Since its launch in 2020, Polymarket has grown into the world's largest prediction market. The platform lets traders predict events, from future Bitcoin prices and election results to governm
Since its launch in 2020, Polymarket has grown into the world's largest prediction market. The platform lets traders predict events, from future Bitcoin prices and election results to government shutdowns, using cryptocurrency as collateral.
Traders can deposit Circle's USDC stablecoin, a type of digital dollar, and trade shares that represent the likelihood of specific future outcomes.
In April, Polymarket announced plans to migrate from USDC to Polymarket USD, a new collateral token backed 1:1 by USDC.
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The platform has not been without controversy. Polymarket faced legal scrutiny over election-related contracts during the 2024 U.S. presidential race, though Donald Trump eased the norms for the industry once he took office. Several high-value trades have also drawn scrutiny for alleged insider trading.
When the U.S. detained Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January, a newly created Polymarket account profited over $400,000 by betting on the outcome. The Department of Justice charged a Google employee in May for allegedly using insider information to profit more than $1.2 million across several Google-related trades on the platform.
Yet, the prediction market platform remains very popular.
Prediction markets posted trading volumes of approximately $60 billion during January and mid-April this year. The investment firm Bernstein estimated in April that volumes could hit roughly $1 trillion by 2030.
Now, as per the latest report by The New York Times, Meta Platforms (Nasdaq: META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants a piece of the pie.
The NYT reported on June 23 that Zuckerberg recently dispatched a small team at Meta to create a smartphone app similar to Polymarket, as per two employees familiar with the matter.
The app, internally referred to as “Arena,” would function independently from Meta’s social networking apps such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. But the company would depend on users on these networks to grow the Arena app, the employees claimed, as per NYT.
For now, users would most likely trade event contracts using points instead of money, but Meta could allow money eventually, as per the report.
As far digital asset payments are concerned, Meta has taken a cautious approach so far.
Back in 2019, its Libra stablecoin project, later rebranded Diem, collapsed under regulatory pressure before launch.
In April this year, Meta rolled out a plan letting select creators in Colombia and the Philippines to receive payments in Circle's USDC stablecoin. It would require the creators to link the app to third-party crypto wallets.
TheStreet Roundtable reached out to Meta to confirm if the NYT report is true and did not receive a response by the time of publication.
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