You treat Polymarket as a casino, but smart money is crazily arbitraging with it.

It's a golden age for those who know how to really make money on Polymarket. Most people think of Polymarket as a casino, and smart money as an arbitrage tool. (Summary: What is the real intention of the NYSE parent company to invest $2 billion in Polymarket?) After receiving a $2 billion investment, Polymarket valued it at $9 billion, one of the highest funding rounds for a crypto project in recent years. In the context of the intensification of rumors of IPO+IDO + airdrops, let's first look at a set of interesting data: :P NL exceeds $1000, you can enter the ranks of the top 0.51% of wallets; With a trading volume of more than $50,000, you are in the top 1.74% of the largest households; With more than 50 transactions, you've surpassed 77% of users. And this set of data also means that in the fertile land of Polymarket, there are not many people who have really continued to cultivate and harvest fruits in recent years. With ICE's strategic investment, Polymarket's liquidity, user volume, and market depth are growing rapidly. More money influx means more trading opportunities; More retail participation means more market imbalances; More market types mean more arbitrage space. It's a golden age for those who know how to really make money on Polymarket. Most people think of Polymarket as a casino, and smart money as an arbitrage tool. In the following long article, Rhythm BlockBeats interviewed three Polymarket veterans to break down their money-making strategies. Sweeping the end into a new financial tool "About 90% of the large orders with more than 10,000 knives in Polymarket have a transaction price of more than 0.95." Veteran player Fish said straight to the point. In the prediction market of Polymarket, this kind of game called "sweeping the tail" is very popular. The gameplay is simple: when the outcome of an event has basically settled, and the market price soars above 0.95 or even close to 0.99, you buy at this price, and then patiently wait for the event to officially settle, eating the definite gains of those last few points. The core logic of sweeping the tail plate is four words: time for certainty. When an event has already occurred, such as an election has a clear result, or a sporting event has been played, but the market has not officially settled, the price tends to stay in the range close to 1 but less than 1. At this time, as long as you wait for settlement, you can steadily eat the last few points of profit. "A lot of retail investors can't wait for settlement," Fish explained to BlockBeats, "They are in a hurry to cash out to play the next deal, so they will sell directly at 0.997 to 0.999, which leaves room for arbitrage for large investors." Although each profit is only 0.1%, if the amount of funds is large enough and the frequency is high enough, the accumulation of small amounts is also a considerable income." But just like all investments are risky, sweeping the tail is not risk-free "brainless financial management". "The biggest enemy of this game," Fish said, "is not market volatility, but black swan events and big manipulation." The black swan risk is a risk that players must always be aware of. What is a black swan? It is those things that seem to have been set in stone, and suddenly there is an unexpected reversal. For example, a game seems to be over, but it is later ruled invalid by the referee; A political event seems to be settled, but a sudden scandal leads to the result being overturned. Once these small probability events occur, those 0.99 buying chips in your hand will instantly become waste paper. "The so-called black swan events that can be reversed are basically manipulated by big players." Fish continued to explain: "The game of large households is generally like this: for example, when the price is close to 0.99, suddenly use a large order to smash the price to 0.9, and at the same time create panic; Bring rhythm in the comment area and social media, spread information that may reverse, and amplify the panic of retail investors; Wait for retail investors to panic sell, and then eat the chips back at a low position; After the official settlement of the event, these big investors not only earned a difference of 0.9 to 1.00, but also pocketed the money that retail investors should have earned." This is the complete closed loop of big user manipulation. Another veteran player, Luke (@DeFiGuyLuke), adds an interesting detail in this closed loop: "Polymarket's comment section is particularly readable. I think this phenomenon is quite special, and it is difficult to see in other products." People will write a lot of evidence to prove their point of view, in fact, many people also know that you can agree with everyone or something. So manipulating public opinion will become easy on Polymarket. This is also the opportunity for Luke to start his own business now: "When I used Polymarket before, I noticed an interesting phenomenon - you look at the content on Twitter, and people don't want to watch it, right? It's all nonsense and it's not true. Most people don't usually talk much. But it's funny if you look at Polymarket's comment section, although he may bet on only a few dozen knives, a hundred, not much money, but the words will be talked about at length there." "You find this kind of content particularly interesting. So at the time, I felt that the Polymarket comment section was really readable." It was based on this observation that Luke started a product called Buzzing: allowing anyone to build a market, on any topic. Everyone places a bet and can post comments, which then form a feed stream that is distributed to the market through the content. Then again, since the tail sweep has the risk of being manipulated by a black swan, can't it be played? "Nor is it. The key lies in risk control and position management. For example, I only have a maximum of 1/10 of my position in each market," Fish adds: "Don't put all your money on one market, even if it looks like 99.9% will win." Preference is given to those markets that are about to settle (within hours) and the price is above 0.997, so that the black swan time window is shorter." Closing markets displayed on polymarketanalytics Total less than 100% arbitrage opportunities There is such an address in Polymarket, which turned $10,000 into $100,000 in half a year and participated in more than 10,000 markets. Not by betting on size, not by insider information, but by a seemingly simple but technically technical arbitrage strategy – capturing "less than 100% in aggregate" opportunities in a multi-option market. The core logic of this gameplay is amazingly elegant: in a multi-option market where only one option wins, if the prices of all the options add up to less than $1, then you buy 1 copy of each of the options and you will definitely get $1 after settlement. The difference between costs and benefits is your risk-free profit. It sounds a little hard to understand. Let's use a...