- Jurors in Donald Trump's hush money trial are expected to return a verdict this week.
- People are placing bets on the outcome on Polymarket, a cryptocurrency-based marketplace.
- Bettors are waiting for jurors to return a guilty verdict.
As presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump awaits a verdict in his hush money trial, a handful of crypto bettors have made up their minds.
The market “Trump found guilty in secret money case?” of Polymarket now has $115,000 on the line, and bettors put the odds of a guilty verdict at 78%.
That figure has actually dropped since the trial began in April, when Polymarket bettors estimated Trump's odds of being found guilty at 83%.
Polymarket creates betting markets with simple binary options, such as “ETH above $2,000 on June 30?
Bettors buy stocks whose price reflects the probabilities of an outcome at the time of purchase. In the case of the Trump trial, bettors could buy “yes” shares for $0.78 on Thursday. Those actions would be to worth A dollar if they were right (in other words, if Trump is found guilty) and nothing if they were wrong.
Closing arguments in Trump's case began Tuesday and jurors began deliberations Wednesday.
Prosecutors have accused the former president of falsifying business records related to payments to conceal his silence to retired porn star Stormy Daniels.
According to Daniels, she and Trump had an affair in 2006. Trump has denied the allegation.
Join the community to receive our latest stories and updates
In the days before the 2016 election that put Trump in the White House, Michael Cohen, then one of Trump's lawyers, paid Daniels $130,000 to buy her silence.
Trump, in turn, paid Cohen. That's where his legal troubles begin: According to prosecutors, Trump deliberately and illegally labeled the payments as “legal expenses” in an effort to conceal the hush money payments.
Trump faces 34 felony charges in the case. If he is convicted, Trump faces probation or up to four years in prison, according to the New York Times.
Crypto market drivers
- Bitcoin is up 2.1% in the last 24 hours to $68,700.
- Ethereum is up 1% over the same period to around $3,780.
what we are reading
Aleks Gilbert is a DeFi correspondent at DL News. Do you have advice? Contact aleks@dlnews.com.
