A study of 1.29M wallets shows users returning more often and trading across more categories, with sports leading at $10.1B and crypto serving as the main onboarding gateway.<\/p>\n
Polymarket processed $25.7 billion in trading volume in March, with retail traders driving consistent, repeated activity across an expanding set of real-world markets, according to a new joint report from Bitget Wallet and Polymarket.<\/p>\n
The study, based on 1.29 million wallets active in Q1 2026, found that 82.3% of users traded under $10,000, indicating that the platform is overwhelmingly retail-driven. Active days per user rose from 2.5 to 9.9 over the study period, while the average number of categories each user traded expanded from 1.45 to 2.34.<\/p>\n
The report frames the shift as behavioral rather than capital-driven, with users returning more frequently and rotating between categories rather than concentrating on one-off events. That tracks with earlier findings from Keyrock and Dune Analytics<\/a>, which pegged on-chain prediction market monthly volumes as having grown 130-fold since early 2024.<\/p>\n Sports emerged as the largest category on Polymarket in Q1, generating $10.1 billion in volume as the constant cadence of global matches drove recurring engagement. The trend mirrors the broader sports-betting surge<\/a> that lifted prediction market activity through late 2025 and into the2026 Super Bowl<\/a>.<\/p>\n Politics generated $5 billion in Q1 volume, including $2.41 billion tied to geopolitics. Unlike past election-driven cycles, the report describes activity as continuously distributed across global news flow, with traders responding to real-time developments rather than discrete events.<\/p>\n Crypto remained the primary entry point for new users, accounting for roughly 40% of early activity. Familiar price action and 24\/7 markets make it a natural starting category, though participation broadens as users return. Polymarket recently leaned further into that funnel, launching 5-minute Bitcoin candle markets<\/a> while teasing a long-rumored POLY token airdrop.<\/p>\n “Prediction markets are becoming less about capital and more about consistent, repeated actions,” noted Bitget Wallet COO Alvin Kan. “What we’re seeing is a behavioral shift: the market is scaling with more taps per day, not bigger trades.”<\/p>\n Elden Mirzoian, director of growth and partnerships at Polymarket, said distribution is becoming as important as the underlying markets, citing the sector’s shift “from episodic trading to more continuous engagement.”<\/p>\n The report cites industry projections of $240 billion in annual volume by year-end 2026, with a longer-term trajectory toward $1 trillion.<\/p>\n Polymarket’s growth has accelerated through a series of structural catalysts. The platform secured CFTC approval to operate in the U.S. in November 2025 and rolled out its U.S. app shortly after, following a $2 billion strategic investment from Intercontinental Exchange. In March, it became MLB’s exclusive prediction market partner<\/a>. Distribution has also broadened through a native integration in MetaMask<\/a>, which began routing user bets to Polymarket late last year.<\/p>\n This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A study of 1.29M wallets shows users returning more often and trading across more categories, with sports leading at $10.1B and crypto serving as the main onboarding gateway. Polymarket processed $25.7 billion in trading volume in March, with retail traders driving consistent, repeated activity across an expanding set of real-world markets, according to a new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425958,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[274,273,272,244,266,271,268,270,269,267],"class_list":["post-425956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-de-fi","tag-crypto-finance","tag-decentralized-finance","tag-liquidity","tag-metamask","tag-pancake","tag-slippage","tag-sushiswap","tag-tronlink","tag-trust-wallet","tag-uniswap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":425959,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425956\/revisions\/425959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}