I recently saw a prediction market on Polymarket about the 2028 U.S. presidential election and discovered a very outrageous phenomenon.

Traders seem to especially like betting on candidates who are almost impossible to win. Elon Musk, although not eligible to run (he is not a natural-born U.S. citizen), has bet up to $23 million on Polymarket. Similarly ineligible New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani attracted $18 million in trades. Not to mention basketball superstar LeBron James and celebrity Kim Kardashian, who are not even on the candidate list, with trading volumes of $48 million and $34 million respectively.

What’s even more exaggerated is that candidates with less than a 1% chance of winning have accumulated trading volume of about $386 million, accounting for more than two-thirds of the entire 2028 election market volume. This means most of the funds are flowing into the least likely winners.

My first reaction was: how is this possible? Until I saw some traders’ explanations, I understood — Polymarket is about to launch its own token and plans to airdrop it. Many speculate that the final amount of tokens received may be linked to the overall trading activity. In other words, even if you bet on Elon Musk becoming president — something that will never happen — as long as you make many trades, you can increase your share of tokens. Calculated this way, creating a large number of trades with a small amount of funds becomes a “wash trading” tactic.

Although Polymarket’s official confirmation of the token and airdrop exists, they have been vague about the distribution mechanism. This ambiguous attitude instead makes people feel there might be some tricks.

Interestingly, the situation on Polymarket’s competitor Kalshi is completely different. In Kalshi’s presidential election market, trading is clearly concentrated on popular candidates. Marco Rubio accounts for 10.6%, while on Polymarket it’s only 1.7%. Tim Walz’s share on Kalshi is 0.7%, but on Polymarket it’s as high as 7.4%. The figures with the largest trading volume on Polymarket are hardly found on Kalshi.

This huge discrepancy suggests that the trading pattern on Polymarket may indeed have issues. On the surface, users are making predictions, but in reality, many might just be trading to farm tokens for future airdrops. The platform’s founder once claimed to be a “truth machine,” but now it seems this market is more like an experiment in token economics.