Most traders on Polymarket are losing money; only a few high-frequency trading bots are making profits.

BlockBeats News, April 29 — According to Bloomberg data, on the Polymarket platform, over 100k accounts have losses of at least $1,000, nearly twice the number of accounts that have achieved profits of the same amount. Meanwhile, a group of about 823 highly active accounts (with extremely high daily trading volume, classified as bots) collectively realized a profit of approximately $131 million. Aside from this highly active bot group, all other traders collectively lost $131 million.

The report points out that prediction markets with an annual trading volume exceeding $50 billion and continuing to grow are currently dominated by a few automated programs. For example, on Polymarket, only about 5% of wallet addresses suspected to be bots contributed 75% of the platform’s trading volume. These bots perform high-frequency dispersed trading across different markets, entering earlier and at better prices, thus earning higher returns. In contrast, ordinary traders, even if they predict the correct trend, often end up trading at unfavorable prices due to lag, ultimately incurring losses.

Research into recent market trends found that among traders analyzing public opinion and geopolitical events on platforms like Polymarket, 68.8% have been in a loss since 2022. Data also shows that the user groups with the largest losses tend to concentrate their trading activity near extreme price levels (odds below 10% or above 90%), while top profit-makers have the lowest trading share in these regions.