A group of gamblers knows what will happen in the world before Wall Street does.

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Will Jesus be resurrected before 2027? Such a rather absurd question, and yet there are people betting real money on it.

The odds for YES once exceeded 15%, with the betting pool even surpassing 60 million US dollars. Some people study the Bible seriously, some analyze the Middle East situation, and some link together AI out of control, global inflation, and geopolitical wars, feeling that the world is looking more and more like the Book of Revelation.

There are similar surreal bets, such as whether the US will admit to the existence of aliens before a certain date.

If you only look at this scene, you might think it’s some kind of large-scale internet performance art. However, on the same website, Wall Street is seriously studying “will the Fed cut rates this year,” “will Trump lose badly in the general election,” “will the Strait of Hormuz be open before June.”

This website is called Polymarket.

In the past year or two, it has gradually evolved from a niche product in the crypto community to one of the most unique information observation windows for the global financial market. During the 2024 US election, when many mainstream polls still showed Trump and the Democratic candidate as neck and neck, the odds on Polymarket had already clearly favored Trump. Later, many realized that this website, which looks like a casino, sensed the real shifts in swing states earlier than many political analysts.

What really made Wall Street start taking it seriously was not just its prediction accuracy, but the speed at which it updates information.

When Pentagon pizza orders become financial signals

The information chain in the traditional financial world is actually a very classical system.

Reporters conduct interviews, analysts write reports, internal meetings are held at institutions, fund managers adjust their positions, and finally asset prices change. The whole process often takes several days or even weeks.

But on Polymarket, this process is compressed to within minutes.

Because the people gathering here are not traditional investors, but a group of information hunters who have long been wandering on the edges of the internet.

The most classic case is the so-called “Pentagon pizza index.”

There’s been a long-standing rumor on the US internet: whenever the US is about to launch significant military operations, pizza orders near the Pentagon surge suddenly. The reason is simple—when the military begins working overtime at night, someone has to order late-night snacks.

Most people always treated this as a joke.

But someone actually bet on it.

A Polymarket trader specifically wrote a bot to monitor pizza order changes at stores near the Pentagon. Once late-night orders grew abnormally, the system would automatically alert. Later, one night, the bot suddenly sounded the alarm, and this trader bet in advance on relevant geopolitical event contracts, ultimately earning $80,000 overnight.

Polymarket systematically brought information that originally belonged to the internet's shadowy corners into the financial market for the first time.

In the past, Wall Street’s information advantage mainly came from Bloomberg terminals, investment bank conference calls, and institutional research; but now, more and more price-moving information is coming from the edges of the internet.

Reddit, Discord, satellite maps, flight data, anonymous tips on X, Github code commits, on-chain wallet activity, government official schedules, and even takeout orders near government agencies—all are entering the market’s pricing system.

In a sense, the financial market is shifting from “analyzing cash flows” to “analyzing information flows.”

And Polymarket is essentially a product of this change.

What exactly is being traded on Polymarket

Many people, when they first see Polymarket, mistake it for simply a gambling website.

Because the bets on there are indeed outrageous.

Some bet on whether Trump will go to jail, some bet on whether the US will “acquire sovereignty over Greenland,” others on when OpenAI will achieve AGI.

But if you look closely, you’ll find that the contracts that are truly active and where the most funds are concentrated on Polymarket, are almost all focused on one thing:

Macroeconomic uncertainty.

Guosen Securities listed a “core event tracking framework” in its report, including:

* The Fed’s interest rate path

* US presidential and congressional elections

* US-China tariff policy

* AI regulatory legislation

* Probability of escalation in Middle East conflicts

* Probability of CPI, unemployment rate, and GDP targets being achieved

These events have one thing in common:

They themselves affect global asset prices.

For example, the Fed’s rate-cut path directly affects US treasury yields, US stock valuations, and dollar liquidity; escalation in the Middle East affects gold, oil, and global risk appetite; AI regulatory bills will change valuation logic for tech companies.

For decades, the financial market mainly traded assets.

Stocks trade on future company cash flows, bonds trade interest rate paths, gold trades on risk appetite.

But in recent years, what truly moves global markets has become less about company growth per se and more about all sorts of sudden events.

A single tariff tweet from Trump can wipe out hundreds of billions of market value instantly; a single escalation in the Middle East can make oil prices surge overnight; an AI regulatory bill could directly alter the entire valuation system for the tech industry.

Traditional financial models are finding it harder and harder to cope with such a world.

Because DCF models can calculate cash flows, but it’s hard to calculate:

“Will the US go to war with Iran.”

Thus, the market started needing something new—to directly price “uncertainty” itself.

What Polymarket essentially does is just that.

It breaks down macro events from the real world into YES/NO contracts. Wars, elections, tariffs, AI, regulations, and even some absurd questions that once only existed in internet subcultures are, for the first time, being traded in one market.

In a sense:

Polymarket is not trading news.

It trades:

The probability of future events.

Why gamblers’ information is starting to be worth more than analysts’

The biggest difference between Polymarket and traditional polling is that the views here come with real financial constraints.

Polls can say anything, analysts can talk up a storm, social media can be endlessly stubborn, but when it comes to betting, that's different.

Because behind every view, there is actual money.

Guosen Securities noted something very important in their report:

“Real financial constraints increase the information content of opinions.”

This is the true core logic of prediction markets.

It’s not “whose voice is loudest.”

But who is willing to put money on being wrong.

Thus, a very counter-intuitive phenomenon is appearing:

Many times, gamblers are closer to reality than analysts.

During the 2024 US presidential election, Polymarket responded to changes in Trump’s winning probability faster than some traditional polls; on the question of Biden dropping out, the prediction market also saw odds adjustments earlier than many media outlets; even in the case of the Fed’s rate-cut path, increasingly more traders are consulting both Polymarket and CME FedWatch data, observing the expectation gap between them.

The most interesting change isn’t actually the “prediction” itself, but the financial market’s systematic absorption of the intelligence industry’s abilities.

A new era dawns as Bloomberg incorporates the odds

The true turning point came when Bloomberg began tracking active contracts on Polymarket.

The symbolic meaning of this far exceeds the event itself.

Bloomberg terminals have long represented the core information system of the traditional financial world. When a website once steeped in crypto subculture began to enter Bloomberg’s monitoring system, some boundaries had in fact already begun to disappear.

The wall between the underworld and Wall Street cracked for the first time.

At the same time, another US prediction market platform, Kalshi, which leans more “regulated and financialized,” also entered mainstream institutional view.

Unlike Polymarket, which bears a crypto community vibe, Kalshi has long focused mainly on macro data contracts such as CPI, GDP, unemployment, Fed rates, and recessions.

Guosen Securities mentions in a report that even Fed researchers have specifically evaluated Kalshi’s efficacy in forecasting macroeconomic variables, comparing it to traditional surveys and interest rate market pricing tools.

The research found that for certain macro variables, Kalshi was even more effective than traditional survey tools.

This means that prediction markets are gradually evolving from “internet casinos” into a new kind of probability-pricing infrastructure.

In the past, Wall Street’s most important data were EPS, non-farm payrolls, and CPI.

Now, increasingly important data are: Trump’s winning probability, rate-cut probability, Middle East escalation probability, and chances of AI regulatory bills passing.

Essentially, the financial market is increasingly trading “uncertainty” itself.

The dawn of a ‘probability era’

But the most notable thing about prediction markets may not be the “prediction,” but that they start affecting reality.

Guosen Securities’ report specifically mentions a concept:

“Reflexivity trap: predictions affect reality.”

For example, when a candidate’s chance of winning stays above 90% in the prediction markets for a long time, their supporters might slack off thinking the win is a sure thing, which in turn raises the chance of losing.

For the first time, prediction is not just prediction.

It starts to shape reality.

This mechanism is particularly clear in AI regulation.

If the market thinks “the probability of the AI regulation bill passing is 80%,” then VCs will invest less, startups will adjust strategy in advance, tech giants will start proactively complying, and funds will vacate high-risk AI projects in advance.

Regulation may not have truly landed yet, but reality is already changing in advance.

So, the deepest significance of Polymarket is no longer just “prediction.”

It is becoming a mechanism for coordinating reality.

People all over the world are beginning to trade the future here in advance. Gamblers, traders, retail investors, institutions, political fanatics, conspiracy theorists, AI engineers, and information brokers all use real money to jointly price the future.

For decades, capitalism has excelled at pricing assets.

Now, it is beginning to try to price the future.

Reference: Guosen Securities, “Polymarket: From Alternative Indicator to Pricing Anchor”

Risk Warning and DisclaimerThe market has risks, investment must be cautious. This article does not constitute individual investment advice and does not take into account particular users' investment goals, financial situations, or needs. Users should consider whether any opinions, views or conclusions in this article are suitable for their own circumstances. Invest accordingly at your own risk. ```