# Facts & Figures — Useful Numbers

A pile of accurate, sourced numbers about the Polymarket ecosystem. Drop the relevant ones into the bot's README so the user knows what they're stepping into. Cite a source when you do — half-remembered numbers shipped without sources erode trust.

## The platform

- **Valuation:** ~$9 billion as of 2026, after a $2B funding round. One of the highest-funded crypto projects in recent years.
- **Monthly volume:** $7B+ across 500+ active markets at any given time.
- **Total markets:** 1,500+ active and resolved at any given time, covering politics, sports, crypto, economics, geopolitics, entertainment.
- **Settlement chain:** Polygon mainnet (chain id 137). USDC.e is the collateral.
- **Resolution:** UMA Optimistic Oracle. Disputed resolutions can take days.
- **Fees:** 0–2% on profits depending on market. Many markets are 0%. Always check before sizing edge.
- **Gas per transaction:** ~$0.007 on Polygon under normal conditions. Approval transactions ~$0.05.

## Bot economics — what's been documented

- **$40M extracted** by arbitrage bots from Polymarket between **April 2024 and April 2025** (IMDEA / arxiv 2508.03474, "Unravelling the Probabilistic Forest"). 86 million transactions analyzed.
- **$29M of that $40M** came from NegRisk multi-condition rebalancing (73% of profit, 8.6% of opportunities).
- **Top single trader:** $2,009,632 from 4,049 trades = $496 average profit per trade.
- **41% of conditions** analyzed had at least one single-market arbitrage opportunity.
- **Median mispricing** on those conditions: markets that should sum to $1.00 were summing to $0.60.
- **Bot earnings (commercial estimate):** trading bots earned an estimated $40M on Polymarket between April 2024 and April 2025.

## Reported individual results (cherry-picked, treat as upper tail)

These are real reports but heavily survivor-biased:

- "$2,000 → $75,000 in a single day" (Cursor + Claude API bot, anonymous programmer)
- "$313 → $414,000 in one month" (January 2026, anonymous trader)
- "$2.2M in two months" (top-tier HFT operation)
- "$10,000 → $100,000 in six months" (anonymous, pure arbitrage strategy, 10,000+ markets traded)
- "$13 profit after 3 hours" (Bullpen CLI demo, $5/trade, copy trading) — much closer to median first-week reality

## End-game sweep economics ("fish" quote)

- ~90% of large orders ($10k+) on Polymarket execute at prices above 0.95
- Buying at 0.97 or 0.98 and waiting to settle ≈ 2–3% return per trade
- 0.5% per trade × dozens per day × $10,000 = "amazing annual return" if executed cleanly

## Latency benchmarks

| Activity | Typical latency |
|---|---|
| WebSocket book event arrival | < 200ms from CLOB |
| Market order fill (FOK) | sub-second |
| GTC order on-book | sub-second |
| End-to-end copy-trade with WS | 1.5–2.5s |
| End-to-end copy-trade with REST polling | 4–14s |
| Polygon block time | ~2s |
| UMA challenge period | hours, sometimes days |

## Liquidity reality check

- Most active markets: $50k–$5M open interest
- 5-min crypto markets: $5k–$50k per window
- Tail markets: <$1k — avoid for any strategy that needs to size meaningfully

## Tools landscape (snapshot)

- **Bullpen** — all-in-one trading + perp app, founded by Ansem (@blknoiz06), seed led by 6th Man Ventures. Has a CLI that integrates with Claude Code.
- **PolyGun** — Telegram bot. 1% flat fee, gas sponsored. Acquired Polymarket Analytics in March 2026 (2.3M+ trader database).
- **PolyCop** — Telegram copy-trading bot.
- **Polymarket Analytics** — analytics site, now owned by PolyGun.
- **Polydex / Polydupe** — leaderboards & whale-trade copy products.
- **TradeFox** — prediction market aggregator, Alliance DAO + CMT Digital backed (~$1.1M pre-seed).
- **Betmoar** — analytics + market analysis ("GMGN of prediction markets").
- **Glint, Kreo** — news-driven trading interfaces with XRP / Polymarket / Kalshi feeds.
- **OpenClaw / "Clawdbot"** — viral self-hosted Claude-with-hands agent, 145k+ GitHub stars, used as a Polymarket trading brain.

## Open source you should know about

- **Polymarket/py-clob-client** — Python SDK, 1.1M monthly PyPI downloads, 1,058 GitHub stars (as of early 2026).
- **Polymarket/py-clob-client-v2** — successor, April 2026, early stage.
- **Polymarket/agents** — official LangChain + Polymarket agent framework, Liam (Polymarket eng).
- **Polymarket/poly-market-maker** — official market maker keeper, Bands or AMM strategy.
- **warproxxx/poly-maker** — community fork w/ Google Sheets parameter control, position merging, automatic market selection.
- **terrytrl100/polymarket-automated-mm** — fork with reduced order churn (95% fewer cancels).
- **Polymarket/real-time-data-client** — official TS client for the real-time data WebSocket service.
- **nevuamarkets/poly-websockets** — TS library with auto-reconnect, dynamic subs, derived prices.
- **GiordanoSouza/polymarket-copy-trading-bot** — Python copy-trading reference, Supabase-backed.
- **Polymarket/python-order-utils** — low-level order signing utilities.
- **Polymarket/agents** — multi-source LangChain framework with a CLI front-end.
- **paulieB14/graph-polymarket-mcp** — MCP server exposing 20 Polymarket tools to Claude/Cursor over The Graph subgraphs.

## Numbers the videos cited

The three source videos covered, in order:

1. **Sharbel A. — "Full Polymarket Bot Build | Claude Code Tutorial"** (Apr 6, 2026): Bullpen CLI + Claude Code copy-trading demo. $5/trade fixed sizing, top 10 leaderboard wallets, ran live for 3 hours, ended **+$13 profit**. Honest take: copy trading is not guaranteed money; the real skill is "knowing what to ask AI".
2. **Mr.Profit — "$500/Day Polymarket Trading Bot"** (Apr 15, 2026): polybuild.app no-code framework + paid Skool community ("Prediction Profits"). Marketed as $763/day; numbers not independently verified. Treat as marketing.
3. **ItsRagnar — "I Let AI Copy Trade on Polymarket for 7 Days"** (Mar 22, 2026): autonomous Claude Code copy trader, $500 starting capital, 4 target wallets, 7-day run with what the title calls "shocking results". Concrete copied wallets:
   - `0xeb49e4a9b5b8335a00a731eec5b710b586c11fbe`
   - `0x339a0e5aea39a7db5cea5b0003abab33c78c1eae`
   - `0xbf2c878cd5d6043697b32067be141647deeb097c`
   - `0x436f969d99c90191fbc2c629e6b7a1b754402c7f`

These wallets are public — anyone can copy-trade them, and many already do. Including them in a copy-trading bot is fine as a starting watchlist, but **don't blindly trust other people's wallet picks** — re-evaluate by category win rate before committing capital.

## Account-creation friction

- Polymarket sign-up: email or wallet, no KYC for most users
- Funding: USDC.e on Polygon, also accepts cards/crypto bridges via the UI
- Withdrawal: USDC to Polygon address; some regions blocked (US users have access via the regulated subsidiary)
- API: no key needed for read endpoints; trading credentials derived from wallet signature on first call

## Cost of running a 24/7 bot

(API costs only — assumes hobbyist scale)

| Component | Monthly |
|---|---|
| Polygon RPC (free tier QuickNode/Alchemy) | $0 |
| Polygon RPC (paid for production) | ~$10 |
| Polymarket APIs (read + write) | $0 |
| Anthropic API (light, AI-driven bot) | $50–$200 |
| Anthropic API (heavy, AI-driven bot) | $250–$1000 |
| VPS (DigitalOcean droplet) | $6–$12 |
| Data store (SQLite local) | $0 |
| Discord/Telegram alerts | $0 |
| **Total — minimal alert-only bot** | $0–$15 |
| **Total — small AI-driven bot** | $60–$220 |
| **Total — heavy 24/7 AI bot** | $260–$1010 |

AI Perks (third party) reportedly offers $1k–$25k+ in free Anthropic credits for early-stage builders.

## "Polymarket vs Kalshi" quick read

- **Polymarket:** crypto-native, on Polygon, USDC, no KYC for most users, broader market list
- **Kalshi:** US-regulated CFTC-registered, KYC + bank link required, fewer markets, US-only effectively
- **Limitless / Opinion Labs:** smaller, niche
- For cross-platform arb, Polymarket and Kalshi are the main pair. Kalshi reactions often lag Polymarket on US-political news; the reverse on US-economic news.

## Quotes to drop in a README (with attribution)

> "Automation without discipline is just faster loss."
> — polycopytrade.space, "How a Polymarket Copy Trading Bot Works", March 2026

> "Don't build UI until you've validated the workflow. The CLI was the product."
> — Örvar Karlsson, "Building an Automated Polymarket Trading System with Claude Code", Medium, March 2026

> "On Polymarket, about 90% of large orders over $10,000 are executed at prices above 0.95."
> — veteran trader "fish", quoted in Bitget News, October 2025

> "The real skill now: knowing what to ask AI."
> — Sharbel A., "Full Polymarket Bot Build", April 2026