This is more than just a little trivia; it's pretty clear evidence that Polymarket has already become a bot-driven marketplace.

Why are the bots winning?

Intuitively, one might think that those who succeed are simply good at predicting the future, but in reality, this is rarely the case. According to research, it is estimated that traders who exploited price discrepancies with Polymarket extracted approximately $40 million between April 2024 and April 2025. The source of their advantage was not the ability to accurately predict the future, but simply "speed of execution."

In other words, what successful bots are doing is not "predicting the future more accurately," but "finding price discrepancies faster than anyone else and quickly closing them down."

The results of individual bots are quite extreme.

Several concrete examples have surfaced. One bot reportedly traded only short-term cryptocurrency markets (BTC/ETH/SOL) and, with a 98% win rate, turned $313 into $414,000 in one month. Another operator, using an AI-powered system to read news headlines and automatically adjust positions, reportedly earned $115,000 in one week.

However, the story isn't that simple.

It's premature to think, "So, if I connect AI, I can easily make money." In fact, the US regulatory body, the CFTC, has already issued warnings about fraudulent automated trading tools that capitalize on the AI ​​boom by promising unrealistic returns. Figures taken out over short periods, such as a week or a month, are naturally biased, as only the successful ones stand out. No one reports bots that incurred losses during the same period.

Having actually seen these systems in action, I've come to realize that consistent, albeit mundane, operational discipline is far more important than simply refining the accuracy of the model.

summary

Polymarket is no longer a place where manual and bot trading coexist in roughly equal proportions. Personally, I find this change quite interesting. Have any of you used a prediction market like Polymarket?