Polymarket
A prediction market where people bet real money on future events. The lab's oil model beats it.
Polymarket is a prediction market where people trade contracts on whether real-world events will happen. A contract trading at $0.72 means the crowd collectively believes there’s a 72% chance the event occurs. Because traders put real money on the line, the prices aggregate informed opinion efficiently : uninformed bettors lose money and leave, pushing prices toward truth. It runs on blockchain infrastructure but the core idea is ancient: put money where your mouth is.
How It Works
Contracts trade between $0.00 and $1.00 (0%–100% probability). “Yes” holders collect $1 if the event occurs, $0 if it doesn’t. The market price reflects thousands of people’s risk-weighted beliefs updating in real time.
Example
In v17, the oil model achieved a Brier score advantage of +2.16 percentage points over Polymarket’s implied probabilities for crude oil outcomes. A deterministic model running on a laptop outperformed thousands of traders with real money at stake. Detailed in Oil v17 Realtime Consensus.