Elon Musk was a prolific Twitter user long before he purchased the social media platform in 2022. In fact, his regular activity likely influenced his decision to buy the platform. However, his posting frequency has increased dramatically over time, making it challenging for followers to keep up with his timeline.
Interestingly, some people are now placing bets of more than $1 million dollars on how many posts Musk will share in a week. A Forbes study found that his posts appear much more frequently to X users than those of others. At the very least, the guessing game has made his posts much more interesting to follow.
Just like sports betting or horse racing, gamblers have discovered a new opportunity in predicting how many posts the X owner will share in the next seven days. Will it be 300, 400, or even 800?
Keeping an Eye on Musk’s Timeline
Polymarket is a popular prediction market. In fact, it was widely used during the last presidential elections. People are now placing bets on it to predict Musk’s activity. Polymarket operates on a system where users buy shares to bet on specific outcomes. As such, the value of a bet is determined by the number of shares purchased for a particular option.
This system combines elements of betting and the stock market, resulting in lower prices for more common bets than for more unusual ones.
For the week ending Jan. 17, bets have already accumulated a total volume of $1.9 million, which isn’t the first time this level has been reached.
However, does this mean that the winner of a bet automatically becomes a millionaire? Not necessarily. The prizes are distributed based on the number of shares purchased for each bet.
Currently, the option with the highest likelihood of winning (64%) predicts that Musk will share more than 400 posts between Jan. 10 and Jan. 17. This is followed by a bet predicting that the number of comments will fall between 400 and 450.
Polymarket tracks the count of posts using Xtracker, which is an external tool that records all posts made from Musk’s X account. This includes direct posts on his feed, quoted posts, and reposts from other accounts, though replies aren’t included in the count.
Xtracker also provides the ability to export data about Musk’s content and posting patterns, allowing experts to analyze his usage of the social media platform. One Polymarket user examined his activity for the weekly cycle running from Jan. 10-17, noting, “Current tweets per day is at 50, on pace to hit 350. To get to 400+, he’d need to average more than 65 per day for the remaining time. While that is a fair bit more, it’s not *that* much. With the upcoming Starship test flight, he might be tweeting a bit more than these past few days.”
Image | Daniel Oberhaus
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