PolySouq: Trade Bitcoin, Gold and Football as Probabilities

What a prediction market is

A prediction market turns a question about the future into something you can trade. "Will Bitcoin be higher in five minutes?" becomes a market with two answers, YES and NO, each with a price between 0 and 100. That price is the market's live estimate of the probability: a YES price of 57 means the people with money on the question see roughly a 57% chance. Events with several answers, such as who wins a league, work the same way with one price per answer.

On PolySouq you buy the answer you believe in at the price shown. It is buy-only: there is no selling to another user and no closing early, so a position is held until the event resolves. That replaces stop-losses and margin calls with one decision made before you click — how much you are prepared to lose if you are wrong. That amount, and never more, is your maximum loss.

The category is no longer niche: Pew Research Center (May 2026) reports that combined monthly volume on the two largest US prediction platforms rose from under $5 billion in September 2025 to about $24 billion in April 2026.

What you can trade on PolySouq

Crypto, forex and commodity markets ask whether a price finishes Up or Down over a fixed window — Bitcoin and Ethereum every 5 minutes, and also over 4 hours, a day, a week and a month. Football markets ask who wins each fixture in the six big European leagues. Politics, economics, technology and other world events are mostly multi-outcome, with three or more answers.

How the payout works: a worked example

PolySouq quotes no spread and never takes the other side of your position. Each market is a parimutuel pool: when the event resolves, everyone who backed the correct answer splits the money staked on incorrect answers, in proportion to their stake, after a 10% commission taken only from the losing side.

Take a market that closes with $600 on YES and $400 on NO, and suppose YES wins. You had $100 on YES.

• Losing pot: $400, everything staked on NO.
• Commission: 10% of $400 = $40, taken from the losing pot only.
• Distributed to YES backers: $400 − $40 = $360.
• Your share of the YES pot: $100 ÷ $600 = one sixth, so you receive one sixth of $360 = $60.
• Your payout: your $100 stake back + $60 = $160. NO backers receive $0.
• Had nobody staked on NO, there would be no losing pot and every stake would be refunded in full.

Prediction market vs leveraged trading

There is nothing to lever, because a pool pays out only what is in it; there is no spread, because there is no market maker; and there is no exit before settlement, because there is no order book.

Opening an account and funding it

Sign-up is email and password, Google or Apple, and email verification is required before you can trade. PolySouq accepts one asset on one network for deposits and withdrawals: USDC on Polygon. No cards, no bank transfers.

• Create the account on the PolySouq sign-up page with email, Google or Apple.
• Verify the email address; trading stays locked until this is done.
• Pick your interests to build your feed.
• Go to Portfolio → Add funds and copy your personal Polygon deposit address.
• Send at least $5 in USDC with Polygon selected as the network. Your $ balance updates once the transfer confirms.
• Open an event and buy YES or NO for the amount you are prepared to lose. Withdrawals go out the same way, USDC on Polygon, $5 minimum.

Friends, the leaderboard and the Ideas feed

Settings gives you a personal invite link. Friends who join through it can be challenged on the same events on the play page, and the weekly accuracy leaderboard ranks users by how often they were right, not by how much they made. If you are alone on a market and nobody takes the other side, your money comes back.

For analysis there is the Ideas feed, where users post their reasoning on upcoming events, plus a comment thread under every event.

Is PolySouq a betting site?

No, and the difference is structural. A bookmaker or sportsbook sets the odds itself, takes the other side of your position and profits when you lose; a casino works the same way. On PolySouq no operator takes the other side: the price is set by what other users have staked on each answer, so it is a probability, not a quote from the house. The commission is a fixed 10% of the losing pot whoever wins, so the platform has no stake in which answer is right. And when no opponent exists, your stake is refunded — which no betting operator does.

It is still real money and you can lose all of a stake, but to other users who were right, at a price you could see before you committed.

Transparency and who runs it

Settlement is automated by consensus of public sources, with human review for unclear cases. Every resolved market shows its outcome and source. The platform is operated by a Cyprus-registered company.

Mike Brend, PolySouq's Chief Marketing Officer, puts it this way: "The only money you can lose is the money you chose to put on a question. If you were right, you share what the other side was wrong about, and every settled market shows you why."

Risk note

You can lose the full amount you stake on any market, and past accuracy does not predict future results. Nothing on this page is investment advice.