Polymarket bettors suffered heavy losses in the Pope prediction, raising doubts about the accuracy of rare event predictions.

Odaily News The encryption prediction platform Polymarket's bettors collectively misjudged the election of the new pope, with users betting on the popular candidates Parolin (28% win rate) and Tagle (20% win rate) losing over $28 million, while the actual winner Provoost (1% win rate) was not favored. This rare event exposed the limitations of prediction markets in low-frequency special events, sharply contrasting with its 90% predictive accuracy in political elections. Anonymous top bettor Domer analyzes that the lack of publicly available reference information regarding the papal election leads users to overly rely on traditional data. (CoinDesk)