We put together a report on the prediction-market side of The International, Dota 2’s world championship, which wrapped up in Shanghai last week. The tournament itself is the biggest event in competitive Dota, run annually since 2011, with this year’s $3.3M prize pool split across the 16 teams that qualified. Team Spirit took the trophy. What the trade data from Polymarket and Kalshi showed is a different story: the markets tracking those matches paid out 61x more than the tournament itself did.

Polymarket and Kalshi collected $2.76M in fees.

Kalshi charged a flat 7% the whole tournament: Polymarket ran 3% on qualifier markets (June 9–29) and raised it to 5% once the main event started on August 6.

Kalshi’s cut came to $450K, Polymarket’s to $2.31M, combined, that’s more than the winning team’s own payout, and 83% of the entire $3.3M prize pool split across all 16 teams.

The venues made almost two times what the champion did.

The top 10 Polymarket accounts made $5.3M between them: more than the tournament paid anyone.

Some of it came from size, some from speed: one account turned $25,735 into $154,307 (a 600% return) across just five markets, and another made $406,692 in 13 hours flat, across 6 markets and 17 trades, without ever once posting a resting price, it only ever took prices other people had already put up.

The losing side of the ledger looked nothing like that. Every one of the 10 largest losses was decided at settlement, not in trading, one account deposited $693,522 across three markets and 148 trades and lost every cent of it.

Split the 21,936 wallets that traded into 10 equal groups by size (about 2,193 each).

Only the largest group finished in profit. It put in $177,944,356, and 97.8% of all the money deposited across every market, and came out $473,415 ahead.

Every other group was underwater except one: the sixth-largest group, up $20,019 on $64,728 deposited, for reasons the data doesn’t explain.

The bottom group deposited $4,074 between 2,194 wallets and got back $3,183, giving up 21.9% of their stake. The typical account outside the top 1,640 wallets put in just $19.98, and about half of even that group lost money.

Full report: [Link]

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