Vice President Kamala Harris is likely to announce her running mate within a week. According to prediction market Polymarket, there are four front-runners. While no poll nor market can guarantee an outcome, Polymarket has a pretty strong track record of forecasting this election's twist and turns so far.
Polymarket priced in a 10% chance of President Joe Biden dropping out of the race, even before his infamous debate against Donald Trump in late June. The day before Trump announced his pick for JD Vance to be his running mate, Polymarket had this outcome at 68%.
On prediction markets, traders exchange contracts that pay based on the outcomes of unknown future events. The prices generated from these contracts are like a collective prediction among market participants. So, the price equates to the odds. "If you aggregate everybody's economic interests in one place, you should get to a source of a probability or a source of truth," said Rob Hadick, a partner at the venture capital firm Dragonfly and an investor in Polymarket.
JD being VP is another huge win for @Polymarket, which favored him earlier than anywhere else
— Shayne Coplan (@shayne_coplan) July 15, 2024
Polymarket is officially becoming the internet’s source of truth. It’s the new news.
Only a matter of time before everyone realizes https://t.co/ZKkpDZgDeO
On July 30, here’s who Polymarket said is most likely to be picked as Harris's VP, as well as any stances they've taken on crypto.
Mark Kelly: 36%
Sen. Kelly (D-Ariz.) joined the Senate in 2020 and is a retired NASA astronaut. In May, Kelly voted in favor of overturning Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 121, or SAB-121, a bill that critics argue deters investment banks from offering crypto custody at scale.
Josh Shapiro: 33%
Shapiro has been the governor of Pennsylvania since 2023, and prior to that was the state’s Attorney General. Shapiro and Bitcoin miner Stronghold Digital Mining were sued in March by environmental organization Save Carbon County. The plaintiffs allege Shapiro facilitated the miner’s polluting the local environment by granting it tax credits and failing to regulate its activity.
Tim Walz: 17%
Walz, the governor of Minnesota, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for the state’s 1st District between 2007–2019. Walz has never publicly spoken about crypto, and his tenure in the House predates the industry's major bills, making it hard to gauge where he might stand on digital assets.
However, Walz’s track record of voting in favor of technological progress could be read as open-mindedness. He supported the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act in 2016, which aimed to improve the competitiveness of the U.S. tech sector. In 2019, Walz voted in favor of the Save the Internet Act, which aimed to restore the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality—the concept of “open, equal internet for everyone, regardless of device, application or platform used and content consumed.”
Pete Buttigieg: 7%
Buttigieg, the U.S. Secretary for Transportation, said during his own 2020 campaign to be the Democratic nominee that Bitcoin should be “treated as a commodity,” thus suggesting the Securities and Exchange Commission should not have regulatory oversight of the currency.
Dark horse: Gary Peters
While Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) is not yet listed on Polymarket's roster, Axios reported on Monday that unions are pushing for Harris to put Peters' name on the ticket. The senator is “strongly against crypto," according to political action committee Stand With Crypto. In 2023, Peters cosponsored Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Ma.) Digital Asset Money Laundering Act. The act seeks to undermine the use of crypto in terror financing. When the legislation was first introduced, Peters wrote to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, stating: “Given the clear and present danger posed by the financing of these and other militant organizations, we ask the Administration to provide additional details on its plan to prevent the use of crypto for the financing of terrorism.”
However, it's worth noting Peters did vote in favor of repealing SAB-121.
