Polymarket: Where People Bet Real Money on Anwar’s Job, Jesus vs. GTA VI, and Everything in Between
A rabbit hole into prediction markets led to a live Polymarket bet on Anwar Ibrahim’s job security and a regulatory grey area Malaysia hasn’t yet figured out how to handle.
- Polymarket lets users bet real money on anything from elections to Jesus's Second Coming, with prices reflecting collective probability estimates.
- Malaysia has not banned Polymarket yet, unlike Singapore and Indonesia, though outdated gambling laws make its legal status genuinely unclear.
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A few days ago, I went down a rabbit hole reading about prediction markets, and somewhere down the line, I found something I didn’t expect.
There is a live market on Polymarket betting on whether Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim will still be in office by the end of the year.
And after doing some more digging, it’s not just Anwar.
In the run-up to the recent Johor state election, Polymarket had a market on which coalition would win the most seats and in the final days before voting, it gave Barisan Nasional a roughly 93% chance of winning, against Pakatan Harapan’s 4%.
BN won. The market called it almost to the point.
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So what exactly are prediction markets, why are they apparently better informed than half our WhatsApp group chats, and is any of this even legal in Malaysia?
What Are Prediction Markets Anyway?
At their core, prediction markets are platforms where people can put money on the outcome of pretty much anything.
Elections. Interest rate decisions. Sports championships. Whether a war breaks out.
If you can turn it into a yes-or-no question, someone on Polymarket has probably already built a market for it.
There’s a market asking whether the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will happen before GTA VI is released. (As of writing, GTA VI is still winning.)
There was one asking whether Donald Trump would say the word “hottest” during a meeting with (now former) UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Over USD1.3 million was staked on that single word.
These examples sound like jokes, but they’re not. People have, and are, trading a lot of money on them.
How Do Prediction Markets Work?
The mechanics are actually pretty simple.
Every market is a yes/no question.
You buy “Yes” shares or “No” shares. If a share is priced at 30 cents, the market is collectively saying there’s roughly a 30% chance of that outcome happening.
As news breaks – a resignation, a by-election result, a policy U-turn – traders buy and sell, and the price shifts in real time.
The interesting part is that some analysts say that prediction markets can be more reliable than the usual opinion polls, because people are putting their money where their mouths are.
In theory, that filters out the noise. People with good information have an incentive to trade on it. People who are just guessing tend to lose money and eventually stop.
The Johor call is basically the case study for why this works.
Prediction Markets Aren’t Right About Everything
The Anwar market is a good counterweight to that success story, because it shows where prediction markets get shaky: liquidity.
As of writing, the “Anwar out by end of 2026” contract has seen only a few hundred dollars in total trading volume, with roughly $1,400 in liquidity behind it.
That’s tiny.
On a market that thin, one trader with a few hundred ringgit to spare can move the price meaningfully.
This means a headline like “prediction market gives Anwar a 31% chance of exit” is really “one or two people with strong opinions and a Polymarket wallet have currently pushed the price to 31%.”
This is worth remembering any time these numbers get quoted.
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Something else to keep in mind is that the user base of these markets are heavily skewed toward crypto-native traders rather than the general public.
And most of them aren’t even Malaysian – so the “31%” isn’t really a read on what Malaysians think either.
Are Prediction Markets Even Legal In Malaysia?
Here’s where it gets kinda murky.
For one, Malaysia’s authorities haven’t blocked Polymarket.
Unlike Singapore, where the Gambling Regulatory Authority formally classified the platform as illegal gambling and had it restricted back in January 2025, no Malaysian regulator has issued a specific ruling on prediction markets one way or the other.
Part of the problem is that the law wasn’t built for this.
Malaysia’s core gambling legislation – the Betting Act and the Common Gaming Houses Act – both date back to 1953, decades before anyone imagined betting on an election outcome from a phone using digital dollars.
There’s also a real argument to be had over whether it should even be treated as gambling at all, rather than, say, a financial derivative – a debate regulators elsewhere are still having too.
But given that neighbouring Singapore has already acted, and Indonesia blocked the platform entirely in May after a market on President Prabowo Subianto’s tenure went viral, it’s not hard to imagine our regulators eventually being forced to take a position of their own.
For now, the market’s still open. Whether Malaysia decides to weigh in might end up being a market featured on Polymarket.
Disclaimer: This article is published solely for informational and educational purposes. It is not intended to promote, encourage, endorse, or facilitate gambling or betting activities in any form.
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