Reddit user predicts BTC to exceed $50,000 and earns 550% return | CoinDesk JAPAN

• Bitcoin's rise above $50,000 brought big profits to those who bet on the YES side of Polymarket's “Will BTC reach $50,000 in February?”
• Anonymous trader u/MeLLoN98 made a 550% profit and is now betting that “Bitcoin price will reach an all-time high by the end of the first quarter.”

Gone are the days of betting on spot or futures markets or creating complex decentralized financial strategies to make big bucks in the crypto market. Now, some traders are generating market-beating returns through decentralized prediction platform Polymarket.

In a recent example, anonymous user u/MeLLoN98, a core member of Reddit's r/CryptoCurrency community, posted 90,000 YES on Polymarket's “Will BTC hit $50,000 in February?” He purchased more than “stocks” and achieved an astonishing return rate of 550%.

The bet comes after Bitcoin (BTC) rose above $50,000 on Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange Coinbase, hitting its highest price since December 2021. The decision was made with a “YES'' on the 12th. At Polymarket, you can buy and sell “stocks'' that are redeemable for $1 if your bet is correct.

“I exchanged 110,000 MOON for 14,000 USDC on Kraken and bought 91,409 shares at an average price of about 15 cents. That's $14,000 (approximately 2.1 million yen, 1 dollar = 150 yen) I paid $91,400 (approx. JPY 13,710,000),” u/MeLLoN98 told CoinDesk in an interview on X. MOON is the native token of the r/CryptoCurrency community with 7.4 million users.

Prediction bet now closed “Will BTC reach $50,000 in February?” (Polymarket)

MOON, an ERC-20 token, will be distributed as a reward to community members for posting and commenting on the subreddit, and can be freely traded and used for various purposes within the community. USD Coin (USDC) is the second largest dollar-pegged stablecoin in the world, with a market capitalization of over $27 billion (approximately 4.5 trillion yen).

So u/MeLLoN98 used his free MOON tokens to bet on the price of Bitcoin and won $91,400.

“MOON will join Arbitrum One next month in partnership with Celer Network, so we will have more liquidity,” he said, explaining his plans to buy more MOON.

Polymarket also has several other bets related to Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH). One, announced in December, allows traders to bet on whether BTC prices will rise to all-time highs on Binance before March 31st. At the time of writing, shares on the yes side of this bet were trading at 18 cents, representing just an 18% chance that Bitcoin would rise above $68,789 by the end of the first quarter.

u/MeLLoN98, who goes by the name RedditMoons-10$ on Polymarket, has purchased over 230,000 shares of YES.

“This time the bet is even crazier. You paid about $27,000 (about 4,050,000 yen) and if you hit, you'll get $230,000 (about 34,500,000 yen),” wrote u/MeLLoN98. Told.

｜Translation: CoinDesk JAPAN
｜Edited by: Toshihiko Inoue
｜Image: Shutterstock
｜Original text: MOON Holder Makes 550% on Predictions Platform Polymarket as Bitcoin Moves Above $50K