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Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, believes prediction markets like Polymarket are proving their worth, offering faster and more accurate insights than traditional news sources.
In a discussion with Roundtable host Rob Nelson, Boiron pointed to the 2024 U.S. elections as a prime example of how these markets, driven by financial incentives, outperformed mainstream reporting in assessing likely outcomes.
Boiron explained that traders on Polymarket were consistently ahead of the news cycle because they had real financial stakes in getting predictions right.
"The changes in likely outcomes were announced on Polymarket much faster than you heard that news anywhere else," Boiron said. "Simply because the faster you took a position, the more you'd benefit from it. So people were incentivized to do that."
Why financial risk drives better forecasts
Nelson echoed Boiron’s sentiment, arguing that real-money betting creates a stronger incentive for accuracy than pundits simply voicing opinions.
"People always say, ‘Put your money where your mouth is.’ Well, there's a reason that saying has existed forever," Nelson said. "The more somebody's willing to put money behind something, the more they really believe it’s true. Now, they could be wrong, but that’s life. There are no guarantees."
Boiron pointed out that prediction markets don’t just offer faster insights, but also more reliable ones.
"When you actually look at the outcomes across the elections in general, what you actually found was that most of these bets were actually very, very right," he said. "And therefore, it’s a small sample size, but a first piece of information on maybe these types of markets actually do work."
The future of prediction markets
As prediction markets continue to scale, Boiron believes they will offer even greater value in forecasting political events, economic trends, and major global decisions.
"As they scale up, we will end up in a spot where we get better information," he added.