Key Points

• Prediction markets are a newly popular source of information about investments, including cryptocurrencies.

• The quality of the data from prediction markets tends to be mediocre.

• And prediction contracts usually don’t answer the most important questions to ask for investing anyway.

The popular betting market Polymarket now hosts more than 5,400 active crypto markets where participants wager on everything from whether Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) will close above $72,000 this week to whether Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) will hit a new all-time high by year-end. And with investors everywhere looking for an edge in turbulent market conditions, it’s quite tempting to treat its predictions as a cheat sheet for what coins will do next.

But prediction…