By Manya Saini
June 26 (Reuters) - Polymarket's annualized revenue has surpassed $1 billion, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday, highlighting the rapid rise of prediction markets as retail investors flock to trade on everything from elections and sports to financial events.
Here are some details:
• Prediction markets have evolved from a niche corner of crypto and academic finance into a fast-growing trading segment in less than two years, as a surge in trading volumes and user
activity has fueled rapid growth across the industry.
• The boom has propelled platforms such as Polymarket, with retail traders showing keen interest in buying and selling contracts tied to the outcome of future events.
• Polymarket's revenue milestone comes about six weeks after the company rolled out access to its U.S. exchange, allowing customers to trade, the source said.
• "Polymarket is a product-led company," a spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reuters. "We spent the last five years building the world's largest prediction market and understanding how people engage with markets at scale. We are applying those learnings to our U.S. platform."
• Prediction market platforms are also making a big push to attract top institutional investors and hedge funds beyond mom-and-pop investors.
• Some of Polymarket's most popular markets currently allow users to bet on outcomes ranging from the winner of the FIFA World Cup to whether the Strait of Hormuz will be closed.
• Last year, NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange agreed to invest $2 billion in Polymarket, marking one of the biggest endorsements yet of the prediction market industry by a traditional financial heavyweight.
• CNBC first reported Polymarket's revenue milestone earlier on Friday.
(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
