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70% of Polymarket Users Experienced Financial Losses, According to WSJ Study, 2026/05/05 17:44:58
A study by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) revealed that 70% of users on the blockchain platform Polymarket have lost their invested funds, while 67% of profits are concentrated in just 0.1% of accounts.
Journalists discovered that fewer than 2,000 accounts on Polymarket collectively earned nearly $500 million. The average loss for a typical user on the blockchain platform ranges from $1 to $100, with the least successful 10% of traders losing an average of $4,000 each over the platform’s existence.
The publication notes that larger trading firms typically hold an advantage. The presence of such companies creates an information imbalance, according to WSJ. While retail traders often rely on intuition or news commentary, professional investment firms utilize real-time data streams from news agencies, sports leagues, government statistical offices, and other sources that may not be accessible to the general public.
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Professional players employ their own models and algorithmic trade execution, gaining advantages through order placement delays, engaging in arbitrage between prediction markets and related betting platforms, and utilizing automated copy trading—replicating the trades of successful traders.
Insiders in the prediction markets corroborated the journalists’ findings. A former employee of the Kalshi platform, Adhi Rajaprabhakaran, told WSJ that the presence of uninformed players on Polymarket serves as a strong incentive for experienced traders to enter the market and “overturn casual users.”
Several scandals regarding insider trading on Polymarket have emerged in the United States. In April, U.S. authorities charged an active service member with using confidential information to profit from blockchain predictions. This case marked the first significant criminal prosecution for insider betting on Polymarket.
Just weeks prior, analysts from Bubblemaps identified that a group of unknown traders on Polymarket had been creating and winning bets on geopolitical events for two years, using multiple accounts—both newly created and older ones. The group earned over $1.8 million on bets related to the U.S.-Iran conflict.
