Polymarket / Prediction Markets

Source bias audit. Polymarket is the engine's primary prediction market data source. Core biases: (1) Whale-dominated — single accounts can move markets by millions ($50 million+ individual positions documented). (2) US-restricted — American users technically barred, creating a non-representative participant pool skewed toward crypto-native, non-US speculators. (3) Crypto-denominated — all positions settled in USDC, meaning participants must already be inside the crypto architecture the engine tracks as a capture layer. (4) Liquidity-as-signal — thin markets can produce extreme probability swings that look like information but are just flow. The engine supplements with Manifold (open-source, play money + sweepstakes, retail crowd) but Manifold's play-money dynamic distorts incentives — participants don't lose real capital on wrong bets. Current status (Mar 30): Polymarket showing US-Iran ceasefire by April 7 at 11.5%, OpenAI federal backstop at 27%. These numbers are treated as signal but may reflect crypto-native sentiment more than geopolitical analysis. The engine should weight prediction market data as crowd sentiment, not ground truth.