CryptoRUs’ George Tung Breaks Down Why Prediction Markets Are Beating Polls
Prediction markets are more and more outperforming conventional polling as forecasting instruments — and the rationale comes down to 1 factor – monetary conviction. When individuals put actual cash behind a prediction, they don’t lie.
The rise of platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi is difficult the dominance of conventional forecasting. Pollsters have lengthy been the dominant voice in predicting political and financial outcomes. But a string of high-profile polling failures from the 2016 U.S. election to Brexit has opened the door to a challenger that punishes uncertainty with exhausting money.
Why Money Makes Better Data
The core argument for prediction markets is behavioural. Exit polls and surveys endure from a well-documented drawback: respondents typically give solutions they suppose sound affordable, or solutions that replicate who they wish to win quite than who they suppose will win. There’s no price to being fallacious on a survey kind.
Prediction markets eradicate that hole fully. Every chance mirrored in a market worth represents somebody who was prepared to threat precise capital on that end result.
“It takes conviction to put a prediction or a guess,” George Tung, founding father of ClashPicks and host of the extensively adopted CryptosRUs channel, advised BeInCrypto. “You need to be fairly positive that one thing’s going to occur so that you can really put down actual cash.”
That conviction makes the info generated by prediction markets basically completely different in high quality. It isn’t sentiment, it’s pores and skin within the recreation.
The numbers again this up. Independent analysis by knowledge scientist Alex McCullough, revealed by way of a Dune dashboard, discovered that Polymarket predicts outcomes with roughly 86% accuracy one month earlier than an occasion resolves, climbing to round 91% within the ultimate 4 hours. The research analysed Polymarket’s historic knowledge, excluding markets with excessive possibilities to keep away from skewing outcomes.
The Polling Problem
Traditional polling has been struggling. Despite methodological overhauls after 2016 and 2020, polls nonetheless overestimated Kamala Harris’s probabilities within the 2024 U.S. election and underestimated Donald Trump’s, particularly inside swing states.
Prediction markets, in the meantime, advised a distinct story properly forward of election night time. Tung is emphatic that this edge is skill-based, not random.
“If you’re predicting on an end result like a presidential election or if gold goes to go up this week — it’s skill-based,” he advised BeInCrypto. “There are those who do an intensive quantity of analysis they usually research issues.”
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The structural motive is pace. Polls take days to area, weight, and publish. A well-resourced prediction market reprices in minutes when new info hits.
Not Without Flaws
However, the case for prediction markets isn’t watertight. Critics level to a big structural vulnerability: when participation is concentrated amongst a small, homogeneous group of merchants, markets may be moved by a single giant actor — producing costs that replicate particular person conviction quite than real collective knowledge.
The demographic hole can be actual. Prediction market individuals skew closely towards crypto-native, financially subtle customers — hardly a consultant pattern of the broader public. Critics argue this limits how far the “knowledge of crowds” argument really stretches when the gang is that this slender.
Tung acknowledged the strain straight.
“I agree that because the platform will get larger and there are extra individuals on it, the extra correct it’s going to be,” he mentioned. But he pushed again on the framing that demographic attain is a weak spot distinctive to prediction markets. “What different type of knowledge has extra individuals predicting than prediction marketplaces mixed? What knowledge really has a much bigger demographic than this?”
It’s a good problem — and one the polling trade has but to convincingly reply.
Newer platforms getting into the house are betting that broadening participation is the important thing. ClashPicks, Tung’s personal prediction market constructed on Solana, affords a free-to-predict mannequin designed to decrease the barrier for first-time customers, with the express aim of pulling in individuals who would by no means open a Polymarket account.
What Comes Next
Whether or not prediction markets absolutely displace polling is irrelevant. They’ve already modified the dialog. Institutional buyers, marketing campaign strategists, and media organisations at the moment are incorporating prediction market knowledge alongside and typically as a substitute of conventional polling aggregates.
The scale of institutional curiosity is tough to disregard: in October 2025, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) invested $2 billion into Polymarket, valuing the corporate at $9 billion. That’s not a guess on a distinct segment crypto experiment. That’s a sign that the monetary mainstream is taking prediction markets significantly as a knowledge infrastructure play.
The subsequent check will probably be whether or not the trade can broaden its participant base with out shedding the skin-in-the-game high quality that makes the info helpful within the first place. More individuals imply extra numerous info, however provided that these individuals are genuinely knowledgeable, not simply speculating. That stability continues to be being labored out.
For now, prediction markets are essentially the most trustworthy mirror we’ve got for what individuals really consider will occur, as a result of getting it fallacious prices them one thing.
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