The American election is all about big money. In just one month, Kamala Harris managed to raise $500 million (€460 million), surpassing her opponent Donald Trump, despite him being very active in this regard. Some have also turned to innovative methods, like entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has already donated over $75 million to the Republican candidate's campaign. He has also invented a lottery that, every day, gives $1 million to a voter in one of the US's seven key "swing states," if they sign a petition to support the Republican candidate's two key pledges: freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. Of course, according to its creator, this does not constitute vote-buying, which is prohibited.
Away from the projections, the markets are also livening up. Prediction markets have sprung up, allowing punters to bet on which of the two candidates will win and where they will win big. The most popular among them is Polymarket. Using cryptocurrency, you can place bets on who will be football's next Ballon d'Or winner, the date of an Israeli military strike on Iran, or the biggest movie release of the year. But, of course, the most popular bets are on the American election, in all its guises, from the winner in the state of Michigan to the probability of a particular candidate winning the White House. The concept is simple: The price of the bet is indexed to the odds of victory that punters give them. If 59% of punters have bet on a Trump victory, then shares are bought for 59 cents, and the payout in the event of victory is always $1.
In total, more than $2 billion has allegedly been wagered in bets on the election. The market's success has been so great that some have come to consider the data to be real-time polls. On Friday, October 25, Trump was winning hands down on Polymarket, with almost 64% of bets versus 36% for Harris. Musk has crowed about the result on his social media platform, X. Yet the market's volatility is extreme and it is easy to manipulate.
In recent weeks, the betting community has been abuzz about the identity of Fredi9999. All told, he would – with the help of three other accounts linked to him – have bet more than $45 million on the Republican candidate's victory. On certain days, the four accounts accounted for nearly 20% of trades. After an investigation by the site, the user– dubbed a "whale" due to his ability to shift prices by himself – was identified. Fredi9999 is a French trader. His nationality is an important factor, as US citizens cannot place bets on this platform. This agitation and the way it is used, as financial gains and political commitments blur together, is yet another indication of the extreme fragility of American democracy. Its foundations, which were once considered to be very solid, suddenly seem to be dissolving at great speed.