How to Bet on Polymarket: A Complete Tutorial

Polymarket is one of the world's two largest prediction markets — roughly $8.6B traded in July 2026 and $58.5B year-to-date, behind Kalshi's $41.1B month (DeFi Rate). It's CFTC-licensed in the US, settles in USDC on the Polygon network, and consistently has the tightest spreads on flagship markets like the 2026 World Cup, the 2028 election, and Fed rate decisions. For a deeper assessment, see our full Polymarket review or how it stacks up in Polymarket vs Kalshi.

If you've never traded a prediction market before, this guide takes you from zero to your first settled trade in under 30 minutes.

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Head to polymarket.com and click Sign up. You can register with email, Google, or a self-custody wallet like MetaMask. Email is easiest — Polymarket creates a custodial Polygon wallet for you in the background.

Complete KYC (driver's license + selfie, ~2 minutes). US users must verify identity to trade.

Polymarket settles every trade in USDC, a US-dollar-pegged stablecoin. You have three funding paths — full breakdown in our Polymarket deposit guide:

• <strong>Debit card</strong> via MoonPay (in-app) — instant, ~3% fee
• <strong>Coinbase / Kraken transfer</strong> — buy USDC, withdraw to your Polymarket Polygon address, ~$1 fee, 2 minutes
• <strong>Bridge from another chain</strong> — advanced; only if you already hold USDC on Ethereum or Base

Browse markets by category. Each market has a YES price and a NO price between 1¢ and 99¢ — those are the market's probability estimates. Buy YES if you think the event is more likely than the price implies; buy NO if you think it's less likely.

Start small. Even $5–$20 is enough to feel the mechanics. Polymarket charges no explicit trading fee — your only cost is the bid-ask spread (typically 0.5–1% on liquid markets).

Each contract pays exactly $1 if it resolves YES, $0 if NO. Buy at 40¢, sell at 80¢ → you doubled your money.

You don't have to wait for the event to settle. Sell back into the order book any time the market is open and pocket the difference. Holding to resolution pays out the full $1 per contract automatically, settled by the UMA optimistic oracle.

Withdraw USDC to Coinbase, then convert to USD and ACH to your bank. Full step-by-step in our Polymarket withdrawal guide.