Trump's lead over Harris on Polymarket soars to 13% as mystery trader pumps the former president's chances to win election

On Polymarket, the odds of Donald Trump reclaiming the U.S. presidency by defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in next month's election surged to as high as 13% on Thursday.

While it's not completely clear what exactly spurred the increased confidence in Trump's chances, a mystery trader on the decentralized prediction platform with the call sign Fredi9999 has recently purchased millions of shares, wagering the real estate tycoon-turned-president will beat Harris.

Earlier this week, Fredi9999 owned about 7 million shares in favor of Trump winning, according to Benzinga. Now, the trader owns nearly 11 million shares, according to Polymarket data . In just the last hour, Fredi9999 bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of shares, wagering that Trump would win, according to the platform's data .

The total volume on the wager over who will win between Trump and Harris has so far surpassed $1.6 billion. In 2020, the presidential election generated just under $11 million in wagers on Polymarket.

Snapshot of Polymarket bets on winner of U.S. presidential election. Image: Polymarket

Trump lead widens since Musk proclamation

At the beginning of this week, Trump's lead was considerably less when Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to X to say Polymarket was more accurate than polls. At the time, Trump's odd had risen to 50.6%, compared to Harris' 48.4%. 

In September, the decentralized prediction platform saw record highs in the monthly categories for trading volume, active traders, new markets and cumulative trading, according to The Block Data Dashboard . Polymarket has raised $45 million in a Series B funding round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and existing investors 1confirmation and ParaFi, with participation from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Dragonfly and Eventbrite’s co-founder Kevin Hartz.