A Wall Street Journal investigation says Polymarket ran an aggressive, misleading social media campaign built around fake profits and fabricated trades to attract new users to its prediction market platform. The company allegedly recruited dozens of young content creators, many college-age, and paid them monthly retainers of thousands of dollars to film themselves appearing to make huge gains.
The videos showed seemingly real bets, including a $100,000 wager on what Donald Trump would say in speeches and trades tied to Federal Reserve interest rates. In reality, Polymarket created near-perfect copies of its website, where the influencers used simulated trading with no financial risk and were shown winning large payouts. The campaign also used contractors to coordinate an online army of human commenters who spread the posts while being told to remove any trace of the brand name from their usernames so the activity would look personal and authentic.
The effort generated more than 140 million views on major platforms and was aimed at an American audience, even though Polymarket’s main platform is barred by regulators from operating in the United States. Users can still access it from the U.S. with a VPN. The story places the campaign in the broader context of crypto betting and prediction markets, where Polymarket, founded in 2020 and built on blockchain smart contracts meant to ensure transparency, has surged in popularity.
The pressure to grow comes as competition intensifies, especially from the regulated U.S. rival Kalshi, which has recently pulled ahead and now records about twice Polymarket’s trading volume. After a 2022 regulatory settlement forced Polymarket to stop operating in the U.S., the company appears to have crossed red lines in marketing to regain American activity. It also promoted videos about insider trading and market manipulation, and paid major influencers to tell millions of followers how easy it was to make “free money” on the platform. TikTok and YouTube later restricted accounts tied to the campaign for disclosure violations, and Polymarket said it is committed to fair and transparent markets and will conduct a broad audit of its active promotional content.
