A version of this article appeared in our The Decentralised newsletter on June 10. Sign up here.
It looks like I’ll be out of a job soon.
“The next information age won’t be driven by the 20th century’s media monoliths — it’ll be driven by markets,” crypto betting platform Polymarket intoned last week.
On Friday, the company announced the latest step toward this Brave New Media Ecosystem: a partnership with social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
Here’s what this means, according to Grok, the chatbot from Elon Musk’s xAI, the company that owns X: “The X-Polymarket partnership lets X users see real-time event predictions, like election odds, enhancing news transparency. You might bet on outcomes, potentially earning money, making news interactive.”
Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan put it more succinctly.
“The two top truth seeking apps on the internet are stronger together,” he wrote. “Welcome to News 2.0.”
As a reporter, I have an obligation to downplay the latest threat to my employment posed by our tech overlords.
So I’ll note that Polymarket bettors rely heavily on “the 20th century’s media monoliths” to make informed wagers, and that social media platforms like X are just as likely to spread lies as they are to illuminate issues the traditional media can’t/won’t/hasn’t touched.
But it’s also my job to view these events dispassionately. Through that lens, it’s clear this is a big win for crypto.
Polymarket runs on the Polygon blockchain and its markets are denominated in Circle’s USDC stablecoin. While market creation is controlled by the Polymarket team, disputes are settled by a supposedly decentralised, crypto-based partner called Uma, which has been criticised over the years.
In short, Polymarket’s partnership with X will only expose more people to crypto-based applications.
On that note, there’s one other development I wanted to talk about this week.
A new, Peter Thiel-backed blockchain called Plasma raised a staggering $500 million in a public token sale Monday.
Like Polymarket, Plasma has a mass audience in mind. It’s built for moving stablecoins, and it has struck partnerships with companies in countries where the fiat-pegged tokens are popular.
Those include Turkish crypto exchange BiLira and Nigerian stablecoin on- and off-ramp Yellow Card.
Plasma sold 10% of its XPL token via Echo, a crypto fundraising platform. Investors had to deposit stablecoins to Plasma, with their time-weighted share of total deposits determining the size of their allocation.
This enthusiasm is the latest sign that stablecoins are indeed crypto’s greatest contribution to modern finance. Whether they supplant today’s financial rails, however, remains to be seen.
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Last week was a doozy on X.
