Cryptocurrency trading is turning into a contest of “irrational exuberance,” according to Shayne Coplan, chief executive of prediction market platform Polymarket, as traders race to become the earliest backers of the next 100x token — slang for an asset investors hope will multiply their money a hundredfold.

“People think they’re buying something, it’s worthless, but they’re buying it. If it can go to 100X, they want to sell it before it goes back to zero,” Coplan said during a fireside chat at Token2049 Singapore, a major annual cryptocurrency industry conference, on Wednesday.

He acknowledged that some traders have generated significant wealth through this strategy, but described it as a “game of irrational exuberance and hot potato,” in which asset prices that rise must eventually come back down.

The phrase echoes Nobel laureate economist Robert J. Shiller, whose 2000 book “Irrational Exuberance” examined how optimism spreads through psychology, social dynamics, and feedback effects. In a similar vein, some cryptocurrency traders are drawn to the asset class by the allure of quick wealth creation, though identifying the next winning altcoin remains difficult. In December, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes argued that altcoin season never actually ended — traders had simply missed most of the cycle’s biggest winners.

Polymarket’s traction points to demand for predictable odds

Polymarket’s growing user adoption signals that some traders are looking for wagers with more predictable odds rather than the next major cryptocurrency, according to Coplan.

Prediction markets let users trade contracts tied to the outcomes of real-world events, with prices serving as crowd-sourced probabilities of each result — and with payoffs capped at a contract’s fixed settlement value rather than open-ended upside.

“On Polymarket, if you’re trading these markets, there’s no exponential upside,” he explained, adding that informed traders continue taking these bets to wager on future events with more predictable probabilities.

Data from DefiLlama, an on-chain analytics platform, shows Polymarket ranks as the second-largest prediction market, with $1.21 billion in prediction volume over the past seven days. Sector leader Kalshi logged $2.3 billion over the same period.

A December report from 10x Research argued that prediction markets are becoming the new battleground of the crypto economy, where data-driven “elite” traders profit from the “information asymmetry” and spreads created by casual investors seeking a quick buck.

The sector’s growth has also attracted increasing regulatory scrutiny in the United States. On Aug. 14, JPMorgan Chase reportedly ended a banking relationship with Polymarket over regulatory concerns, while saying it remains keen on a potential underwriting role should Polymarket seek to go public.

More than a dozen US states have taken legal action against Polymarket, Kalshi, or both over sports event contracts, and authorities in several countries have also blocked or restricted access to Polymarket. How those legal challenges are resolved — and whether Polymarket ultimately pursues a public listing — stand out as developments to watch for a sector whose weekly volume now runs into the billions of dollars.