Polymarket Data: 70% of traders lose money while an elite 0.04% captures $3.7 billion in profits

Source: Yellow Original Title: Polymarket Data: 70% of Traders Lose Money While an Elite of 0.04% Captures $3.7 Billion in Profits

Original Link: https://yellow.com/es/news/datos-de-polymarket-el-70-de-los-traders-pierde-dinero-mientras-una-elite-of-004-captures-3700-million-dollars-in-profits

New Profitability Patterns in Polymarket

New blockchain data reveal distinct profitability patterns in the decentralized prediction market Polymarket.

Only 30% of the 1.7 million trading addresses on the platform have realized gains.

The remaining 70% show realized losses, according to on-chain analytics account defioasis.

What happened

The analysis examined realized gains and losses throughout Polymarket’s entire trading history.

Less than 0.04% of addresses captured over 70% of all realized gains on the platform.

These top addresses accumulated a total of $3.7 billion in realized gains.

Most profitable addresses earned modest amounts, between $0 and $1,000.

This group accounts for 24.56% of all addresses but captures only 0.86% of total realized gains.

Earning more than $1,000 in realized gains places a trader in the top 4.9%.

On the losing side, approximately 1.1 million addresses — representing 63.5% of all users — have recorded realized losses between $0 and $1,000.

Over 140 addresses have recorded realized losses exceeding one million dollars.

The calculation method used total sales revenue plus total redemption remittances, minus the total purchase cost.

This approach does not account for unrealized gains or losses on open positions.

Why is this important

The data reflect traditional financial markets, where a small fraction of sophisticated traders consistently outperform the rest.

Recent research on 86 million on-chain transactions identified six profitable strategies: information arbitrage, platform arbitrage, high-probability bond strategies, liquidity provision, domain specialization, and high-frequency trading.

Professional traders employing these approaches achieved returns superior to most hedge funds.

The concentration of profits suggests that prediction markets reward systematic approaches over intuition.

Polymarket processed over $9 billion in trading volume throughout 2025.

The platform recently received regulatory approval to re-enter the U.S. market after several years of compliance review.