Editor's note: ...on November 3,
prediction markets on Polymarket and
Kalshi have locked in a lopsided verdict (worth around $2 billion by election day) that treats Democratic control of the House as a near certainty at
93 to 94 percent while pricing Democratic Senate control at roughly 70 to 72 percent. A full Democratic sweep of both chambers trades near 70 percent, a split outcome with Democrats holding the House and Republicans the Senate sits in the mid 20s, and any Republican sweep has been reduced to low single digits. Tens of millions of dollars have
flooded these specific contracts in the closing weeks, with individual House and Senate control markets and key swing state races each attracting millions in volume as election day approaches. The platforms market these prices as a pure, crowd sourced reading of political reality.
In practice the structure remains extractive. Only a
small percentage of traders capture the overwhelming majority of the profits, systematically transferring money from the much larger pool of retail participants who treat the contracts as speculative entertainment rather than disciplined forecasting. The result is a marketplace that claims to illuminate an imminent national election while quietly
concentrating gains in the hands of a narrow professional class. One of the most prevalent driving forces of most of humanity is constantly trying to better his odds at getting something for nothing. And now they have access to AI...
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The Secret History of Polymarket – Part 1
By
Whitney Webb & Mark Goodwin | June 30, 2026
Shayne Coplan, now the world's youngest "self-made" billionaire, is the public face of what purports to be the world's largest crypto-powered prediction market – Polymarket. Coplan and his alleged arch-rival, Tarek Mansour of the competing prediction market platform Kalshi, recently buried the hatchet to create a new venture capital firm called 5c(c) Capital, a reference to the section of the Commodity Exchange Act which is currently used to regulate prediction markets. The fund is aimed at bulking up the infrastructure for what has
rapidly become an insurgent digital industry.