đŽ TRUMP 4 POPE
Meet the Polymarket traders betting that Trump becomes the next Pope
đŽNEW: The Oracle on YouTube.
Weâre distributing the podcast and show clips on YouTube.
đ Subscribe to The Oracle on YouTube
The race for Pope is heating up.
Just one week before the Papal conclave was set to begin, Donald Trump seemed to throw his hat into the ring:
The remark was clearly a joke.
After suggesting himself, Trump, who is not eligible to be Pope because he is neither a Catholic nor a cardinal, immediately suggested Cardinal Dolan of New York as a candidate.
But the Polymarket community was not satisfied.
Following multiple requests on our Discord server, a âWill Trump become the next Popeâ Polymarket was launched on May 1.
Inside the Order Book
On Polymarket, when it comes to Christianity bets, there are longshots, and there are loooooongshots.
For example, you can buy âyesâ shares (that pay $1 if the event happens or expire worthless if it doesnât) in the âWill Jesus Christ Return in 2025â Polymarket for 3.1 cents today.
By the logic that drives prediction markets, a rational buyer would only buy these shares if he/she gives a better than 3% chance of rapture (pRapture) this year.
But you can pick up Trump for Pope shares now for just .3 cents each, or a .3% probability.
This means that traders think itâs about 10x more likely that Jesus Christ returns this year than Trump becomes the next Pope.
But since weâve already gotten this far, letâs see if we can squeeze a bit more juice from this story.
Who Are The âYesâ Holders?
One thing that makes Polymarket unique is that you can see the trades of each user on the platform.
This is because Polymarket is built on a blockchain where transactions are recorded in a public ledger. You canât necessarily trace them back to the individual person, but to a specific address with a username, profile picture, and trade history.
Holding 31,571 shares of âyesâ in Trump for Pope, the user âThecordiusâ is the top holder in this market.
Thecordius purchased the shares in a series of transactions on May 2, the same day Trump posted this AI generated picture of himself as Pope to Truth Social.
Thecordius paid a total of $148.04 for his shares. This will be enough to fetch a brand new Chevy Malibu if we see Trumpâs head peaking out of St. Peterâs later this week.
Why might someone want to hold such a longshot bet?
Letâs go through a few possibilities:
For the Payoff. This is the primary reason people trade in prediction markets. We can see that Thecordius also owns âyesâ shares in âWill the next pope be Blackâ (đŽ 11% odds) along with shares in several other longshot Black Pope Polymarkets including Robert Sarah, Fridolin Besungu, and Francis Arinze - all trading between 0-1% odds. Interestingly, Thecordius does not own shares in Peter Turkson, who at 8% odds is the most likely black Cardinal to become Pope.
For the Culture. Or perhaps Thecordius is the owner of an Instagram meme account. In the social media trenches, itâs possible to get clicks by posting longshot bets with humorous captions. Thecordius may be playing that game but has not yet discovered how to save money by posting fake screenshots.
For the Flip. Finally, there is a style of prediction market trading where users buy shares cheap and hope to flip them to a greater fool before the market settles. For example, say Trump posts another AI pope meme or makes another remark about becoming Pope (đŽ 76% chance he says the word âPopeâ this week). This could easily create a mini hype bubble that would allow Thecordius to offload shares he paid .3 cents each for a 2X, 3X or more - even as the absolute odds of Trump becoming Pope remain below 1%.
Who Are The âNoâ Holders?
But on Polymarket, since the exchange does not take the other side of bets, a trade can only exist if there is another user who is a willing counterparty.
Who are the sharks circling to prey on poor Thecordius and the other longshot Pope punters?
In prediction markets there is a type of trade known as âbonds.â
To buy a âbondâ in prediction market terms is to buy an almost âsure thingâ bet and hope to harvest the last few percentage points of value before the market expires.
Letâs walk through an example. We can see that the largest ânoâ holder in Trump for Pope is the user âbetwick,â who paid $19,940 on May 2 for shares that will be worth $20k if Trump is not the next pontiff.
While a $60 profit from almost $20k risked may not seem like much, letâs say we have a very fast conclave and a new Pope is selected on May 7, the first day. In this case, betwick would make almost a 25% annualized return over the 5 day period. If the process drags on another week and we get a new Pope on May 14, the APR falls to 9.5% - a bit under the long run return of the S&P 500.
Bottom Line
While itâs impossible to know the contents of these tradersâ hearts, it is possible to know, down to the penny, the contents of their Polymarket portfolios and make some educated guesses about their trading motivations.
Even for those who might never trade on a prediction market, understanding how the order book works and how traders operate can give you a better sense of the balance of risk and reward that produces the odds.
Connect With The Oracle
Tips? Feedback? Story ideas? Write oracle@polymarket.com or @wasabiboat on X
Write for The Oracle: Weâre expanding our coverage and looking to hire more writers and investigators. Details Here.
Disclaimer
Nothing in The Oracle is financial, investment, legal or any other type of professional advice. Anything provided in any newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement of any type of activity or any particular market or product. Terms of Service on polymarket.com prohibit US persons and persons from certain other jurisdictions from using Polymarket to trade, although data and information is viewable globally.
Always fascinating to see how people doing (seemingly) stupid sh*t can be traced back to rational explanations.