Polymarket.com - Bets on any events (politics, sports, crypto markets, and more)

[internetional]

I am not a representative of the platform. I am just opening this thread to get answers to my questions. The following information is based on what I found in public sources.


Polymarket is a prediction market where you can place wagers on the outcomes of various events. Each bet is a wager between two users.

Example.

• One user offers "odds" 2:1.
  He says: "I want to make a wager that event A will happen for a total of $1, half of which I will put in, and the other half will be put in by the opponent."
  And he posts the corresponding order (puts $0.5 into the smart contract).
• Another user offers different "odds".
  He says: "I can wager that event A will not happen, but I am only willing to put in $0.4 provided that the opponent puts in $0.6."
  And he posts the corresponding order, depositing $0.4 into the smart contract.
• As soon as someone accepts the terms of one of the posted orders, the deal is considered made.

Unlike casinos and bookmakers, here there is no "house" - all bets and settlements are done P2P between users, and the platform does not profit from losses. You can sell your "bet" if there are buyers. There are no fees from Polymarket for this - only crypto network fees.

Polymarket supports BTC deposits, but these BTC, like any other assets, are converted to USDC.e (on Polygon), and these tokens are what get credited to the balance.
Bets are always placed in USDC.e. Winnings are also in USDC.e, and withdrawals are only in USDC. Bitcoins deposited will not be returned to you.

On Polymarket, you can bet on
- Politics: Fed decisions, appointments in the US, candidates 2028/2032.
- Sport: Super Bowl 2026, NBA 2026, UCL, EPL, World Cup 2026.
- Crypto: forecasts on BTC and ETH price levels, corporate actions of MicroStrategy.
and many other events.


Here is what I don't understand and would like to figure out with the help of the forum:

1. Who receives the bitcoins and other assets that we deposit?

2. What is this USDC.e? Who issues it? Does anyone guarantee redemption of USDC.e, i.e., its exchange for anything? (At least for USDC. It is clear that back to bitcoins - definitely not.)

3. The smart contracts that distribute winnings based on the event outcome - are these immutable contracts or proxy contracts? If proxy contracts, who has the authority to replace the core logic, and how is abuse of such authority prevented?

4. Polymarket is sometimes called a decentralized platform. Does this mean anyone can create their own event and start accepting wagers on it, even outside the web interface - just based on the same smart contracts? Or is permission from some governing center required?

If you have answers or additional questions - let's discuss them.

[Vaculin]

This is actually a very good topic since Polymarket has been discussed a lot in the forum under different threads, so it’s about time we really understand how it’s used. I’m not here to answer your questions OP, sorry, but I’m here to learn as well, same as what you’re trying to do.

Hopefully we get some good answers from people who actually have real experience using it.

[Oshosondy]

1. Who receives the bitcoins and other assets that we deposit?

Read the quote below.

2. What is this USDC.e? Who issues it? Does anyone guarantee redemption of USDC.e, i.e., its exchange for anything? (At least for USDC. It is clear that back to bitcoins - definitely not.)

There are other coins there that you can use. USD.e is the bridged form of USDC which can be accepted on platforms USDC is not listed but USDC is even more common, so just use USDC. USDC.e is backed by USDC but it is issued by a third-party.

4. Polymarket is sometimes called a decentralized platform. Does this mean anyone can create their own event and start accepting wagers on it, even outside the web interface - just based on the same smart contracts? Or is permission from some governing center required?

Yes, you will see it on the quote below that polymarket also deduct fee to avoid spam. But regardless of this, Polymarket is still centralized.

This explains how fee are made:

Polymarket makes money primarily through transaction fees on trades, typically a small percentage of net profits, and potentially from data monetization by selling anonymized insights on market trends. While it has operated without direct fees during growth phases, focusing on venture capital, future revenue will likely rely on these established models, plus fees from market creation, ensuring sustainability and rewarding liquidity providers.
Key Revenue Streams:
Transaction Fees (Profit Fees): When users profit from selling shares, Polymarket takes a small cut, often around 2% of those net gains, to keep markets running.
Market Creation Fees: Users pay a fee to list new prediction markets, which discourages spam and provides revenue.
Data Monetization: Anonymized data on public sentiment and prediction trends is valuable and can be sold to research firms and media.
Liquidity Fees: Fees paid by users to provide stability (liquidity) in the markets, creating a balanced trading environment.
How It Works in Practice:
Trades: When you buy or sell shares (e.g., "Yes" or "No" on an event), a small fee is applied, which supports liquidity providers.
Blockchain Costs: Users pay network (gas) fees on the Polygon blockchain to process transactions, separate from Polymarket's fees.
Growth Focus: The platform initially focused on growth, relying on venture capital, but plans to expand monetization.
In essence, Polymarket generates revenue from the activity on its platform, much like a stock exchange, by taking small cuts from profitable trades and creating value from aggregated market data.

[Cointxz]

1. Who receives the bitcoins and other assets that we deposit?

Add a word “unofficial discussion” to make this thread a general discussion for polymarket. There’s a lot of topic already on Polymarket so this thread will be useful to consolidate all the discussion and concern about this service.

I hope they will soon come here in the forum for their Announcement thread.

Answering the above questions, they are using smart contracts on their books so they have dedicated wallet which smart contracts automatically distribute the payment.

[un_rank]

It is marketed as a decentralized prediction website, but it is not. You get that clearly when you sign up and you are giving addresses generated for you. There is an option to export the private keys on this address but if you did not generate it yourself it is not your keys and if it is not, the platform is not decentralized.

The way your title is worded and also the way the OP begins, one would easily think this is an official ANN for polymarket. You can include there that it is an inquiry.

- Jay -

[Charles-Tim]

It is marketed as a decentralized prediction website, but it is not. You get that clearly when you sign up and you are giving addresses generated for you. There is an option to export the private keys on this address but if you did not generate it yourself it is not your keys and if it is not, the platform is not decentralized.

The address is completely controlled by Polymarket, not that it is generated by Polymarket users. Another thing is that the servers will be centralized, unlike bitcoin nodes or Tor nodes that are not centralized but consist of many nodes from different users that do not know themselves. I will also conclude that Polymarket is not decentralized, or not totally decentralized. People should not think that web3 are decentralized. Also decentralized invention like bitcoin, Tor and Bisq existed before web3.

[un_rank]

I will also conclude that Polymarket is not decentralized, or not totally decentralized. People should not think that web3 are decentralized. Also decentralized invention like bitcoin, Tor and Bisq existed before web3.

It is a common misconception that peer-2-peer platforms are automatically decentralized. P2P exists on centralized platforms and many of the times there is a third party in the background that not only mediates but controls the entire transaction.

I still consider web3 to be a buzzword that it used to get money into the altcoin market.

- Jay -

[Fivestar4everMVP]

Well, I only have visited this platform once since it's inception and that I did out of curiosity, I didn't even register there and has never returned to the platform since that first visit.
Though I know that some of the questions you asked can be answered by some of us here who must have used the platform to place one or two bets in the past and through that; have gained some experience in how the platforms works, I would still say that most of the questions you asked are more likely to accurately be answered by the official customer support person of the polymarket platform, so why don't you try directing this questions to them as well, it's very possible that the answers may already be there in their Faq or terms of service but the problem is locating or pinning the answers in the wall of texts.

By the way, good topic but only thing is the subject is misleading and gives false first impression, but a good thread to learn more about polymarket anyway.

[348Judah]

If you have identified yourself as the kind of a gambler so committed to playing all manners of bets, then i think this will be a good chase for you also to consider playing varieties of markets options on poly market, while I've seen the likes of gamblers that does not like playing it at all, which makes it more of our individual preference to what we play when it comes to bets, some weird options could be so interesting to some while some may find it unattractive.

[Haunebu]

You could have easily found some answers on your own through chatgpt or gemini pretty conveniently. Anyway, the first 3 questions are common sense questions and you can find their answers everywhere(I would start with their site itself).

The 4th one is a bit more complicated. They are not centralized, but they aren't completely decentralized either. You could call them a partially decentralised site. Their customer care through Discord only pretty much sucks.

[Odusko]

It is marketed as a decentralized prediction website, but it is not. You get that clearly when you sign up and you are giving addresses generated for you. There is an option to export the private keys on this address but if you did not generate it yourself it is not your keys and if it is not, the platform is not decentralized.

The address is completely controlled by Polymarket, not that it is generated by Polymarket users. Another thing is that the servers will be centralized, unlike bitcoin nodes or Tor nodes that are not centralized but consist of many nodes from different users that do not know themselves. I will also conclude that Polymarket is not decentralized, or not totally decentralized. People should not think that web3 are decentralized. Also decentralized invention like bitcoin, Tor and Bisq existed before web3.

Anything that involves layer 2 network have shifted away from decentralization,  more centralized, so in the first place no one should think of polymarket or it web3 network in connection with decentralization, instead we should talk of centralized regardless of how it being pathed to look.

[BlackHatCoiner]

1. Who receives the bitcoins and other assets that we deposit?

Polymarket itself. I'm reading it is received by a custodial service, so it's custody partners integrated into Polymarket's frontend.

2. What is this USDC.e? Who issues it? Does anyone guarantee redemption of USDC.e, i.e., its exchange for anything? (At least for USDC. It is clear that back to bitcoins - definitely not.)

It's bridged USDC, locked on Ethereum.

3. The smart contracts that distribute winnings based on the event outcome - are these immutable contracts or proxy contracts? If proxy contracts, who has the authority to replace the core logic, and how is abuse of such authority prevented?

Core logic can be changed by a multi-sig controlled admin key.

4. Polymarket is sometimes called a decentralized platform. Does this mean anyone can create their own event and start accepting wagers on it, even outside the web interface - just based on the same smart contracts? Or is permission from some governing center required?

The answer you're looking for is: It's not really decentralized.

[SmartGold01]

I want to know if they have ran any marketing here on the forum?
If NO, then to me I will assume talking about them is a kind of giving them some sorts of exposure and popularity over here.
Anyway there is still nothing wrong to talk about them, especially when there seems to be finding clarity over their operations.

[salad daging]

I want to know if they have ran any marketing here on the forum?
If NO, then to me I will assume talking about them is a kind of giving them some sorts of exposure and popularity over here.
Anyway there is still nothing wrong to talk about them, especially when there seems to be finding clarity over their operations.

Like not! Polymarket does not do marketing on the forum officially, because Polymarket has previously received more attention after receiving major funding.
Anyone can talk here, especially about the prediction market which is now getting a lot of attention, most people here may not have bet there so there is a lot of discussion here.

[ryzaadit]

I want to know if they have ran any marketing here on the forum?
If NO, then to me I will assume talking about them is a kind of giving them some sorts of exposure and popularity over here.
Anyway there is still nothing wrong to talk about them, especially when there seems to be finding clarity over their operations.

The company already bigs, they also have a funding as well.

You can check on their company report, like earning and other. Polymarket is also being targeting for like a platform needed to be regulated due the betting system are really needed to be regulated since they can make any betting event, match or other no matter is what the topic.

These platform are quite famous, and mostly being used in US too. Since already have a huge base line, earning they no need to marketing in here.

[noorman0]

I want to know if they have ran any marketing here on the forum?
If NO, then to me I will assume talking about them is a kind of giving them some sorts of exposure and popularity over here.
Anyway there is still nothing wrong to talk about them, especially when there seems to be finding clarity over their operations.

While Polymarket isn't running a campaign here, we'll likely get honest, uncensored information. If you're wearing their signature, you might be limited in your ability to speak more independently, especially about flaws. Lol.
I think Polymarket is currently more popular than this forum.

[memehunter]

 

1. Who receives the bitcoins and other assets that we deposit?

Polymarket itself. I'm reading it is received by a custodial service, so it's custody partners integrated into Polymarket's frontend.

Yeah, how it can be otherwise if that is not an on-chain smart contract, which it is clearly not.
I am just curious but is it possible to see increase number of arbitrage betting with this. I don't think Polymarket.com stops any settlement of bets since there is no house and everything is PvP.

[Haunebu]

I am just curious but is it possible to see increase number of arbitrage betting with this. I don't think Polymarket.com stops any settlement of bets since there is no house and everything is PvP.

Arbitrage betting is easily possible through exchanges like Polymarket, Betfair etc where some people have made millions in a completely legal way. These exchanges don't care about arbing since all that matters to them is turnover along with their commissions.

However, you will need another side which is typically a soft book for a proper arb and these soft books hate arbers for obvious reasons.

[stadus]

I want to know if they have ran any marketing here on the forum?

I’ve been here for 10 years and I honestly can’t remember them ever running a promotion here.
Maybe they don’t see the members here as their target market, but even so, here we are still talking about them.

If NO, then to me I will assume talking about them is a kind of giving them some sorts of exposure and popularity over here.
Anyway there is still nothing wrong to talk about them, especially when there seems to be finding clarity over their operations.

There were already topics about Polymarket before, and the last one I remember was about the breach, and according to them it wasn’t their fault but a third party app issue.
I think they are already very popular.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

I want to know if they have ran any marketing here on the forum?
If NO, then to me I will assume talking about them is a kind of giving them some sorts of exposure and popularity over here.
Anyway there is still nothing wrong to talk about them, especially when there seems to be finding clarity over their operations.

I had exactly same thought when I first come across this thread, and worst is the way the op made the subject or topic of the thread look like it's an official announcement thread of the platform, I had the impression that polymarket finally found their way into bitcointalk forum, not until I opened the thread and I realized it's just a user making enquiries about the platform.

It's not bad for forum users to make enquiries concerning any platform on this forum, whether or not the platform has a presence on this forum, but we should learn to do it In a manner we don't end up giving the platform a free and unpaid advertising, I understand polymarket is also a big and popular platform, but I believe there's some where they spend to market their service, that somewhere could he here.