INSIGHTS
Meet May's Top Performer!

Polymarket, the decentralized prediction market platform, reached its ATH in May with over $63 million in trading volume, a 62% increase compared to April. Plus, the platform got a bunch of new users, with its user base tripling to over 14,000 speculators since the start of 2024.

The reason?

Elections in the U.S. and across the globe, including in Russia, Brazil, India, Mexico, Pakistan, and over 60 other countries, are scheduled for this year.

But, what does Polymarket have in common with elections?

The decentralized platform enables users to speculate on various global events using cryptocurrencies. Speculators place their bets by voting, then buy and sell shares to wager on the likelihood of those events occurring.

So far, the bet on the Presidential Election Winner in the U.S. totals $154.7 million.

Launched in 2020 and built on the Ethereum blockchain, Polymarket was created by Shayne Coplan, an ETH enthusiast since 2014, with a background in entrepreneurship, business leadership, and global risk management.

A fun fact about Shayne: he has acted in several movies, including A-List and Beeline.

However, the story of Polymarket wasn’t linear.

In January 2022, Polymarket faced a $1.4 million fine from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and received a cease and desist order for regulatory violations, including failure to register as a Swap Execution Facility.

Despite this setback, the platform continued to grow. In June 2023, it experienced a surge in interest and activity after a tweet about the Titan submersible went viral. Polymarket offered a poll on whether the submersible would be found by a certain date, further boosting engagement.

Just last month, the platform raised $45 million in a Series B funding round led by Peter Thiel’s Founder Fund, with participation from Vitalik Buterin and others.

Today, Polymarket stands as the world’s largest decentralized prediction market, with over $200 million worth of predictions made on it to date.

With a mission to use free markets for fair insights into future events, we salute Polymarket. Here's to betting on more record highs in the future 🚀

Who Holds the Most Bitcoins Across Publicly Traded Companies?

SUBSTRATES
What else is happening?

• Perplexity AI is launching Pages, a new feature that transforms searches into user-friendly web pages. These pages are easy to share, visually attractive, and simple to edit, publish, and discover on Google.

• Pudgy Penguins has partnered with Mythical Games, utilizing the Mythos chain, which hosts over a million active wallets, to announce the release of a new mobile game coming in 2025.

• Nvidia announced Rubin, the state-of-the-art AI-accelerating GPU platform, expected to be released in 2026.

• Coinbase introduces Smart Wallets, offering gas-free transactions, lower costs, and faster speeds. They replace seed phrases with passkeys, marking a crucial innovation to push crypto into the mainstream.

• Asana launches AI teammates, a new feature powered by AI, designed to collaborate with human employees. Using past team data and project information optimizes teamwork and project execution within organizations.

• Robinhood acquires Bitstamp, one of the world's oldest cryptocurrency exchanges, in an all-cash deal worth around $200 million. The acquisition is set to be finalized in the first half of 2025.

• Intel introduced its newest AI chips for data centers in response to growing demands. These chips promise superior performance and power efficiency compared to their predecessors.

• Stand with Crypto," the pro-crypto advocacy community, celebrates reaching a milestone of 1 million members.

FROM THE REPOSITORY
5 tools to add to your maker’s arsenal

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• Nowadays is your AI-powered corporate event planner

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SCOOPS OF THE WEEK

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