Which hamster will run the fastest? Cryptocurrency prediction markets attract thousands of gamblers.

Prediction markets, a gambling arena that includes betting on sports competitions, elections, and even daily events, have always been an important application in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space due to their ability to ensure fairness and security on the platform. Platforms like Augur and Polymarket have attracted thousands of crypto gamblers, and now, even live hamster races can be bet on.

Hamster Racing on the Rise Rapidly Within a Week

The frenzy of leverage and greed in cryptocurrency has led to a great speculative concept in some products. In the current relatively flat market, a gambling craze related to hamsters is rapidly spreading.

According to Decrypt's report, Hamsters.gg is a new cryptocurrency gambling website where participants can bet with $BUSD on live hamster races at fixed times. Winners who predict correctly will share a portion of the betting amount, while losers will receive the site's token $HAMS based on their betting amount, with the website charging a 5% fee on each bet.

However, the hamster races are not actually live but pre-recorded by three developers to prevent situations where hamsters die or do not move from being exposed during the live broadcast. One of the developers, Dani, claims that the event is held out of love for sports and hamsters, and expresses little concern about the legal implications.

It is reported that the community of the website is rapidly expanding, with the official Telegram group surpassing 2,300 members.

It is worth noting that gambling in the crypto world has been going on for years and is prevalent.

Who Will Have Better Box Office Sales, Albus Dumbledore or Barbie?

Another example is Polymarket, a decentralized prediction market built on the Polygon chain, allowing users to bet on the outcomes of events such as sports matches and political elections through trading binary options contracts.

In essence, in the market of "Will the weekend box office revenue of 'Barbie' exceed $150 million," the prices of "will" and "will not" can be seen as the market's probability of the event occurring, totaling 1 dollar.

If one bets $100 on the "will" option and predicts correctly, they can expect a 141% return on settlement day, or zero otherwise. However, profits from purchases will vary with changes in odds, and besides waiting until settlement day to confirm the correctness of the prediction, one can also choose to sell at a specific price to realize profits.

Interestingly, there are many more bizarre bets to choose from.

Furthermore, Polymarket was fined $1.4 million by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) last year for violating the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) by providing platforms for financial derivatives such as binary options contracts. The CFTC stated that platforms offering financial derivatives such as binary options contracts are still subject to regulation by the CFTC and CEA.

It seems Dani might need to worry a bit after all.