Polymarket Content creators are said to have paid money to film themselves making fake trades and getting fake wins.
This is according to an investigation conducted by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). published Sunday (June 21), based on analysis of more than 1,100 videos by the publication, along with educational materials and interviews with content creators who have worked in the prediction market.
According to the report, Polymarket saturated social media with videos that initially appeared to be real. In fact, the company created near-replica copies of its website, then asked the creators to simulate trading on those duplicate sites without revealing that they were getting paid to do so.
Polymarket issued a statement to the news outlet saying it plans to conduct an audit of active promotional content.
The company added that it is “committed to maintaining accurate, fair and transparent markets. We are part of.” Fast growing industry We are constantly evaluating ways to improve how we interact and earn the trust of our audiences.
The Wall Street Journal said it reviewed 1,105 videos posted by 10 creators approved by the Polymarket contractor between December of last year and mid-May of this year. In the majority of the videos, the creators placed a bet, although evidence in the clips indicated that none of the bets were real, the report said.
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Most just showed the bet being placed, but 118 videos showed creators reacting to old footage or fake headlines indicating they had won. These videos showed that the creators earned nearly $900,000. The Wall Street Journal said those bets would have actually lost more than $166,000. While Polymarket is unavailable In the United States, the report stated that the company’s social media campaign targeted American users, who could access the site via a virtual private network.
In other Polymarket news, earlier this month the company closed its first trade Institutional block trading on-chain Connected to AI computation infrastructure, arguing that this shows that prediction markets can function like commodity futures in the age of AI.
“Prediction markets are emerging as one of the strongest places for institutional trades, and this deal is proof of that.” Brooke RizzettoPolymarket’s head of institutional liquidity said at the time. “Seeing institutional counterparties using Polymarket to hedge exposure to real GPU computing at scale is exactly the future we have been building toward.”
In other prediction markets news, competitor Polymarket everything It is said Tripled Its annual revenue since November, bringing this number to $2 billion. The information stated that these gains came from trading around NBA and World Cup matches.
The report added that the company is now in talks with banks about going public, although this is unlikely to happen until late 2027 or 2028.
