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Polymarket is making a big bet on pop culture

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Polymarket, a cryptocurrency-based “prediction market” best known as a platform for betting on elections, sports, and geopolitical events, is on a winning streak.

Earlier this month, the Department of Justice and Commodity Futures Trading Commission dropped investigations into whether Polymarket was allowing U.S. traders access to the platform despite lacking a proper license. This week, the platform announced that it will acquire QCX, a CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange, giving it fully legal access to the U.S. market.

Meanwhile, Polymarket has increasingly become a venue for betting on an array of cultural and even meme-level current events—such as who will be the next editor of Vogue or whether the “Coldplaygate” canoodlers will each get a divorce. In the process, Polymarket has ended up surprisingly well positioned to become a pop culture brand itself.

There are similar prediction-market competitors, notably Kalshi (where you can also bet on possible Coldplaygate aftereffects), but Polymarket has increasingly become a shorthand fixture for the category, often cited by other media. The platform “has become synonymous with understanding the........

© Fast Company