Trump victory odds on crypto markets jump to 72% post-shooting

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday appears to have boosted his chances of becoming president. His chances of winning the election have risen from 60% to 72%, according to Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market, and the imminent possibility appears to have boosted public support for Trump.

According to the same market, Biden’s odds have risen slightly to 18%, while Vice President Kamala Harris’s chances of succeeding Biden have fallen sharply from 13% to 5%. Meanwhile, Trump’s odds have risen to 67%, while Biden’s have fallen to 26%, according to prediction market PredictIt.

What are prediction markets?

Prediction markets, also known as betting markets, are markets where investors exchange contracts that pay based on the outcome of unknown future events. The prices generated from these contracts are like an aggregated prediction among market participants. That is, the price equals the odds. For example, Trump shares are trading at 72 cents, which suggests a 72% chance of winning.

If a better trader believed that Trump had a greater than 72% chance of winning the election, they would buy Yes stock at 72 cents each. If Trump won, each Yes stock would be worth $1, generating a profit of 28 cents per share. This would render anyone who bought No stock worthless. Traders could buy or sell their stocks at any point before the outcome, changing the stock price and therefore the odds.

Among all the prediction markets, Polymarket wants to be the transparent and trustless one. The platform is decentralized and built on the Ethereum blockchain, and users bet with stablecoins. The company announced in May that it had raised over $70 million in Series A and B funding rounds, and investors included Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

Polls paint a different picture of the election results, with FiveThirtyEight predicting Trump with a two-point lead over Biden. But research suggests that prediction markets can be “better predictors” of political outcomes on average. That’s because investors combine all the available information (news, polls, and expert opinions) and make trades based on that combined information. According to Polymarket’s website, the economic stimulus should mean that “as more informed investors join in, the price (probability) of the market will shift to more accurately reflect the true current odds.”

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In this regard, Polymarket creates markets where users can bet on almost anything: “Your job is to find markets where you disagree with the current odds and make a profit by betting on your beliefs.

This includes the “who will want Biden to step down” market, where Joe Manchin is trading at 62 cents. There are markets about how many times Elon Musk tweets in a week. Will Taylor Swift get engaged in 2024? The market says there’s a 38% chance. Will the identity of Satoshi, the author of the Bitcoin whitepaper, be proven? Perhaps unsurprisingly, traders have estimated the probability of this happening at less than 1%.

Trump stocks and cryptocurrencies soar

Another indicator that the shooting could work in Trump’s favor in the long term is the market reaction. For example, the crypto market has rallied as Trump doubled down on his promise to be a “crypto president” if he’s re-elected. Bitcoin rose 6% following the shooting at 6:15 p.m. ET and surpassed $63,000 for the first time in three weeks on Monday morning, according to CoinGecko data. Similarly, crypto-related stocks are climbing. Shares of Coinbase Global, Marathon Digital Holdings, and Riot Platforms are up 10%, 7%, and 6%, respectively.

Similarly, the stock price of a company owned by Trump is also rising. Shares of Trump Media and Technology, the parent company of Truth Social, rose 47% between Friday’s closing price and Monday morning, but have since retreated and are currently trading at $41.35. Still, that represents a 32% increase from last week. That would add a hypothetical $1.8 billion to his total wealth, according to The Telegraph.

This story was first published on Fortune.com