Galaxy: 69% of Polymarket Retail Traders End in the Red
Galaxy analyzed 2.9 million wallets on the international Polymarket platform. Retail traders are mostly losing, while a small group captures most of the gains.
Key Takeaways
- Galaxy Research says 69.2% of retail accounts on Polymarket ended below break-even.
- Together, those traders are down $338.9 million, based on 2.9 million wallets and the platform’s full on-chain settlement record.
- Losing traders drop off faster, while Galaxy still sees Polymarket as a forecasting tool.
Galaxy Research concludes that 69.2% of retail accounts on Polymarket ended below break-even. In total, those traders are down $338.9 million (€300 million), based on an analysis of 2.9 million wallets and the platform’s full on-chain settlement record.
How Galaxy Counted
The analysis uses data compiled by oracle network Stork and looks only at the international Polymarket platform. That matters because the U.S. app runs separately and is therefore excluded from these figures.
Galaxy tried to separate human traders from scripts using a threshold of 50 orders per active day. The company calls that threshold an estimate, because the researchers say there is no natural dividing line in trading frequency. With that filter, 125,429 accounts were removed, accounting for 80.8% of all orders and a combined $246.8 million (€218 million) in profit.
Among the remaining retail wallets, the median account is about $3 (€2.66) in the red. The losses are concentrated mostly in the tail of the distribution. The worst 1% lost at least $4,804 (€4,250).
Losses Weigh on Activity
Galaxy also found that losing traders drop off faster. Within 30 days after a loss, 15.2% had not traded again, compared with 6.1% after a win. The company does warn, though, that it cannot tell whether multiple wallets belong to one person, so some of the traders who stopped may have simply moved to another address.
The result lines up with earlier research showing how uneven the profit split is on Polymarket. A 2026 study by Andrey Sergeenkov found 84.1% of wallets were unprofitable, while a separate analysis of 1.4 million users showed the top 0.1% of traders captured 58.5% of the profits. That underscores how a small group takes the biggest gains while the majority loses money.
What This Says About Polymarket
For European crypto readers, this mainly shows how tough prediction markets are for active retail trading. At the same time, Galaxy says this does not take away from Polymarket’s role as a forecasting tool for outsiders. According to the company, a market can still work as a source of information even if most participants do not make money themselves.
