Polymarket users bet $5 million on what Trump would say during his X space with Elon Musk

Quick Take

  • Polymarket users bet approximately $5 million on the chances of Trump saying various words in his conversation with Elon Musk on Aug 12.
  • Those who bet on Trump saying “tampon” at the last minute saw the highest returns.

Polymarket users spent just shy of $5 million betting on what former President Donald Trump would say during his conversation with Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Aug 12.

Overall, there were 11 markets on Polymarket that saw this amount of trading volume, covering crypto-specific words like “bitcoin” and “crypto” alongside more political topics such as “civil war” and “censorship” — plus the words “tampon” and “weird.” The betting was so popular these markets saw over 1,500 comments on the platform.

The most amount of money was spent betting on whether Trump would say “crypto,” followed by “MAGA” and “illegal immigrant.” Trump ended up saying three of the words, which were “MAGA,” “illegal immigrant” and “tampon.”

By the time Trump said the slogan “MAGA,” the odds were at 59%, meaning that betters who had just placed a bet would see under double their money. For “illegal immigrant,” the odds rose from 46% when he said it. But for “tampon,” the odds were at 7% when he said the word, meaning anyone who had just placed a bet that he would say it saw a 14X increase.

“Congrats to my tamponbros,” wrote one Polymarket user as Trump delivered on saying the word.

The chances of Trump saying "tampon" fell sharply right before he said the word. Image: Polymarket.

Those who bet on “crypto” saw the most significant losses as it had the most money in a losing market. The odds of him saying the word fell from 65% to zero over the course of the speech.

Trump's conversation with Musk took place on the latter's social media platform X via an audio call known as a Space. The call was delayed around 40 minutes due to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, according to Musk. The conversation centred around subjects such as immigration and inflation, as well as the failed assassination attempt on Trump.

Polymarket is a crypto-focused prediction platform that lets users trade tokens representing outcomes of a particular variable. In this case, those buying “yes” tokens were betting Trump would say a particular word, while those buying “no” tokens were betting he wouldn’t. Each market is priced on a scale from $0 to $1, and when the market is resolved, it goes to either of those numbers (0 for no and $1 for yes). 

The platform has been particularly popular for betting on the outcome of the U.S. election. So far $581 million has been placed on bets for the winner of the election, with betting currently favoring Vice President Kamala Harris at 52% with Trump on 46% — despite having a previous lead as high as 72%.


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About Author

Tim is the Editor-In-Chief of The Block. He writes about the evolution of crypto technology and the people who are at the forefront of it. He provided exclusive, source-based insights into the launches of the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, crypto sales by the FTX Estate and the Trump-linked World Liberty Financial project. Prior to joining The Block, Tim was a news editor at Decrypt. He earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of York and studied news journalism at Press Association Training. Follow him on X @Timccopeland.

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