A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) investigation revealed that Polymarket paid dozens of content creators, most of them college students, to film fake bets on near-identical copies of its website. The analysis of 1,105 videos from 10 creators, published since December, determined that none of the approximately $1.9 million in displayed bets were real.
Among the cases documented by the WSJ is that of student George Makihara, who simulated winning $100,000 by betting that Donald Trump would say “McDonald’s” in January: the recording he was responding to was filmed two months earlier, Trump never said that word that month, and more than 50 real accounts that placed the same bet lost.
The creators operated with test versions of the site, including one under the misspelled domain “poiymarket.com“. According to the report, Polymarket managed this network through marketing firm Virality, paying between $2,000 and $3,000 per month to creators, who were required to not disclose the agreement and whose payment was contingent on at least 60% of their audience being American.
In 118 videos, creators promoted nearly $900,000 in fabricated gains on bets that would have actually lost more than $166,000. The campaign targets the American market directly, where the company’s main site remains geo-blocked. Polymarket told the WSJ it is “committed to accurate, fair and transparent markets” and announced a comprehensive audit of its promotional content.
Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/media/polymarket-social-media-bets-prediction-market-441cdeb5
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