Polymarket cryptographic prediction platform have developed, in recent months, an enviable reputation for winning the betting corridors.
So it was a surprise on Thursday when they obtained the result of the very wrong papal conclave.
The winner Robert Francis Prevost was not among the favorites, and the traigators only gave the cardinal born in the United States around a 1% probability of succeeding Pope Francis ahead of the result.
Polymarket’s traigators, such as traditional betting markets, gave Cardinal Pietro Parolin the highest probabilities, with 28%.
With more than $ 28 million of bets placed in different predost candidates, the result was a total elimination for many trapers.
The event questions the greatest perceived precision of betting markets such as Poymarket on conventional surveys.
Polymarket allows users to bet on the results of everything, from football accessories to political elections. Unlike traditional betting platforms, where the house establishes probabilities based on its best diligence, Polymarket’s probabilities are a real -time reflection of bets imposed by users.
In a nutshell, the more demands for a certain result, the greater the probabilities and prices paid for bets.
In November, Polymarket won a conventional notoriety when the traigators gave Republican candidate Donald Trump significantly more likely than most other sources to win the presidency of the United States.
“Polymarket prices seem to be finishing the opinions of smart money quite well,” said Koleman Stumpf, professor of economics at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, at that time, noting that Polymercad tractors seemed to have a slight advantage in the prediction of the outcome of the elections.
A historical data analysis by the Data scientist based in New York City, Alex McCullough, showed that Polymket previously predicted the result of world events for a month with a accuracy of 90%.
What went wrong?
The reason why Polymarket’s traigators obtained the result of the papal conclave so wrong is that the event is extremely difficult to predict, Domer, one of Polymarket’s main pseudonymous apostators, said in X.
“It’s like entering a store that does not communicate with the outside world,” he said. “Not even participants in themselves would probably know how to harm him.”
Since it is difficult for the trainers to find an advantage with such an esoteric bet, it is likely that many breached to follow the opinions of traditional betting markets and the media, resulting in the close alignment of probabilities between Polymarket and other betting markets such as Betfair.
The rarity of papal agrees may also have hindered things.
Pope Francis, the previous Pope, was named in 2013, years before there were blockchain -based betting platforms such as Polymket. It is also possible that many Polymeket tractors probably do not have previous experience betting on the event.
The political elections, where the probabilities of the polymer have aligned closer to the results, are much more frequent and widely understood.
According to Domer, the real advantage of betting on the papal conclave is not to choose the correct candidate, but to bet against those with too high probabilities.
He attributed the high probabilities of great favorites Parolin, and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, who Polymarket’s trainers gave 20% chances of winning, to their popularity between the public and the media.
“The price of Parolin and Tagle was too high and high for not very good reasons,” he said.
Read more: Polymarket is 90% precise to predict world events: research
