#Gate正式接入Polymarket Another Path to Making Money in Crypto Beyond Spot and Futures—Polymarket

What is Polymarket? Polymarket is a decentralized prediction market platform based on blockchain technology. It allows users to trade bets on the outcomes of various future events including politics, economics, technology, culture, sports, weather, and even cryptocurrencies, thereby forming collective predictions about event results.
Simply put, you can think of it as a market where you use real money to "vote" on predicting the future. For example, predicting the Federal Reserve's decision in March: placing a "yes" or "no" bet on whether there will be a rate cut of 50 basis points or more in March. If you bet "yes," it means you believe the Fed will cut rates by 50 basis points in March. If the final decision matches your expectation, your $1 bet would earn you $1,000 in profit. However, if the final decision differs from your expectation, you lose your bet amount. The difference from pure gambling is that before the event outcome is determined, you can choose to exit at any time by selling your bet shares. Since the probability of the event itself is constantly changing, this means that once you place a bet, the floating gains or losses on your investment are continuously fluctuating.
For example, betting "no" for $5 on the above rate cut question means you believe the Fed won't cut rates by 50 basis points in March. Currently, the probability of the Fed not cutting rates is over 99%. This means if the final decision maintains the interest rate unchanged, your $5 bet will remain $5—your account breaks even, neither earning nor losing. This is because the event of no 50 basis point rate cut in March is nearly a certainty. However, if before the rate cut decision is announced, something major occurs in the United States or economic problems emerge, causing the probability of no rate cut in March to decline somewhat, with some market participants beginning to think that due to this event the Fed might unexpectedly cut rates. In this case, with your "no" bet, you might see your $5 bet generate $2 in floating gains. Before the final decision comes out, you choose to sell your bet shares and obtain the real $2 in profits. However, if you don't sell in time with the $2 floating gain, and wait until the rate cut decision is announced and the interest rate remains unchanged with no cut, your floating gains disappear, and the system automatically settles the break-even. This is quite interesting—after placing bets on predicted events, you can choose to exit at any time based on probability changes, allowing you to choose timely stop-losses or stop-profits before the event is finally confirmed. This is unlike traditional predictions where you can only wait for results after placing bets.
Therefore, Polymarket is not a completely gambling platform, because the probability of predictions itself can be financialized, and probabilities can be traded financially through buying low and selling high. This means the changes in probability themselves are also twists and turns, and tradeable.

What's the relationship between Polymarket and the crypto space?
First, Polymarket leverages blockchain technology at its foundation, using smart contracts on the blockchain to handle transactions and settlements. After the event outcome is confirmed, the smart contract executes automatically—winning contract shares become worth $1, while losing ones become $0. Users earn profits through buying low and selling high or holding until expiration.
Second, Polymarket accounts can be funded with cryptocurrencies for trading. For example, we can deposit funds from trading accounts like G into this platform to trade prediction markets. Additionally, we can directly call decentralized wallets to trade, just like calling wallets in dapps—very convenient.
Finally, Polymarket has predictions related to cryptocurrency price movements.
We can predict whether Bitcoin will rise or fall based on time periods such as 5-minute, 15-minute, 1-hour, 4-hour, daily cycles, etc.
Combining Chan Theory, if our current judgment is that a 15-minute level downtrend is about to begin, and a 15-minute level downtrend requires at least 5-9 hours to develop, then we can predict that the next 4 hours or 8 hours will see a downtrend with Bitcoin's price moving lower. Based on this judgment, we can bet that the current or next 4h period is bearish. As Bitcoin's price changes every minute and second, the probability of its 4h rising or falling continuously changes, meaning that regardless of whether you bet bullish or bearish, the odds are constantly changing. Your account's floating gains or losses also change accordingly. We can still financialize this betting mode. Through our understanding of short-to-medium term market trends, we place bets.
For example, on March 4th, the 1-hour big bullish candle pulled directly to 69,688. Based on fundamental knowledge and understanding of the crypto space, the pace would likely continue to rise afterward, at least breaking through the previous high of 70,096. So we bet bullish on 1h, betting $100. In the first half-hour there was a slight pullback and the account was in floating loss. In the second half-hour it began rising, with Bitcoin pulled directly to 71,000. Ultimately the 1-hour bullish prediction succeeded, in just one hour, the $100 bet generated $140 profit—more than doubling the profit.

How to make money with Polymarket in the crypto space?
1. Quantitative compounding in prediction markets
Most people should be familiar with quantitative trading—for example, Bitcoin spot quantitative trading, futures quantitative trading, stock market or other market quantitative trading. It can be understood as using programs to utilize indicators, historical trading volume and other data, along with mathematical models and statistical analysis to find market patterns and probability advantages, designing a set of buy and sell rules. When price movements match the pre-designed buy trading strategy, the program automatically buys for you. When price movements match the sell trading strategy, the program automatically sells for you.

2. Claiming Polymarket airdrops

Currently, Polymarket awards points for trading activity and reaching certain trading volumes on the platform, which can be exchanged for airdrop tokens in the future.
From current information, Polymarket is likely to launch its own token in the second half of the year or next year. Continuous trading can earn you their airdrop tokens.
Airdrops are estimated to provide approximately 1,000-3,000 USDT per account.