A brand new evaluation by Bitget Pockets of 1.29 million Polymarket wallets in Q1 2026 reveals how prediction market customers truly behave: they arrive by way of crypto and keep for sports activities.
Singapore Summit: Meet the most important APAC brokers you understand (and people you continue to do not!).
The discovering has sensible implications for brokers and fintech platforms constructing on this house. The information reveals a transparent person development, with distinct merchandise driving acquisition and retention at totally different levels.
The Entry Level: Crypto
Crypto markets are the place most new customers begin. Among the many smallest merchants on the platform — these with the bottom exercise ranges — crypto accounts for almost 40% of all buying and selling quantity. These are markets that retail customers already know, out there across the clock, with median commerce sizes for Bitcoin and Ethereum sitting at $2–$3.
The capital dedication is low sufficient that the platform itself is actually a check setting. The broader person base is closely retail in composition. In Q1, 82.3% of all wallets traded below $10,000 — the expansion is coming from quantity of individuals, not focus on the prime.
This retail-driven entry level contrasts with the rising institutional curiosity within the sector, suggesting that person acquisition and capital deployment are nonetheless pushed by totally different segments.
The Retention Driver: Sports activities
Crypto pulls customers in, however sports activities hold them. As merchants transfer up in exercise ranges, their share of crypto buying and selling declines and sports activities picks up — from 22.7% amongst lower-volume customers to 29.2% amongst mid-tier ones. In combination, sports activities had been the only largest class by buying and selling quantity in Q1, producing $10.1 billion.
The NBA and English Premier League are cited particularly — leagues with dense, predictable occasion schedules that give customers a recurring cause to return. The mechanic shouldn’t be sophisticated: frequent video games create frequent markets, which maintain frequent engagement.
Throughout the broader market, sports activities dominate prediction market quantity, accounting for roughly 64% of the $75.9 billion tracked by Paradigm’s information set, in contrast with about 13% every for crypto and politics.
Politics and Macro because the Third Layer
Political and geopolitical markets are rising into a definite class. Political markets generated $5 billion in Q1 quantity, with geopolitics accounting for near half of that.
These markets function in a different way from sports activities. They’re news-driven and event-dependent reasonably than calendar-driven, however they add a layer of engagement for customers who deal with prediction markets as a method to value real-world uncertainty. Whole month-to-month quantity on the platform now exceeds $25 billion.
The sample could replicate product design as a lot as person choice — significantly the supply of high-frequency sports activities markets versus extra episodic political or macro occasions.
For brokers, the strategic query the info raises is whether or not this person journey is platform-specific to Polymarket or whether or not it generalizes. The onboarding-through-crypto, retention-through-sports sample suggests product design as a lot as market demand — and that is value analyzing earlier than assuming the playbook transfers.
A brand new evaluation by Bitget Pockets of 1.29 million Polymarket wallets in Q1 2026 reveals how prediction market customers truly behave: they arrive by way of crypto and keep for sports activities.
Singapore Summit: Meet the most important APAC brokers you understand (and people you continue to do not!).
The discovering has sensible implications for brokers and fintech platforms constructing on this house. The information reveals a transparent person development, with distinct merchandise driving acquisition and retention at totally different levels.
The Entry Level: Crypto
Crypto markets are the place most new customers begin. Among the many smallest merchants on the platform — these with the bottom exercise ranges — crypto accounts for almost 40% of all buying and selling quantity. These are markets that retail customers already know, out there across the clock, with median commerce sizes for Bitcoin and Ethereum sitting at $2–$3.
The capital dedication is low sufficient that the platform itself is actually a check setting. The broader person base is closely retail in composition. In Q1, 82.3% of all wallets traded below $10,000 — the expansion is coming from quantity of individuals, not focus on the prime.
This retail-driven entry level contrasts with the rising institutional curiosity within the sector, suggesting that person acquisition and capital deployment are nonetheless pushed by totally different segments.
The Retention Driver: Sports activities
Crypto pulls customers in, however sports activities hold them. As merchants transfer up in exercise ranges, their share of crypto buying and selling declines and sports activities picks up — from 22.7% amongst lower-volume customers to 29.2% amongst mid-tier ones. In combination, sports activities had been the only largest class by buying and selling quantity in Q1, producing $10.1 billion.
The NBA and English Premier League are cited particularly — leagues with dense, predictable occasion schedules that give customers a recurring cause to return. The mechanic shouldn’t be sophisticated: frequent video games create frequent markets, which maintain frequent engagement.
Throughout the broader market, sports activities dominate prediction market quantity, accounting for roughly 64% of the $75.9 billion tracked by Paradigm’s information set, in contrast with about 13% every for crypto and politics.
Politics and Macro because the Third Layer
Political and geopolitical markets are rising into a definite class. Political markets generated $5 billion in Q1 quantity, with geopolitics accounting for near half of that.
These markets function in a different way from sports activities. They’re news-driven and event-dependent reasonably than calendar-driven, however they add a layer of engagement for customers who deal with prediction markets as a method to value real-world uncertainty. Whole month-to-month quantity on the platform now exceeds $25 billion.
The sample could replicate product design as a lot as person choice — significantly the supply of high-frequency sports activities markets versus extra episodic political or macro occasions.
For brokers, the strategic query the info raises is whether or not this person journey is platform-specific to Polymarket or whether or not it generalizes. The onboarding-through-crypto, retention-through-sports sample suggests product design as a lot as market demand — and that is value analyzing earlier than assuming the playbook transfers.
