The bettors on the Crypto Polymarket prediction platform have developed an enviable reputation in recent months to beat bookmakers.
It is therefore a surprise on Thursday when they had the result of the very false papal conclave.
The winner Robert Francis Prevost was not among the favorites, the bettors giving only the cardinal born in the United States around a chance of 1% to succeed Pope Francis before the result.
The bettors of Polymarket, like the traditional Paris markets, gave Cardinal Pietro Parolin the highest ratings, at 28%.
With more than $ 28 million in Paris placed on candidates other than prevost, the result was a total erasure for many bettors.
The event questions the increased precision perceived of the Paris markets such as the Poymarket on conventional polls.
Polymarket allows users to bet on the results of everything, football devices in political elections. Unlike traditional Paris platforms, where the house defines the odds according to its best diligence, the coasts of Polymarket are a real-time reflection of the bets placed by users.
In other words, the more requests for a certain result, the more the chances and the prices paid are high for betting.
In November, Polymarket acquired a dominant notoriety when the bettors gave the Republican candidate Donald Trump that most of the other sources to win the American presidency.
“Polymarket prices seem to finish the views of smart money,” said Koleman Stumpf, professor of economics at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, at Coindesk at the time, noting that Polymarket bettors seemed to have a slight advantage in forecasting the elections.
A historical analysis of the data scientist of New York data, Alex McCullough, has shown that Polymarket had previously predicted the result of global events a month with a precision of 90%.
What’s wrong?
The reason why the bettors of Polymarket obtained the result of the Papal conclave so bad is that the event is extremely difficult to plan, Domer, one of the best pseudonym bettors in Polymarket, said on X.
“It’s like entering a store that does not communicate with the outside world,” he said. “Even the participants themselves probably do not know how to handicap it.”
Since it is difficult for bettors to find an advantage with such a esoteric bet, many have probably been lacking to follow the opinions of traditional Paris markets and the media, resulting in the narrow alignment of dimensions between polymarket and other Paris markets like Betfair.
The scarcity of papal conclaves can also have made things difficult.
Pope Francis, the previous pope, was appointed in 2013, years before the existence of Paris platforms based on blockchain like Polymarket. It is also possible that many Polymarket bettors probably have had no prior experience on the event.
The political elections, where the dimensions of polymarkets have lined up closer to the results, are much more frequent and widely understood.
According to Domer, the real advantage in bets on the Papal conclave does not choose the right candidate but rather bets against those who have too high ratings.
He posted the high chances of the Lourdes Favorites Paroline, and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, that the bettors of Polymarket gave 20% chance of gaining, their popularity with the public and the media.
“The price of paroline and tagle was far too high and high for reasons not very good,” he said.
Read more: Polymarket is 90% precise to predict global events: research
