Polymarket Seeking Funding Round That Could 10x its Valuation to $10B

Cryptocurrency

Summary:

According to one source, at least one investor offered a term sheet valuing the company at $10 billion. A Polymarket spokesperson declined to comment on the funding talks.

Prediction market Polymarket is pursuing new funding that could boost its valuation to $10 billion, as Business Insider reported on Sept. 12.

Two people with knowledge of the matter said the valuation discussions represent at least a threefold increase from the $1 billion Polymarket achieved in a funding round that closed this summer.

According to one source, at least one investor offered a term sheet valuing the company at $10 billion. A Polymarket spokesperson declined to comment on the funding talks.

Strategic developments

The reported valuation surge follows a series of strategic developments positioning Polymarket for a US comeback.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission granted regulatory approval for the platform to resume US operations through a no-action letter issued Sept. 3 to QCX LLC, Polymarket’s regulatory partner, acquired for $112 million in July.

The regulatory greenlight enables Polymarket to operate event contracts while maintaining compliance with federal derivatives regulations. It also marks a return after the platform ceased US operations in 2022 following a $1.4 million CFTC settlement over unregistered derivatives trading.

Additionally, Donald Trump Jr. joined Polymarket’s advisory board in August as his venture capital firm 1789 Capital made a strategic investment in the platform.

The partnership adds political expertise as Polymarket prepares for US market entry. Trump Jr. recently praised the platform for cutting through “media spin and so-called expert opinion.”

Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan characterized the 1789 Capital partnership as reinforcing the company’s role as a trusted information source, while the firm’s founder, Omeed Malik, praised Polymarket’s intersection of financial innovation and free expression.

Slump in user growth

Polymarket operates as a prediction market where users place bets on outcomes ranging from political elections to cultural events, generating market-driven predictions.

Data from a Dune dashboard by Varrock founder Richard Chen shows that Polymarket crossed $8.5 billion in year-to-date trading volume as of Sept. 12, surpassing last year’s total volume.

The trading volume increase occurs despite a slump in active and new users. Polymarket’s monthly active traders peaked in January at 454,664, gradually falling to reach August’s 226,442 after a 20% fall from July.

Meanwhile, new users plunged 33% between July and August, reaching 66,160, the lowest level in a year.

The platform’s regulatory preparations and high-profile advisory additions position it for a potential pivot in these numbers with a US expansion.

Source: Cryptoslate

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Manuel

Central Bank

Political

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with BlackRock Inc (BLK) executive Rick Rieder in New York on Friday, as the Trump administration continued its search for a new chair for the Federal Reserve, a source familiar with the matter said.

Bessent has now spoken with four of the 11 candidates on the administration's list of candidates to replace Fed chair Jerome Powell, whose term expires in May, the source said.

Bloomberg first reported Bessent's meeting with Rieder, BlackRock's CIO of fixed income, and called him a rising contender for the post. The two met for two hours and discussed monetary policy, the Fed's organizational structure and regulatory policy, it said.

President Donald Trump had told reporters at the White House a week ago that his short list for the job included his aide Kevin Hassett, former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh and current Fed Governor Christopher Waller.

At the time, Trump said he had eyed Bessent for the job, but the Treasury secretary declined.

Bessent has said he will meet with the candidates to whittle down the list and present Trump with a list of top contenders.

Trump has made clear he intends to install a Fed leader more aligned with his push for rapid interest-rate cuts after months of railing against Powell for being "too late" to lower interest rates and bring down borrowing costs.

Powell's Fed has kept rates on hold all year on concern that Trump's tariffs could reignite inflation, although his concerns have shifted recently to focus more on the slowing labor market.

The U.S. Senate is slated to vote on Monday to confirm White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Stephen Miran to the Fed, which starts a two-day meeting Tuesday at which it is expected to cut its policy rate by a quarter of a percentage point. Miran will retain his White House job, but take an unpaid leave while at the Fed.

Miran would replace Adriana Kugler, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden and resigned as Fed governor last month.

Trump has sought to fire another Fed governor appointed by Biden, Lisa Cook, but that move has been blocked for now by a federal judge.

Source: Reuters

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Manuel

Economic

Stocks

US stocks closed out a winning week mixed on Friday as Wall Street took stock of the US economy from a lofty, record-setting perch ahead of the Federal Reserve's highly anticipated decision on interest rates next week.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) climbed around 0.5% to notch its fifth-consecutive record as Tesla (TSLA) stock hit a seven-month high. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) fell just below the flat line, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) fell 0.6%.

Still, the Dow gained nearly 1% for the five trading sessions through Friday, its first win in three weeks, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq had their best showings since early August.

Investors have taken in several weeks' worth of economic data to gain clues on the Fed's next move. Over the last week, jobs data has shown clear signals of labor market weakness, with just over 20,000 jobs added last month and weekly initial jobless claims surging to a near four-year high.

Meanwhile, inflation remains stubborn, with consumer prices rising last month amid more signs that President Trump's tariffs are filtering their way into the economy.

The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment survey released Friday showed consumer sentiment slipped more than expected in September, while long-run inflation expectations jumped to 3.9%, as Americans worried over the effects of tariffs.

But investors are betting inflation is tame enough for the Fed to cut next week — and then some.

Traders are pricing in a more than 90% chance of a quarter-point cut when the Fed holds its September meeting, according to CME Group. Beyond that, around 75% are betting the central bank will cut the equivalent of three times before the end of the year.

Source: Yahoo Finance

To stay updated on all economic events of today, please check out our Economic calendar

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Manuel

Cryptocurrency

Decentralized derivatives exchange Hyperliquid has consistently outperformed traditional finance giants in terms of volume and net income.

DefiLlama data estimates Hyperliquid’s annualized net income at $1.24 billion as of Sept. 12, exceeding Nasdaq’s $1.12 billion net income for the entirety of 2024 by 11%.

The comparison positions the DeFi platform ahead of one of the world’s largest stock exchanges in net income, despite operating with just 11 team members.

Additionally, data from ASXN shows Nasdaq employed 9,162 people in 2024, producing a net income per employee ratio of $123,335.52.

Hyperliquid’s 11-person team generates approximately $113 million per employee, establishing the highest net income-to-employee ratio in global financial markets.

Volumes surpass Robinhood

The trading protocol posted $420.3 billion in total trading volume during August, extending its winning streak against Robinhood to four consecutive months.

Robinhood published August trading figures on Sept. 11, revealing $227.5 billion in total volume across all products.

The breakdown included $199.2 billion from equity trading, $195.5 million from options contracts, $13.7 billion from crypto trading in the Robinhood App, and $14.4 billion from crypto trading on the Bitstamp exchange.

Hyperliquid processed $398 billion in perpetual contracts and $22.3 billion in spot trading during the same period, creating a $170.5 billion volume advantage over the retail trading platform. The August performance marks the platform’s strongest monthly showing since beginning its winning streak against Robinhood.

The volume comparison traces back to May, when Hyperliquid first overtook Robinhood with $256 billion versus $192 billion, according to data shared by Jon Ma from Artemis.

June volumes reached $231 billion for Hyperliquid compared to Robinhood’s $193 billion, followed by July’s $330.8 billion versus $237.8 billion performance. Its July advantage represented its largest monthly gap at 39.1% before August’s results widened the margin further to nearly 85%.

Amid these results, Hyperliquid’s HYPE token registered a new all-time high of $57.30 on Sept. 12, up roughly 760% from its launch price of $6.51 on Nov. 28, 2024.

The platform continues to demonstrate how decentralized exchanges can compete directly with established retail trading platforms while maintaining lean operational structures that generate outsized returns per employee.

Source: Cryptoslate

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

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Manuel

Stocks

Political

Vaccine makers’ shares fell after a report that Trump health officials plan to link Covid shots to the deaths of around two dozen children in a presentation to advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention next week.

The Washington Post reported Friday that a group of health officials appear to have used the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, to tie the deaths of 25 children to Covid vaccines. A high-profile advisory committee that Kennedy revamped to include vaccine critics is scheduled to discuss the shots from companies including Pfizer Inc., Moderna Inc. and BioNTech SE at its meeting next week.

Moderna shares dropped as much as 8.7% during trading in New York Friday. Pfizer shares fell as much as 3.6%. BioNTech’s US-traded shares sank as much as 14%.

Covid vaccines have become a political flash point in recent weeks as conflict between Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former CDC director Susan Monarez led to her ouster just weeks into her job. Kennedy has previously claimed that the shots crafted during President Donald Trump’s first administration — largely credited with saving millions of lives during the pandemic — cause deadly complications, despite rigorous studies involving millions of people that found serious side effects are rare.

VAERS collects copious amounts of unfiltered data in an effort to detect early signs of side effects. Reports can be submitted by anyone and no effort is made to verify the details or prevent duplication, a format that scientific researchers said makes it difficult to draw clear conclusions.

“FDA and CDC staff routinely analyze VAERS and other safety monitoring data, and those reviews are being shared publicly through the established ACIP process,” HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said, referring to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Pfizer could not immediately be reached for comment. BioNTech did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, Moderna said the safety of its Covid vaccine, Spikevax, is “rigorously monitored” by the company, the FDA and regulators in more than 90 countries. Safety monitoring systems have not identified any new or undisclosed safety concerns in children or in pregnant women, the company said, adding that research “continues to demonstrate a favorable risk–benefit profile for Spikevax.”

A 2022 Lancet study of heart inflammation in adolescents and young adults who received messenger RNA Covid-19 vaccines found no known deaths, with most patients recovering within 90 days.

The Data System

The Food and Drug Administration had already indicated it was investigating reports of children dying due to the Covid vaccine.

“There have been children that have died from the Covid vaccine,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper earlier this month. “We’re doing a proper investigation. We’re going to release a report in the coming few weeks.”

Patients, health-care providers, caregivers and companies are encouraged to notify the agency about adverse events following immunization, “even if they are not sure the vaccine caused the problem,” according to the CDC, which manages the VAERS database with the FDA.

Yet VAERS warns that some of these reports “represent true vaccine reactions and others are coincidental adverse health events and not related to vaccination,” according to its fact sheet. “Overall, a causal relationship cannot be established using information from VAERS report alone.”

For 2021 alone, there were more than 11,000 reports of deaths. While many mentioned Covid shots, it’s impossible to know from the database alone if they stemmed from the shots. Many of the submissions detailed “breakthrough” Covid infections, the ones that happened after a patient was vaccinated. This makes it possible that the virus — not the shot — was deadly.

Even Kennedy has raised concerns about the system’s reliability. “It’s outrageous that we don’t have a surveillance system that functions,” he said at an event in Indiana in April.

Kennedy has long said that the government should focus more on vaccine injuries. Before taking office, he made money connecting people with claims of vaccine harm to a law firm that sued manufacturers. More recently, his allies in Congress have hosted hearings featuring people who said their family members experienced vaccine injuries.

The Washington Post report came as the as the CDC reported that Covid hospitalization rates are peaking nationwide. The virus has contributed to more than 15,000 deaths in 2025 through the first week of September, according to the agency.

Source: Bloomberg

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

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Kevin Du

Political

President Donald Trump has repeatedly deployed the US military for domestic assignments. In June, he summoned the Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles — over the objections of local leaders — to subdue protests against his administration’s mass arrests of migrants. And in August, Trump called up the Guard to combat violent street crime in Washington, DC.

The president has repeatedly suggested he will extend the campaign to other cities. “We’re going to Memphis,” Trump said on Sept. 12, adding that he believes the city is “deeply troubled.” Trump has also discussed plans to deploy troops to Chicago and New York City.

Trump also issued an executive order directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to create “National Guard units around the country specifically trained and equipped to deal with public order issues,” as the president said at a press conference.

Trump’s actions mark a sharp departure from his predecessors. Historically, US presidents have made sparing use of the armed forces for missions within the nation’s borders, a legacy of resistance to the presence of British soldiers in the colonies in the 1700s. Trump’s mobilization of the military domestically has drawn sharp criticism from Democrats as an authoritarian abuse of power.

In 2018, during Trump’s first term, his defense secretary, James Mattis, authorized the deployment of up to 4,000 National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border to support federal agents with surveillance and logistics for immigration enforcement.

In 2020, more than 30 state governors used National Guard troops to curb protests that erupted after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Two years later, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper testified to a House committee that he and others had needed to persuade Trump not to deploy active-duty troops — those serving in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines — in US cities as well. At the time, Trump felt the widespread unrest made the US look weak, Esper told the committee.

As Trump campaigned for a second term, he made clear he wanted to be more aggressive in using the military. At an event in Iowa in 2023 he labeled several big cities “crime dens” and said he had previously been held back from sending in the military.

Following up on his vow to target an estimated 11 million immigrants who are in the country illegally, Trump in January ordered a new deployment of Army soldiers and Marines to the border to help block migrants from crossing without authorization. The Defense Department said at least four military planes would be used to help carry out deportations of about 5,000 detained migrants from El Paso and San Diego. As of early July, about 8,500 military personnel were stationed at the border.

In June, the president sent 4,000 National Guard troops and about 700 US Marines to Los Angeles for 60 days amid protests against immigration raids in the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area. In July, after protest activity faded, most of the troops were recalled.

In early August, Trump announced he would take federal control of Washington, DC’s police department and deploy National Guard troops there, escalating his push to exert power over the nation’s capital. On Aug. 12, troops began arriving in the city. As of Aug. 26, about 2,200 National Guard soldiers had been deployed to Washington.

On Aug. 22, The Pentagon said that National Guard troops deployed to Washington will begin carrying firearms. The order was a reversal for the Army, which had said on Aug. 14 that weapons would be available but “remain in the armory.”

The law strictly limits the federal deployment of troops within US borders.

The US Constitution provides that neither the president nor Congress can use the armed forces to carry out their policy agenda without consent from the other branch. Domestic deployment of active-duty military personnel has historically been viewed as an option of last resort.

The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, along with amendments and supporting regulations, generally bars the use of the active-duty US military from carrying out domestic law enforcement. Important exceptions to the 1878 law are contained in the 1807 Insurrection Act and its modern iterations, which allow the president, without congressional approval, to employ the military for domestic use in certain extreme circumstances. The Insurrection Act has been used very rarely to deploy troops under federal control domestically without a request from a state government, and modern examples mostly date from the Civil Rights era.

Occasionally, a president has deployed National Guard troops to respond to civil unrest and rioting, but almost always at the request of a state’s governor. President Lyndon Johnson, for example, sent National Guard soldiers under federal control to Detroit, Chicago and Baltimore to help quell race riots in the late 1960s after governors asked for help. Likewise, President George H.W. Bush activated the California National Guard in 1992 at the request of Governor Pete Wilson and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley when rioting broke out in the city following a jury’s acquittal of police officers charged with severely beating a Black man, Rodney King, after a high-speed car chase.

The last time a president activated a state’s National Guard without a request from the governor was in 1965, when Johnson used the guard to protect civil rights demonstrators in Alabama after the governor refused to do so.

In recent decades, both Republican and Democratic presidents, including George W. Bush and Barack Obama, have relied on the National Guard and active-duty military members to reinforce US Customs and Border Protection with tasks including engineering, aviation and logistical support. But Trump has gone further by creating military zones along the US-Mexico border where troops can detain migrants without running afoul of restrictions on their involvement in domestic law enforcement.

Trump has repeatedly signaled he might invoke the Insurrection Act, though he has not done so. Instead, the Trump administration has justified deployments by arguing that local and state officials have failed to restore order in their jurisdictions. In his takeover of policing in the District of Columbia, Trump declared a public safety emergency under a provision of DC’s Home Rule Act that allows him to temporarily assume control of the city’s Metropolitan Police Department.

In Trump’s announcement of the DC deployment, he painted a nightmarish picture of a Washington that’s been “overtaken” by “bloodthirsty criminals” and “roving mobs of wild youth.” That was at odds with a finding from the Justice Department in January that violent crime in the capital reached a 30-year low in 2024.

To unilaterally dispatch the California National Guard to Los Angeles, Trump cited a provision of Title 10 of the US Code that permits the president to deploy the guard in cases of invasion by a foreign nation, a rebellion, or danger of a rebellion. Under this statute, troops are still not permitted to do civilian law enforcement.

On June 7, the president issued a proclamation giving Hegseth the authority to direct troops to take “reasonably necessary” actions to protect immigration agents and other federal workers and federal property. It also permits him to use members of the regular armed forces “as necessary to augment and support the protection of federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion.”

On June 9, California Governor Gavin Newsom filed a lawsuit challenging the Los Angeles deployment. Following a three-day trial in August, US District Judge Charles Breyer ruled on Sep. 2 that Trump’s actions “willfully” violated the Posse Comitatus Act.

Breyer rejected the administration’s argument that concern about the ability of federal employees to do their jobs without interruption was an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, saying that such an exception “would be limitless in principle.”

In Los Angeles, the president’s move to stop what he called “migrant riots” was condemned as inflammatory and unnecessary by local officials, including Mayor Karen Bass and Newsom, who would normally be responsible for requesting such a mobilization.

DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued Trump on Aug. 15, alleging the president exceeded his authority in taking control of the Metropolitan Police Department and deploying hundreds of National Guard troops to the nation’s capital. At a judge’s urging, US Attorney General Pam Bondi agreed to let DC police chief Pamela Smith remain in charge of her department, while directing DC Mayor Muriel Bowser to assist with federal immigration enforcement and enforce laws barring homeless people from occupying public spaces.

Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson condemned Trump’s warnings that he may deploy troops to Chicago and other cities.

“After using Los Angeles and Washington, DC as his testing ground for authoritarian overreach, Trump is now openly flirting with the idea of taking over other states and cities,” Pritzker said. “Trump’s goal is to incite fear in our communities and destabilize existing public safety efforts — all to create a justification to further abuse his power.”

Source: Bloomberg Europe

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Adam

Economic

An executive order signed last month by President Donald Trump aims to make it easier for workplace retirement plans like 401(k)s to offer investments in alternative assets, like private equity and private credit.

Supporters of the idea believe it would “democratize” access to investments that largely have been available only to institutions and very wealthy individuals. They say it would provide retail investors better exposure to the whole economy since so many companies choose to remain private.

It’s also touted as a chance for ordinary investors to potentially get better long-term returns on their money. But is that true?

The question of how private markets have performed relative to public markets is the subject of debate. So the answer you get depends on who you ask, what studies they’re referring to and the metrics they choose to compare.

Different metrics lead to different outcomes

While some studies say private markets have outperformed, others say that they haven’t.

This discrepancy is driven in part by which public benchmarks researchers use for comparison, what type of private funds they analyze, how they calculate the private funds’ returns and what timeframes they choose for measuring performance.

For starters, there is no index for private assets that is comparable to public market indexes like the S&P 500 or Russell 2000. So you can’t make a true apples-to-apples comparison, said Zane Carmean, director of quantitative research at market data firm PitchBook.

And there is no uniform way that researchers measure private funds’ performance.

They may calculate what are called “public market equivalent” (PME) returns — but there are different ways to measure those, each with their pros and cons, Carmean said.

Another metric used is the “internal rate of return” (IRR). But in a recent article, Jack Shannon, Morningstar’s principal of equity strategies, warned these are “not the compounded, annualized returns everyday investors are used to, so they should be skeptical of any marketing materials that compare IRRs with the annualized return of a public benchmark.”

So, when asked if private markets have outperformed public ones, you often may get a yes from those who favor giving retail investors access to alternative investments.

“Our updated analysis finds that private equity and credit funds continue to generate high returns and offer significant portfolio diversification opportunities,” the Committee for Capital Markets Regulation, a financial policy research group, said in a report last month.

The committee’s report cites many studies suggesting outperformance relative to public equity indexes over time. One found that if private equity buyout funds had accounted for 20% of the equity portion of a traditional balanced 60-40 portfolio between 1995 and 2017, it would have reduced the portfolio’s risk — and it would have increased average annual returns by about three-quarters of a percentage point, after accounting for the higher fees normally charged by private investments.

But other researchers and retirement experts may say private markets have not outperformed public ones.

For instance, a recent study by Ludovic Phalippou — professor of financial economics at Oxford University’s Said Business School and author of the book “Private Equity Laid Bare” — concluded that private equity funds returned “about the same as” public equity indexes since at least 2006.

“There is no clear outperformance in the US. There is in Europe, but it seems driven by (a) different industry mix,” Phalippou said in an email to CNN.

Meanwhile, a 2022 study by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston University focused on returns for public pension plans that invest in a mix of public and alternative private assets, like private equity and real estate. It concluded that “from 2001-2022, alternatives have not helped overall returns although they may have reduced volatility.”

Another critical comparison will need to be made for 401(k) plans

Beyond the public benchmark comparisons, 401(k) plan sponsors should consider whether the private options that will be pitched to them are likely to perform as well as traditional private funds.

To better fit the needs of 401(k) participants, the new products will have to be structured differently than a traditional private investment fund. Traditional funds typically have very high fees, very little transparency and only call for investors to put their money in when the managers have secured a deal to invest in; and traditional funds often require investors to keep their money in the fund until it offloads given assets after a number of years.

By contrast, an investment product with private asset exposure designed for workplace retirement plans may have somewhat lower costs and let investors put money in regularly as well as make periodic withdrawals during the year. But the product may limit how many redemptions investors can make to ensure liquidity demands can be met.

What’s more, the money invested on a regular basis by a 401(k) participant might not be put to work until the fund manager finds the next deal to invest in. That means they could see a somewhat lower return over time if their money spends a lot of time held in cash or cash-equivalent assets before being deployed.

“The returns are based off the timing of the inflows and outflows of cash into the fund,” Shannon, the Morningstar analyst, said in an interview about private assets.

Even if a new product charges investors less than what they would have to pay in a traditional private fund, they still will pay more than what they’d be charged in index funds, some of which can cost as little as $3 to $10 a year for every $10,000 invested.

“The new products being designed for 401(k)s and wealth platforms add yet another layer of costs (distribution fees, liquidity management fees, platform charges) on top of the already high fee structure of traditional PE funds,” Phalippou said.

Bottom line: “It is certainly possible that some of these new products may beat a traditional, public-market equity fund. But they’re going to need to clear significant fee hurdles to do so, as these funds are much costlier than the average (exchange-traded fund) investors are used to,” Shannon said.

Then again, he also expects a number of new products will offer “hybrid portfolios that mix both public and private assets.”

“We are seeing a lot of development in this space, particularly with collective investment trusts, which is a good thing, as CITs often require daily liquidity, and having too much private exposure in a daily liquid vehicle would be a recipe for disaster,” Shannon said.