r/PredictionMarkets: rules, karma requirements and posting culture

Who posts here

The wiki is written for newcomers and points them at play money markets and introductory reading. The feed is split between people who found a 15 minute Bitcoin contract this morning and people pricing that same contract off options volatility and running dozens of bots. A basic question is not told off. It is mostly ignored, because the room rewards a screenshot or a dataset more than a question.

• Retail traders on Kalshi, Polymarket and similar apps, many arriving from stocks, options or sports betting.
• Hobbyist quants and bot builders who post backtests, forward tests and pricing models.
• Sports bettors posting daily picks, often with a sign-up code attached.
• Founders of new prediction market apps and tools looking for testers.
• A smaller group interested in forecasting as an idea, which is what the sidebar and wiki are about.

Karma and account requirements

What it takes to get a post through in r/PredictionMarkets.

What you can post

What happens to a new post

Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 300.

• Stayed up73%
• Removed by Reddit's filters26%
• Deleted by the author1%

Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.

What happened when we posted here

We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.

Stayed up

100%

Removed by Reddit's filters

0%

Removed by moderators

0%

Period

June 2026 to July 2026

The culture

On paper this is a subreddit about prediction markets as a tool for forecasting and decision making. The wiki links to essays on futarchy and calibration. In practice the feed is a trading floor for about 12,000 members, and the names that come up most are Polymarket and Kalshi. Sports markets and short Bitcoin contracts take up most of the room.

The posts that get attention are image posts. A screenshot of a position that swung in the last seconds, a confession about losing several thousand dollars in an hour, a six figure bet on a Fed decision. Every one of the top posts in our sample was a screenshot with a line or two of text. The 15 minute Bitcoin market is the running obsession, with one camp treating it as a slot machine and another trying to price it like a short-dated option.

Moderation is light to the point of absent. There are no published rules, and we saw no moderator removals in 300 posts. Referral links, sign-up codes, daily picks with a promo attached and product announcements all stay up, some in other languages. They also mostly sink without a reply. The median post gets one comment, so the feed is noisy and the real conversation happens in a handful of threads.

What lands

• A screenshot of a real trade with the stakes visible, win or loss. Losses told honestly do as well as wins.
• A write-up of a strategy with numbers: how a contract was priced, how many trades settled, where the money went.
• Negative results. A long account of running many bots and where each one lost money stood out against the usual claims of being up.
• A plain question about a trade-off traders care about, such as fees against liquidity when comparing platforms.
• A complaint about a contract that settled the wrong way, with the evidence shown. These pull a lot of comments.

What gets removed or ignored

• We saw no moderator removals in the sample, and there are no posted rules to break.
• Reddit's own filters removed about 26% of new posts. Our data does not show which ones, so we cannot say what trips them.
• Plenty of referral and promo posts stayed up, so a removal here is more likely to be about your account than about the subreddit's taste.

The unwritten rules

• Staying up is not the same as being read. Bare links, picks posts and app announcements stay visible and get nothing.
• Show the position. The popular posts are almost all images, and a claim of profit without a screenshot or data is not taken seriously.
• People assume you know what a contract at 70 cents means, what a strike is and how settlement works. Nobody explains it in the thread.
• A high win rate invites the obvious question about what you risk per trade. Posts that raise the risk themselves get a better reception.
• If you built something, say what it found. Posts that share data or a method get discussion. Posts that only describe a product get silence.

Self-promotion

There is no rule on it. The wiki itself carries a referral code for the subreddit, and referral links, sign-up bonuses and tool launches sit in the feed untouched. That does not make promotion effective. Those posts collect almost no comments, while builders who lead with a finding, a dataset or an honest loss get real threads and can mention the tool in passing. Treat the lack of enforcement as a lack of audience for anything that reads like an ad.

How people write here

Typical post length

65 words

Typical title length

10 words

Titles phrased as a question

21%

Typical comment length

21 words

Comments that include a link

5%

Top keywords

The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/PredictionMarkets.

• prediction 47 posts
• polymarket 44 posts
• kalshi 41 posts
• markets 47 posts
• prediction market 23 posts
• prediction markets 24 posts
• market 48 posts
• trading 27 posts
• sports 27 posts
• betting 19 posts
• underdog 10 posts
• trade 19 posts
• btc 12 posts
• bet 17 posts
• joefb 8 posts
• code joefb 8 posts
• odds 13 posts
• bets 12 posts
• picks 12 posts
• novig 8 posts
• bettors 6 posts
• sports betting 7 posts
• traders 9 posts
• sportsbooks 6 posts
• deposit 11 posts
• deposit match 6 posts
• earnings call 5 posts
• min 11 posts
• win 13 posts
• sign 14 posts
• price 18 posts
• profitable 8 posts
• edge 11 posts
• trades 8 posts
• football 8 posts
• polymarket kalshi 4 posts
• min btc 4 posts
• draftkings 5 posts
• nfl 7 posts
• underdog sign 3 posts

Common questions