As such, Allium can only link approximately 6% of Polymarket’s political and commercial portfolios to a country. The company therefore says the numbers should be interpreted as directional rather than exact.
Polymarket did not immediately respond to requests for comment before U.S. trading hours.
Meanwhile, another interesting element concerns the bets that Americans are turning to. Geopolitics accounted for 46% of US theoretical values compared to 36% for the platform as a whole, while elections attracted 16% of US portfolios compared to 32% for the entire platform, meaning that the US crowd negotiates foreign wars at a rate nearly three times higher than elections favored by everyone else.
Of the twelve largest markets in the US cohort, five were bets on the Iran war. The largest, at $20.8 million, was a novelty deal on whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would wear a suit.
These are largely markets that regulated US sites do not offer. Kalshi and the compliant US arm of Polymarket stick mainly to economic data, rate decisions and elections, so demand is heading towards the offshore version which lists regime changes and ceasefires.
The pattern regulators might fear is the one the data doesn’t show.
In markets that resolved, US portfolios backed the winner 81.9% of the time compared to 80.3% for everyone else, no advantage, and the returns if held were almost identical.
