Data estimates that Polymarket's annual revenue exceeds 100 million is not difficult, assuming the following premise...

Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)

On January 6th of this year, Polymarket officially began charging trading fees on markets related to “15-minute cryptocurrency price movements.” The specific fee rate varies with real-time market odds — the closer the odds are to 0% or 100%, the lower the fee; conversely, the closer the odds are to 50%, the higher the fee, with a maximum of 1.56%.

This is the first time Polymarket has stopped its fully free mode outside the US market (where Polymarket charges a 0.01% fee) and started collecting trading fees on specific market types. Now, after three weeks, we have a certain amount of observable data samples, and it’s time to make a rough estimate of Polymarket’s revenue potential.

First, let’s look at the most straightforward fee revenue scale. According to data compiled by Gate Research on Dune, since the fee collection began, Polymarket has accumulated approximately $2.19 million in fee revenue, averaging about $730,000 per week. Based on this static calculation, assuming trading volume and activity structure remain unchanged, it is estimated that Polymarket could generate about $38 million annually.

It is foreseeable that Polymarket’s fee scope will not be limited to just the “15-minute cryptocurrency price movement” category. Since officially charging fees on this category, Polymarket had long maintained a completely free model, also subsidizing market liquidity at its own expense. At the end of last year, Coplan personally admitted that Polymarket was operating at a loss… but we have seen many such “money-burning” stories in the internet market. As Polymarket’s user habits and market position gradually stabilize, it is not surprising that future fee collection will expand to more markets.

• Odaily note: For more on Polymarket’s revenue issues, refer to Odaily’s previous tea talk column “Odaily Editorial Tea Talk (January 7).”

Assuming Polymarket continues to use the current fee standard in other markets, we can compare the trading volume of the “15-minute cryptocurrency price movement” market with Polymarket’s total platform trading volume to glimpse the theoretical revenue ceiling under current trading levels — the more markets charged, the higher the revenue.

Data from Odaily shows that in the past week, the total trading volume of the “15-minute cryptocurrency price movement” market on Polymarket was about $159 million (among the four major tokens, BTC was $114 million, ETH $30.29 million, SOL $8.93 million, XRP $5.73 million), accounting for about 9.1% of Polymarket’s total trading volume of approximately $1.75 billion last week — based on this ratio, a static projection suggests that if Polymarket introduced similar fee models across all markets, it could generate about $418 million in annual revenue.

It should be noted that the above is a projection based on Odaily’s historical data; actual revenue will inevitably vary due to multiple variables — firstly, Polymarket has only been charging fees for three weeks, so the sample size is still small; secondly, Polymarket may not adopt similar fee mechanisms in other markets, and different user trading habits across markets will also lead to differences in final fee outcomes under dynamic fee models; thirdly, and most critically, Polymarket is still in a strong growth phase. It is expected that as the concept of prediction markets further popularizes, along with potential explosive events like the 2026 World Cup and mid-term elections, the platform’s trading volume will continue to grow.

But even considering these uncertainties, one trend is already quite clear — Polymarket is demonstrating the revenue potential of this new prediction market industry. It is no longer just an innovative concept but a genuinely sustainable business with highly imaginative profit margins.