PrizePicks, one among North America’s largest each day fantasy sports activities operators, has partnered with Polymarket to develop into the prediction-markets house — a transfer that would open new income streams past its core fantasy sports activities enterprise.
The partnership will combine Polymarket’s occasion contracts immediately into the PrizePicks app, permitting customers to make predictions on outcomes spanning sports activities, leisure and cultural occasions, the businesses disclosed Tuesday.
Polymarket founder and CEO Shayne Coplan mentioned the collaboration may entice hundreds of thousands of PrizePicks customers to the rising prediction-markets ecosystem.
Each firms mentioned the rollout will coincide with Polymarket’s re-entry to the USA, signaling a renewed push to carry regulated prediction buying and selling to American customers.
For PrizePicks, the transfer represents a strategic growth past each day fantasy contests, positioning the corporate to diversify engagement and stand out in an more and more aggressive sports activities gaming panorama.
Polymarket stands out within the event-outcome prediction house for its decentralized design, constructed on the Polygon blockchain, which permits markets to function transparently and with no central middleman.
The platform gained prominence in the course of the 2024 US presidential election cycle, when its buying and selling exercise and market odds accurately anticipated Donald Trump’s return to the White Home nicely earlier than conventional polls mirrored the shift.
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Prediction market development comes beneath scrutiny
Polymarket’s fast rise has not been with out controversy. A current educational paper by researchers at Columbia College discovered that as much as 60% of the platform’s buying and selling quantity could have been artificially inflated, primarily by wash buying and selling — a apply through which the identical entity repeatedly buys and sells an asset to create the phantasm of market exercise and liquidity.
The researchers mentioned they detected intensive wash buying and selling on Polymarket beginning in July 2024, indicating that a lot of the noticed development in buying and selling quantity could not have mirrored real market participation.
Cointelegraph reached out to Polymarket for remark however had not acquired a response at time of publication.
Wash buying and selling allegations will not be distinctive to prediction or betting markets — comparable practices have been documented throughout the broader decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. A 2023 report by Solidus Labs recognized intensive cases of wash buying and selling on a number of decentralized exchanges.
Extra not too long ago, reviews from merchants and analysts have pointed to an increase in suspected wash buying and selling on Solana decentralized exchanges.
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