Vitalik: “$70,000 profit on Polymarket last year… I bet against ‘overheating’”

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum (ETH), is reported to have generated about $70,000 in profit last year on Polymarket, a global decentralized prediction market.

In an interview with Chinese crypto outlet Foresight News published on the 28th (local time), Buterin said, “I made $70,000 on Polymarket last year,” adding, “The principal was $440,000.”

Asked about his investment strategy, he replied: “I look for an ‘overheated market’ and bet on ‘the overheated thing not happening.’” Buterin said, “For example, there are markets predicting that the value of the dollar will converge to ‘zero (0)’ next year due to extreme panic,” and added, “When market sentiment falls into this kind of irrational overheated state, I bet on the opposite.”

He also touched on prediction-market investment themes. Buterin said, “(The investment areas are) related to politics and tech,” adding, “If you want to make money, you have to jump into markets where people are obsessed with absurd and irrational predictions.”

As for Ethereum’s future direction, he said, “We need to improve the technology.” Buterin said, “Ethereum’s current technology is not sufficient,” adding, “Layer-2 networks have solved scalability issues, but the level of centralization is still high.” He continued, “We need to make Layer 2 more efficient and more decentralized.”

Buterin stressed, “My biggest concern right now is that the crypto industry could devolve into a 100% speculative casino with no real-world applications.” He said, “If that happens, people will get bored and the industry will disappear,” adding, “To prevent that, we must create real value—such as developing decentralized applications that can be integrated across all industries and building a more open DeFi (DeFi).”