Thousands of players who bet on the US election are waiting for a potential payout of about $450 million from online gambling sites after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, but some may have to wait to collect their winnings, Reuters reports, according to UNN.
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Online election betting sites became popular in the weeks leading up to the election as odds on former President Trump in the so-called “prediction markets” diverged sharply from opinion polls that had recorded a tie.
Prediction markets can “measure the wisdom of crowds when there is no hard data,” said Samuel S.-H. Wang, a professor of neuroscience at Princeton University who is also director of the Election Innovation Lab, which studies elections and electoral reform.
The two largest cryptocurrency-backed prediction exchanges, offshore Polymarket, which sells contracts to overseas bookmakers, and US-based Kalshi, which serves US residents, have together received about $450 million in payouts as of Tuesday evening, according to the companies. The third site, PredictIt, is an academic research group and does not disclose its payouts.
In total, Kalshi reported that 28,000 bet on Harris to win, while 40,000 bet on Trump. Polymarket did not respond to a request for information on how many people placed bets on its site.
Payouts Polymarket was estimated at $287 million as of Tuesday evening. Kalshi's payout was estimated at $159 million as of Tuesday evening.
The Polymarket player who received the largest payout is a Parisian investor known as the “Polymarket whale” who placed $40 million worth of Trump-related bets on the site. If Trump wins, he will walk away with $80 million, according to his accounts on the site.