Polymarket has raised a $45 million Series B funding round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and existing investors 1confirmation and ParaFi, with participation from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Dragonfly and Eventbrite’s co-founder Kevin Hartz.
Polymarket is a decentralized prediction market platform that utilizes the Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts to allow users to speculate on the outcomes of various real-world events using stablecoins in a transparent and trustless way.
“Polymarket has finally made the vision for prediction markets a reality — an opportunity that we have been passionate about for years,” Founders Fund Partner Joey Krug said in a statement. “Internally at Founders Fund we developed a habit of checking Polymarket at times of breaking news. The tangible benefits of using Polymarket as a complement to consuming news on social and mainstream media was obvious. It became clear to us that Polymarket was the winner in this market.”
The firm behind the predictions market platform also confirmed a previously unannounced $25 million Series A round led by General Catalyst, with participation from Airbnb’s Joe Gebbia and Polychain, among others.
The new investment comes despite a Commodity Futures Trading Commission proposal on Friday to crack down on so-called event contracts that enable derivatives betting on political contests and sports. Polymarket previously settled with the CFTC for $1.4 million in 2022, agreeing to wind down its Polymarket.com front-end website services in the U.S.
Polymarket claims some $202 million worth of predictions have been made via the platform so far in 2024. More than $125 million has been bet on the outcome of the U.S. election alone, according to its website. Donald Trump currently leads Joe Biden with 49% versus 44% odds on the platform.
