it that way, insiders will make the market more accurate, and your product, as a measure of accuracy or something like that, will become better. So this part is positive. This is a rather delicate question.
And one more nuance: it’s hard to figure out whether someone knows the answer in advance because of illegally obtained data, whether they’re an insider from the administration, or whether they just did something complicated to find out, right? And if someone could actually figure it out, that’s exactly what you want. This is literally the person you need in the prediction market to move the odds in the right direction and reward them for their investigation or clever way of getting information before anyone else.
There’s a funny joke in the crypto community where some whale opens a huge 9-figure position and everyone asks, “What does he know? What does he know?” And the answer is almost always: He knows nothing. He’s just like that, some kind of degenerate gamer, and there’s a certain humor in all of this.
When you trade in such markets, especially those where you have high volumes, do you monitor for potential insiders? Are you following these wallets that have been showing strange insider activity? Do you even think about it? Is this part of your calculations when you open a position?
I mean, not necessarily when… More like when you already have a position and someone starts changing the odds and you’re like, “Oh, what do I do now? Do I have to reset it or something?” This is more of a reaction than an anticipation of the situation.
But the other thing is that insiders are now very clearly expressing themselves, aren’t they? It’s like a whole new account. It is fully replenished. They bet too much money. They change the odds. It’s very, very, very obvious that they already know the answer, whether it’s an insider or someone who figured it out themselves. So no, it’s just easier to notice now.
I would worry that maybe in a few months or a year, people will become much more sophisticated and realize that you have to look like an idiot gambling addict making a stupid bet. This will be the next stage for insiders: you prepare your account to look like a complete fool, and then act with inside information.
There was such a market for Taylor Swift. That was funny. It was about one of her former drummers or something.
Yes, it seems it was: “Will she get engaged to him?” And someone just poured a bunch of money in literally 2 days before the announcement.
Was “Doc’s” real name his real name? It was a good story. I don’t think it was her guitarist, who’s in his 50s, after all, but maybe it was Travis Kelce’s cousin, Kelsey, or someone else. Who knows? It was wonderful.
Well, that’s great if you’re an outside observer who hasn’t lost money in this market. That’s all.
Yeah, that raises an interesting question, doesn’t it? Insiders exist, but they make it pretty clear that they are insiders. They come, crash the markets, and move the odds. You can somehow test and understand: What type of activity is this? Is it real or not? What do you think is the current stage of efficiency of these markets?
Yeah, we’re not even close to being efficient. If you are at least a little smart, register with Polymarket, think logically, and don’t make incredibly stupid, pointless bets, you will simply make money. This is inevitable because there are so many markets and people have little understanding of what they do.
So how would you assess the likelihood of a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine being concluded by December 31?
We’re just making up this number. If God came to Earth, perhaps He would say that the number is 5 or 80. Who even knows what the number really is? So a lot of these things are just made up, and if people are really smart and do deep research, they can get an advantage in a lot of markets.
Do you think this market is getting closer to full efficiency with all these experienced players, market makers, and HFT firms coming in, who are probably also getting into the game? Will this advantage continue to diminish, becoming smaller and smaller?
Yes, the answer is yes, because we are getting much better at predicting future events. Let’s say you’re wondering if there’s going to be a recession next year, right? And you remember where we were 50 years ago—they had no idea at all whether there would be a recession. They were too limited to understand the relationship between inflation and employment, and so on.
We now have so many precise tools that we can determine approximate odds quite accurately. Maybe the real odds are 20, but we estimate them at 23 or so. We are getting very, very close. So as we get better at all these fine-tuning things, we can answer complex questions much better than we were able to before.
So I think forecasting will get much better. Right now, it’s terrible. There is still a long way to go. But yes, Polymarket will also accelerate our improvement in forecasting, because here they literally pay for the ability to forecast well. If we think about how people try to predict future events, prediction markets are going to make that a lot better.
So you had this cool idea, basically phrased a little differently but of a similar type, I think, in the last interview, or maybe it was one of the written ones that I read. You’re talking about what I think is a misconception in society that people are getting stupider. Boomers are dumb, you have no attention span, you’re on TikTok all day, you can’t focus on anything, no one can read.
But then you made the point that our tools and our mental models for ideas and actions are so much more advanced that if you went back to when you started in 2007, 2008, or 2009, you would just blow everyone away with what’s available to you now in 2025. And I actually didn’t think about it in that way at all.
Yeah, I mean, we’ve become a lot more analytical. Let’s say you’re just watching some random basketball game, right? If you watch a basketball game, you are inundated with these performance indicators or even odds. So your understanding of who is actually good at basketball is much better, right?
Someone who might not score a lot of points, who might not even have a lot of assists or anything like that—maybe his plus-minus is actually very good because he does a lot of very subtle things that you don’t pay attention to. And we’re just a lot smarter about who’s actually really, really good at any given sport.
So if you apply that same way of thinking and analyzing to the world at large, we will become much more sophisticated in how we analyze things. People are increasingly relying on numbers, trying to come up with formulas, models, and all that.
And so, if you think about where you were in 2007, no one had heard of Nate Silver back then. There was this website that you’ve probably never heard of called Daily Kos or something like that. It was such a liberal site, and Nate Silver had a blog there. Almost no one read it. It was this tiny corner of the internet, of the world, where people were really trying to apply mathematics to politics, whereas now it’s much more ubiquitous.
As for me, I still believe in what I see with my own eyes, but yes, analytics prevail.
Yes, okay. I love mid-range shots.
So, you had this tweet on October 8. You’ve actually made it to our list—we make a selection of the best trades of the week every Friday. Last week was tough, and you were, I think, number 4 or 3, something like that. You posted a profit of $110,000 in a week, which usually doesn’t make the top trades because you’re competing with all the crypto traders, but the explanation and the way you made that money was crazy.
The Middle East peace agreement in particular was one of the most improbable predictions. I mean, man, that was just crazy. I couldn’t believe what I read in your explanation. Can you tell us about this deal?
Yeah, well, I think it all started back in July, when they were very close to a peace agreement. The thinking in July was, “Okay, Israel really wants to make peace, but the big question was whether Hamas would agree to it.”
I remember talking to a lot of people who were very optimistic about a peace deal in July, and they were all saying, “Oh, yes, yes, it’s going to happen. Israel is so excited.” Everyone was saying that, and I was like, “What are you even talking about? The terrorists have to approve of that. They haven’t said anything.”
With that mindset, I just went with the flow. Then we get to this point, and Trump issues a tweet: Israel will stop bombing Gaza. This guy tweets as if he’s also the president of Israel. He writes, “Oh, yes, they finished bombing Gaza.”
If you think about it, I reacted extremely quickly to that tweet and immediately bought a bunch of ceasefire shares. Trump is more popular in Israel than Bibi Netanyahu—that is, even more popular than the country’s leader.
The United States is also integral to Israel’s security and everything else. We provide them with weapons, money, and all that kind of stuff. So if Trump tweets about it, Netanyahu is trapped, right?
When you corner Netanyahu, you suddenly have the opportunity to negotiate with people who otherwise wouldn’t want to do it, because they’re thinking, “Okay, the president of the United States is actually a little bit on our side.”
I spent that weekend talking to the exact same people I had talked to in July. Let’s say Trump wrote this on Saturday. I said, “Well, what do you think now?” And they said, “Oh, no, no, no, that’s not going to happen.” Several of them had literally the opposite opinion.
I was like, “What are you even talking about? Trump wrote this on Twitter. This will definitely happen.” I bet a ton of money that they would make a peace deal that week because I thought Trump would make it happen.
There was another time constraint, too. Sorry if I’m being a bit confusing, but the Nobel Peace Prize was to be awarded on Friday. I thought, “Okay, he’ll do it.” It’s like a student taking a final exam. This was his deadline. He would finish this damn exam by that date.
There was not only pressure from Trump as a person, but also internal time pressure to get everything done. I was very, very, very confident about it, and I’m glad I made that bet and stuck to it. It was madness.
Yes, a crazy explanation. It’s just incredible in terms of the efficiency issue that we were talking about earlier. So, how can these markets be evaluated?
I hear you say it all the time. People always ask you what makes a trader successful in the prediction market, and I think I asked you about it during our first conversation. You name a bunch of things, but the first thing you always say is your ability to react quickly to new information and make the right decisions. It seems that this remains the main advantage for stable earnings in these markets.
Yes, and you know, this can be analyzed because I also lose money from time to time. Sometimes I lose a lot of money on stupid bets. When I analyze it later, I understand that I didn’t react when I should have.
I got some new information and thought, “Well, I can ignore that,” or something. But no, if new information comes out, it should change your chances. Whether it changes them by 2 points up or down, or by 20, you can’t be the kind of person who gets new data but already has a set opinion and doesn’t let it affect you in any way.
You have to be very, very, very open to new things. If you’re as open as possible and receive new information, you have to react. And you have to react correctly.
I don’t know if I’ve asked you this before, but how technically complex are your bets? Sports betting has essentially become an exact science. People have these complex models.
If I’m betting on sports, I’m just a Lane Kiffin fan. The Ole Miss uniforms are cool, so they’re going to win today. I’m not a sports bettor at all.
Trading, of course—if I’m trading crypto—has a little more of a process that I follow, but there’s still a lot of it based on narratives, market feel, and intuition about price. There’s a lot of feeling there, whereas in sports betting, this isn’t the case at all.
Are you running models for any of these markets? How technically savvy are you in this area?
You know, it really depends on how deep you dive. First, some of these markets aren’t modelable at all, so forget about it.
But if I’m really, really serious about something—this is going to sound pretty silly, but two weeks ago, the huge market was how many albums Taylor Swift would sell in the first week—I had a bunch of spreadsheets to figure it out. It ended up being within 1% error, which was a really big win for me.
So, yes, it depends, first of all, on the type of market and whether it can be measured in numbers at all. Secondly, it depends on how much money I invest in it, because for me personally, $2,000 is a small bet.
If I invest $1,000 or $2,000, it doesn’t really matter whether I win or lose. But if the amounts reach $50,000, $100,000, or $500,000, then you need to approach this very logically, consistently, and mathematically, analyzing everything from all possible perspectives. In those cases, I build quite complex models.
What is the psychology behind you trading almost every market, even if the money isn’t what matters to you when you win?
Well, first of all, I think it’s really interesting—trying to predict what’s going to happen. The other thing is this: Let’s say you see a market that you think is worth 30 cents, but it’s trading at 25, and you’re not entirely sure. That’s the market I’ll bet $1,000 on.
If it stays at 25 cents all the time, there’s no point in investing more money in it, right? But if you see a market trading at, say, 80 cents, and you think it’s worth 30, then you’re going to pay a lot of attention to that market.
You’ll bet a lot of money on it. You’ll try to figure out why it’s trading at 70, because someone thinks it’s worth 70. You need to figure out why they think it’s worth 70, why they’re wrong, and so on.
You spend so much time and energy when you think the difference is really very big. That’s how you end up putting a huge amount of money on the line. It mostly comes down to what you think your advantage is.
I like this approach. You know, one of the reasons why I think you’re unique in this—there are a lot of reasons, but look, I trade coins all day long, and I’ve gotten to the point where I always say here that I have a “streamer’s portfolio.”
Most of my portfolio is spot Bitcoin. I also have one or two, maybe three, other positions that I truly believe in. If there are more of them, my mental ability to closely monitor these positions simply disappears.
That’s really a maximum of two, apart from my spot Bitcoin. Otherwise, my hands are completely tied and I can’t do anything else. How do you deal with this?
Do you have a process for managing all of these open positions at once? I think that’s what people forget when they talk about how many markets you trade. Is there any process?
No. Should there be? Yes, probably.
Since the news comes in consistently, it’s not as difficult as it seems, right? Let’s say you wake up one day and have 1,000 bets open, and you’re following the news. You won’t get news about all one hundred out of one hundred bets at the same time.
The news will come one at a time, maybe one or two at a time, on the markets you’re paying attention to. So it’s easier to control than you think, because I’m not betting on 1,000 football matches happening on the same day.
Some of these markets last 6 months, and some last a week. The pace is a little slower, so you can follow the events sequentially and step by step. It’s not as difficult as it seems.
Sometimes you can get blown away because you missed a tweet, and that happens. So, yes, it does create some difficulties. It’s not easy, but it’s not some super-complicated thing that’s impossible to do.
The hardest part for me was trading low-cap meme coins all day long. It’s like being in these hypervolatile positions, and I’m holding 5 at the same time. Then you have notifications turned on for all the founders’ tweets, and you just can’t shut down your computer.
You can’t close your computer while having several positions open on coins with a capitalization of $300,000 to $500,000. It’s either you trade or you don’t.
I don’t do this “degen” trading as much anymore, but while your explanation is valid, I think it’s an underrated aspect of your skill—the ability to mentally manage all these positions.
I’ll add a question to this: Do you have a system for determining position sizes and what proportion of your bankroll is open at any given time?
Another thing that becomes difficult in crypto is portfolio management. You have a bunch of money in ETH, maybe a core portfolio on Solana, but then the Binance BNB ecosystem takes off and you transfer funds to Binance to trade those coins.
It becomes such a mental mess to figure out what the position size is and how much your portfolio is worth when it’s spread across different ecosystems.
This is roughly what you do every day when trading the markets. What do you think about this?
If I think about cryptocurrencies, ecosystems, and things like that, it seems more like stocks. A lot of time and attention goes into properly balancing a portfolio and maximizing it in terms of risk—not taking too much risk, but also not being too passive.
I know this is a very complex question, but prediction markets are completely different. If I saw a market that I really wanted to bet on and thought the price was completely wrong, I would invest there. In an extreme case, I would be willing to invest every dollar I had in that market.
It can be very, very, very concentrated, right? Especially if you feel like you have it figured out, because in prediction markets, you can understand everything in the equation. For example, how many album sales will Taylor Swift have? You can learn everything. You can figure it out. The answer is known.
Whereas the challenge you face with cryptocurrencies is unknowable. For example, will Ethereum grow more tomorrow, or will BNB? It’s impossible to know. Prediction markets are limited in that way. You can wrap your mind around everything, and I’m very willing to focus all my bets on X, Y, and Z at any given time.
Did listening to the album affect your equation at all?
Not exactly—well, a little, just a little. First of all, I’m a Taylor Swift fan. I’m not a “Swiftie” or anything, but I really like her music and her as a person, so I listened to it right away no matter what.
But I’m not sure quality mattered much to me. No.
Of course. Just curious.
In general, I think a lot of normal people were like, “Oh, this album isn’t that good,” and that led them astray. That’s one of the reasons why it was so profitable to make a lot of money, because the Swifties hardly care about quality, right?
Taylor Swift releases an album—I buy as many albums as I can. That’s their mentality. Quality doesn’t really enter the equation. So if you’re letting quality affect you, maybe you’re betting against it, and it’s like, “Oh, you’re on the wrong track, buddy.”
By the way, that was exactly the narrative. Everyone posted that their girlfriends said the album sucked and went short.
Yes.
Right?
Yes, yes. They were simply blown to pieces.
Sorry, guys.
Yes, it was tough. I like it. Quality doesn’t even factor into the equation.
To your last point about position sizes, what was the last market you essentially loaded up on completely?
It was so long ago, simply because my portfolio is too big now to invest in one thing. Besides, if you have all these bets, it’s hard to close one and transfer funds to another. A lot of your bets just hang for a month or two, so this question is difficult to answer.
But with the Taylor Swift album, I had over $1 million. I have about $2 million in the prediction markets right now, and I had over $1 million in bids on Taylor Swift. More than half of my portfolio was invested in the number of albums she sold.
Yeah, and I think I made a quarter of a million, which is crazy when you think about it. You kept more than half of your portfolio in this. I didn’t know that.
Dude. Yes, yes. I invested over $1 million, and I think I made about $250,000.
How confident were you? To what extent was your confidence in going for it personal and not conditioned by the opinions of other traders? Was this purely your own analysis?
No, no, no. It was extremely important to consult with people who were smarter than me. It was completely a team effort. Actually, I should send these people bottles of wine or something. This is a good reminder. I need to get back in touch with these people and send them one of these.
I was going to ask you how to get one of these PFP avatars with a dome.
Dude, I think it was AI, but I actually want one. I’ll try to arrange it.
It was on my list to ask you about this at the very beginning, but I got sidetracked. Wow, this is crazy. I didn’t know you kept such a large portion of the portfolio in this. Great trade. This is just wild.
What I want to know is this: we talked a lot about your trading style. Returning to the topic of the virality of prediction markets, where do you think all these new traders are coming from?
A lot of traders come from places like sports betting. If you think about the United States, sports betting is only legal in maybe 20 states. I don’t know exactly, but there must be a lot of them. All the other states are hearing about prediction markets for the first time and thinking, “Oh, okay, I can sign up for that. I’m not forbidden to do this.”
That’s the first thing. Secondly, as it becomes part of the public consciousness, people talk about it. They hear about it, go to the site, and realize, “This is really cool.”
If you explain to someone what a prediction market is without context, they’ll think it’s too difficult. They’ll think it sounds kind of geeky. It sounds absurd. But a lot of people put it in the right context, and when they get that context, they realize, “Okay, that’s cool. This is what suits me.”
So I think people are much better at explaining what it is now, and that’s attracting a lot of new users.
You know what’s funny? When I was making that video announcing Polymarket, I think we made it about a month ago, and there were—I think—12 actors who came that I didn’t know. We contacted the agency, and they sent all these actors. I think there were 10 of them. Together with the film crew, there were probably 15 to 20 people.
None of them knew what Polymarket was. The script was a bit intense, so at the beginning I gave a speech. I sat everyone down, went up to the board, and explained what Polymarket was. None of them had any idea at first.
But as soon as I started talking, they were like, “Oh, this is like when you can bet on what Trump will say?” People immediately understood what it was when it was explained to them in context.
It’s a pity that I don’t have the recording of that speech. I would tweet this if I had it. It was pretty good. No one knew Polymarket. They asked, “What is this?” But when I started explaining, some people said, “Oh, like South Park.” They realized that it was really interesting. I was a little surprised.
Yes, that’s true. You have to explain it to people in a way that they understand. When people hear about it in a context that is familiar to them, it becomes very logical.
It’s just a logical thing that exists. They think, “Oh, yes, of course. That’s really cool. Let me be a part of this.”
So I think, in a way, these markets are advertising themselves, but you have to find the right message to reach people. Do you understand what I mean?
Yes.
Do you think the advantage is disappearing, or is it becoming more difficult to trade in these markets due to the influx of newcomers? Is this a situation like online poker in the early 2000s, where there were a lot of newbies ready to throw money around?
I think online poker is a good analogy because the individual market has become more complex than it was—probably the most complex it’s ever been.
In each individual market, yes, it’s more difficult. But the other side is that there are so many new players and so many markets that it has become massive. Even if your advantage in some markets is smaller, you can work with 30 markets instead of 10 and therefore earn even more, despite the smaller advantage.
It was similar with poker. It became so popular that even though the games became a little more complicated, you could play at multiple tables—10 tables at a time. A lot of people played, so your potential profit was higher, even if the games got a little harder.
What about poker? Was it Chris Moneymaker who caused this boom?
Yes. ESPN was broadcasting it for the first time, and some unknown guy—a regular guy—won everything. He was actually kind of overweight and chubby, and looked like a substitute teacher or something.
Yes, yes.
He didn’t even play very well, to be honest. People thought, “Okay, if this guy can do it—he’s just a substitute teacher, just an ordinary uncle—if he can do it, so can I.”
So many people started playing poker, especially since it was very easy to register for online poker back then. It became incredibly popular very quickly.
Was that around 2004?
I think I was two years old.
What were you doing when you were watching? Were you playing poker at that time?
Yes, I watched it. I think I was maybe in my last year of college, or the second-to-last year. I don’t remember exactly what year it was, but it was toward the end of college, and I watched it on TV.
I think it was in the summer, and I thought, “This is cool. You can see the cards and the strategy.” There are games within the game, and bluffing. It’s a simple game, but it’s also complex, and you have to make a lot of decisions in a short amount of time. You either make money or lose money depending on how skilled you are.
For us, because a lot of us grew up on video games, poker is just a game. It’s a kind of video game. If you watch it on TV, it’s like watching a video game. So many people immediately registered, trying to catch this wave.
I think I actually used my college graduation gift to make my first investment in poker.
I lost my first $100 in 30 minutes. It just disappeared. But I thought about it and thought, “I think I can do it. Yes, I lost that money instantly, but I think I can figure this out and make it right.” That second $100 started my entire career.
This is madness. Many people think the best traders talk about poker all the time. They were all professional poker players—absolutely all of them. That’s why when you told me that, I thought, “Yeah, damn, that makes sense. Of course.”
Everyone remembers the days of online poker. Many compare the era of meme coins to those times, only everything happened much faster. The newbies ran out of money; it was just pros against pros, the best players against the best. We threw money at each other until we said, “That’s enough. Let’s find something new.”
I wasn’t planning on asking this, but what do you think marked the end of online poker—if “end” is the right word—and could something similar happen to prediction markets?
What happened to poker is pretty obvious. It was what’s called “Black Friday,” when the U.S. government just shut everything down. They sued everyone, and it was completely unclear whether people would get their money.
Even when new poker sites appeared, people treated them with great distrust. Professional players even moved to Mexico, trying to continue playing, but nothing worked out for them. It destroyed the entire industry, literally in one day. Yesterday everything was thriving, and today it was, “Okay, this doesn’t work anymore. This simply doesn’t exist anymore. We all need to look for something else.”
So it was a very specific event. And you know why I use a pseudonym? Because prediction markets are constantly being shut down. The first prediction market I used was closed by the government in 2012. The second prediction market I was involved with was also closed by the government.
So why should I put my name out there and engage in a business that the government is constantly coming after? But I think there are 2 things that are really playing into the hands of prediction markets right now.
The first is the current administration, which, let’s put it this way, is very supportive of prediction markets. We don’t need to delve into this. But that’s good.
The second is that there is room for maneuver here, where prediction markets can use this administration to gain a foothold and become a legal business. These companies receive investments from very powerful partners, and when you have such strong partners, it makes your company much more resilient.
So I think over the next few years they will really strengthen their position to the point where the government will no longer be able to shut them down.
It seems like the same thing happened with crypto, and we’re actually praying that some things are no longer undoable, right? Like the GENIUS Act and things like that.
Once it is approved, has gone through all the stages, and has been confirmed, then regardless of who comes to power next, it can only be rolled back to a certain point.
I didn’t even realize that was it. For some reason, I thought poker was all about solvers, GTOs, and stuff. I didn’t know there was a story about Black Friday—the whole story.
The only thing I want to say is that I feel like it’s the responsibility of these companies right now to put themselves in a position where the government can’t shut them down. I feel like this applies to cryptocurrencies as well.
It’s a boom time right now. Things are going very well, but you also want to strengthen your position, right? You want to make sure that everything happens openly and honestly. So I feel that now, at least under this administration, these companies have an obligation to do everything they can to ensure that no one can destroy them.
Yes, I like it. It seems like this is already happening.
It seems to be speeding up the process, and that’s really nice to see.
I’m sure a lot of people right now, especially in the cryptosphere, are watching everyone talk about prediction markets and trying to figure out if this is really a profitable play for them.
I’m sure you’ve probably been told this a lot, but how do you start? Where do you start? What is needed in terms of capital?
You trade virtually every market, and I’m sure that’s not entirely realistic for a beginner. When someone asks you, “Where should I go? How do I start?” what do you advise them to do?
I think that’s the simplest answer possible. First of all, you don’t have to be like me. I’m at the top of the food chain in the prediction markets, and you’re just beginning your journey.
I would advise you to deposit only a small amount of money—an amount you can afford to lose, right? Secondly, there are simply an incredible number of markets on these sites. You should scroll through them all and try to find one where you think you have an advantage.
Maybe it’s something that interests you. Maybe it’s something where you see a number and think, “That doesn’t make sense at all.” Or it could be any other factor.
The worst that can happen is that you lose money you could already afford to lose. The second-worst thing that can happen is that you probably become smarter about whatever topic you decided to research.
There is actually very little risk in joining and becoming a player in the prediction market. You can choose which markets to bet on, and you can choose how much to bet.
As long as you take it very seriously at the beginning, you’ll be able to figure it out, understand the situation, and then, as you get better, increase your capital, increase the number of bets, and find more markets.
So I think it’s very easy to start small and grow quickly in prediction markets. A lot of players, especially beginners, set themselves challenges like “from $1,000 to $100,000” or something like that. Many of these people are doing it successfully, if they do it right.
I was thinking about this today. When I thought about you before this conversation, I realized that you must have incredible knowledge in the narrowest of fields. It’s amazing how broad your horizons are when communicating with anyone in real life.
You’re simply the best guest at any wedding.
Because it really seems to me that this is true, especially at weddings. If I talk to someone, I inevitably know something about what they do.
For example, at the last wedding I attended, I was sitting next to a rugby player. I knew about rugby because I created markets on match results, although I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a full rugby game in my life.
But I also feel that the funny thing is this: when you trade prediction markets, it’s like you’re studying for an exam on the last night. You absorb as much information as possible, as quickly as possible, for a specific final event that’s approaching. You need to become as knowledgeable as possible in the shortest amount of time.
What happens when you prepare for an exam at the last minute? Teachers don’t like it because if they test your knowledge 3 months later, you’ll inevitably forget everything. Only small fragments will remain in your head.
So I won a lot of money by becoming a real expert trader on the Pope, the conclave, or something like that. But if you ask me about it in 2 years, I’ll probably be like any other ordinary ignoramus with minimal knowledge, because all the knowledge I memorized simply faded away over those 2 years.
This was one of your best posts. You were telling me how you read Italian newspapers, and I think that’s how I came across you. It was a really great post.
I think I found you before the costume debate, and I was scrolling through your feed because I didn’t know who I was dealing with. I thought, “Oh my God, we really have to prepare for this.” That was cool.
Yes, it’s fun.
I’ll let you go in a couple of minutes, but here’s a question for you. Many are trying to pitch me on non-binary markets and indices for specific verticals within prediction markets. Do you have any thoughts on this? Do you understand how it works, whether it will become something serious? Have you thought about this?
What do you mean by “non-binary”?
They constantly write to me in direct messages and offer ideas for tools they’re creating. Some of them are interesting, and some of them—I don’t understand what they’re talking about at all.
For example, how could you go long on the Republicans using an index of Republican performance, where you aren’t buying anything specific? It’s a weighted indicator based on 15 different markets included in the financial instrument.
I don’t know if there are many people doing this. It’s interesting, but no one can explain to me how it works. I always ask, “Okay, when does the market close? How does it work?” And they say, “Well, you know, we’re weighing it.” No one can explain how it works.
It’s interesting because it’s essentially like an ETF—a thematic ETF.
That’s right, only in prediction markets.
I think this is actually a very good idea. The logistics would be a little different because one market pays in November and the other in September. How do you reconcile all that?
But overall, the idea isn’t bad. You invest $100, and then a portfolio manager you trust allocates it by theme—say, “Republicans”—trying to find the best Republican markets to bet on.
I think it’s very interesting. I’ve never heard of such a thing before. This could be a good thing. I’m not sure the markets are big enough for this in terms of volume, but in a couple of years, it’s quite possible. That was a cool idea. No one could really explain how it works, but in theory, it sounds great.
Yes. I mean, the thing about prediction markets is that you can build so many cool things on them and get a ton of data out of them. It’s like a gold mine if you try to work with them.
Okay, and that brings me to one of the last points I wanted to raise, given your time. I think a lot of really smart people are optimistic about prediction markets, but they really believe that the next on-chain crypto game will be an ecosystem built around or based on prediction markets, which I find very interesting.
I know that now, especially after the elections, many people are creating really cool things in anticipation of the next ones. You wrote this crazy post about the Polymarket token and what it would mean for prediction markets in general and how important it would be. I think you mentioned a $9 billion valuation, and I know you’re much more immersed in crypto than most.
I know we talked about this a little bit during the last stream when you got the GCR notification. You’re mostly only interested in prediction markets, but we talked a little bit about crypto. You wrote this masterful bullish post, if you may say so, about how important a potential Polymarket token would be. My favorite part was that you said if that happened, that in itself would be a bull market.
I don’t know if you have any thoughts. I don’t really have a specific question; I just want to hear what you think about this topic. Have your thoughts on this changed? Do you often think about this? It seems like a lot of people are tweeting that they’re farming airdrops or something like that. I don’t even know. What do you think about this?
Yes, I think this post speaks for itself to some extent, but I also think that if you imagine a world where you want to bet—what if you get married, right? You’re betting on this person. You’re putting everything you have on the line. You seem to have assessed the situation. There’s a certain risk here: you’re taking a risk, and perhaps this marriage will not work out. Or maybe it’s the best thing that will happen in your life.
It’s like you’re making a bet. So, if I think about Polymarket, if I think about what its token could do and its utility, I think it would be an integral part of the site. I think it would have real, huge value in use.
And if I think about the world in 10 years, it seems like it would be an extremely profitable bet to bet on Polymarket going up now. Yes, of course, Polymarket could fail. I may look like an idiot for making a post like this. But I think that in most future scenarios, Polymarket exists, and it is much larger than it is now.
Yes, I think this is a cool post. I think it will not lose its relevance over time. There’s one line there that I liked the most. I think I’ve heard that before. I don’t think you were the author of the thought, but you wrote it. It’s a great line.
I think that’s what really helped me understand prediction markets a few months ago: the real product is information. To be a user of Polymarket or any other prediction market, you don’t have to trade.
There are people who say, “I don’t trade very actively in these markets, although I would like to, and we will start doing so,” but I use them all the time. We’re constantly monitoring them. I was almost worried that there was some kind of disconnect here, until I realized that no, that’s exactly what it’s meant to be.
Most people who use Polymarket won’t even log in. They’ll simply be in a browser on the site, viewing the odds for a specific market, a specific niche, or whatever else. I think that’s going to be the tipping point for the mass consumer, where most people won’t even trade, but everyone will open the site and look at the odds because it’s more accurate than biased news, if you will.
Yes, I think that’s definitely true. In the same vein, for example, to give a random example, I think the picture will be very clear. There was a prediction market on who would be the next prime minister of Japan, and I think she was just elected yesterday or the day before yesterday.
But if you think back to this market two months ago, I can easily imagine a large Japanese bank giving Polymarket $25,000, sponsoring this market, and incentivizing market makers, trying to get the best information from traders. That’s because the information Polymarket provides is going to be so important to that bank. Depending on who’s prime minister, interest rates could go up or down, and it integrates with so many things they’re already doing.
So I think we might see sponsored marketplaces where they want to know the answer to a question and actually pay people to create a marketplace to find out what the answer is.
I didn’t even think about that—$25,000. Someone could use that $25,000 to influence the election. I didn’t even think about it that way. That’s a killer use case.
Wow, I like that. You played in that market?
I played that market and almost made a ton of money, but it seems I ended up breaking even.
What happened?
This woman, who is somewhat similar to Margaret Thatcher, is very conservative and a bit controversial. She was elected leader of a certain party that was sure to lead her to the position of prime minister, right?
When she was elected, I thought, “Well, she’s quite a controversial figure. Maybe they won’t elect her as prime minister.” Her chances were 99.9%. She literally had a 99.9% chance of becoming prime minister, and I bought about 50,000 “No” shares.
Then, the next week, the country started having problems, and everyone was saying, “I’m not sure if we’re going to elect her.” Her odds went from 99.9% to 75%. She ended up becoming prime minister, but I almost won a bet at 1,000 to 1.
A post about that would be incredible. Were you thinking about posting while those odds were falling?
No. I mean, it seems to me that’s the way to become arrogant and put the cart before the horse. I’m more inclined to say that I just really hope it works.
It seems to me that you had a successful Twitter streak. I guess you’ve always been like that, but I think my account grew because of the prediction markets, right? I probably posted the same thing, but no one really saw it.
Yes, that’s right. My last question for you: Do you have any interest in building something in the future based on prediction markets, or something related to them? Now that these things are becoming truly mainstream, everyone is offering me prediction market companies—not just markets, but tools and all sorts of things like that.
Do you have an interest in anything other than trading, or is trading something that will remain your main passion?
I have absolutely zero interest. I’m not at all excited about creating something new. I just love what I do, and I’m in it even if the prediction markets go down 99%.
If everyone woke up tomorrow and said, “Okay, we’re not going to use them anymore,” I would still continue to do it. It would be me and 15 other people. I’m going to do this for the rest of my life.
Whether or not someone else does it is fine, but I have found my calling, and I will follow it.
This is so cool. Listen, when you were in high school, were you some kind of nerdy gamer, playing RuneScape or something, getting lost in there for days? Have you done this with anything else before?
When I was in high school, I was given an award for being the person most likely to become a millionaire. The reason I won that award was because I was constantly going to computer class and playing these stock-trading simulators.
So I’ve always been a fan of trading, and in school I thought I would do it all the time. I think it was only in college that I realized that these financiers work so hard, don’t seem very happy, and that it’s not a very glamorous lifestyle.
So I thought, “I’m not sure if I want to do this for a living.” But it’s funny that I ended up becoming such an avid trader anyway, just not in stocks anymore.
I thought the title “Most Likely to Become a Millionaire” only existed in movies. I didn’t even know it was something real.
No, it’s like “most popular student.” They give it to all the graduates at the end of school.
Dude, this is incredible. I would flaunt this my whole life. This is just cool.
Yeah, it’s just kind of funny. Apparently, they were right about my profile in the prediction markets.
Domah, that was cool, dude. Thanks for coming again, friend. Honestly, I think the second episode was great. In the first one, we sorted out a bunch of stories, and in this one, we went a little deeper into the details. It’s cool to see your beliefs actually being confirmed.
It’s also really nice to see so many of my crypto friends saying, “Domah, Domah, Domah,” because you’re really cool. Honestly, everyone should sit down and listen to what you have to say.
Hopefully, in the future, maybe when I break the 7-figure mark on Polymarket, we’ll do a third part. But, man, it was a real pleasure.
Hey, thanks for the invite, dude. I really appreciate it. It was nice. All the best, dude.
Thank you for coming. Likewise. Good luck with everything, and I’m sure we’ll talk soon.
Definitely. Thanks, dude. Peace.