---
title: 'Polymarket for Beginners 2026: Everything You Need to Know'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=7HZGjVqzzSg'
video_id: '7HZGjVqzzSg'
date: 2026-08-01
duration_sec: 1232
---

# Polymarket for Beginners 2026: Everything You Need to Know

> Source: [Polymarket for Beginners 2026: Everything You Need to Know](https://youtube.com/watch?v=7HZGjVqzzSg)

## Summary

This video is a beginner-friendly walkthrough of Polymarket, a crypto-native prediction market. The host covers account setup, deposits and withdrawals, how yes/no shares work, practical trading tactics, market rules, fees, and risk warnings.

### Key Points

- **Sign-up requires a decentralized wallet** [00:43] — Even if you select "Sign up with Google," you still need a decentralized wallet like MetaMask or Rabby because Polymarket is a crypto platform.
- **Depositing funds** [01:20] — You can deposit via crypto, bank transfer, card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay. Bank transfers carry very high fees, so crypto is recommended.
- **US access restrictions** [01:48] — The Polymarket website is not available to Americans; US users must use the mobile app, which may require an invite code.
- **Withdrawals are on-chain only** [02:56] — Funds can only be withdrawn on-chain to a crypto wallet. There is no direct transfer to a bank or Venmo — you must use a centralized exchange like Coinbase, Binance, or OKX to cash out.
- **Many market categories** [03:37] — Polymarket offers markets for politics, crypto, e-sports, finance, tech, culture, weather, and even Netflix predictions, so anyone can find a niche where they have an edge.
- **Focus on one niche** [04:18] — Because this is an information game, the host strongly advises focusing on one sector instead of trying to track politics, crypto, and weather simultaneously.
- **How shares work** [04:34] — Markets are yes/no questions; shares are priced between $0 and $1. A correct share resolves to $1; a wrong share resolves to $0.
- **Trade before resolution** [05:34] — You don't need to wait for the outcome — you can buy and sell shares against other users as prices fluctuate with new information, enabling early profit-taking.
- **Watch volume and order books** [07:26] — Low-liquidity markets can ruin large entries; a $10,000 buy on a 2.5-cent share may fill at an average of nearly 50 cents due to a thin order book. Use limit orders for big positions.
- **Always read the rules** [08:49] — Market titles can be misleading. Examples include an ETH market with a June 30 expiry date and a 'Trump acquires Greenland' market that actually refers to the US government. Ignoring rules leads to losses.
- **Buying shares** [10:37] — To buy, enter your amount, pick market or limit order, click buy, then confirm the transaction in your wallet.
- **Selling shares** [12:39] — Selling into the market uses the current bid; the order book cap means you may get less than the last price. You can set a limit sell instead.
- **Claiming winnings and losses** [13:44] — Go to Profile > History, click Claim on resolved markets, and sign the transaction. Claiming losing markets is recommended for tax purposes.
- **Disputes and UMA** [15:40] — If an outcome is disputed, UMA token holders vote; voters who vote incorrectly get slashed. Some vague markets are controversial and may be rigged in practice.
- **Fees structure** [17:00] — Polymarket has fees on many markets, with a variable maker fee depending on share price; politics and some topics are believed to be fee-free.
- **High risk warning** [18:38] — About 84% of people lose money on prediction markets — almost as bad as meme coins. Treat it as trading with information, not gambling.

### Conclusion

Polymarket is a powerful prediction market for anyone willing to study information and respect risk, but beginners must read the rules, check liquidity, and avoid treating it like gambling.

## Transcript

have mastered trading on Polymarket because I'm going to walk you through available on the platform as well as answer a ton of questions I had after my last Polymarket tutorial. If you have any video requests, if there's something
you want me to do, let me know in the comments section down below. I know people want to see copy trading, they want to see AI bots auto trade for you. subscribe while you're down there. Remember, I am not a financial advisor.
I'm just showing you how this tool works, and let's jump right into it. So, referral link that will earn me a portion of your fees at no extra cost to you in the description down below. If you click it, even if you've already
account. It helps me out a lot cuz I do these videos for free. So, once you've clicked that referral link, you are going to click on sign up. And even if you select sign up with Google, you're still going to need a decentralized
whatever, because this is a with crypto. Now, if you're already confused at what a decentralized wallet is, I'll put multiple tutorials in the
description down below for MetaMask and Rabby just to help you out. But, if you're still following along, the next step is going to be to deposit funds by clicking on deposit. And from here, you can either use crypto by connecting your
can either use crypto by connecting your wallet, generating a link, or connecting your centralized exchange, or you can send money from your bank account, a card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, whatever. However, I noticed if I send money from
my bank, let's say 10K, which I understand is a lot of money, the fee is That is absolutely crazy. So, personally, I just stick with crypto. Hopefully, you have more options here based on the country you're in. Speaking
of which, Polymarket website version is not available for Americans. I got a lot of complaints on my last video. People really want to use it. Legally, I can't tell you to use a VPN. However, if you're in America, you're going to have
to sign up to the mobile app. It's not available for everyone yet. You have to annoying. It is what it is. I've been asking the team. I'm trying to get some Maybe in the description if I get codes in the future, I'll put it down there.
And I don't know, I'll post about it on my YouTube. So, make sure you subscribe, and hopefully I get you guys some codes. Cool. Now that we've deposited funds, you could see them at the top here. Let's just go to my profile. You could
see my funds, including active positions. You can also see my cash position, my trading history. And this is where you go when you want to withdraw your money from the platform. You see this withdraw button right here.
You would just click it, and then you need to withdraw on chain, meaning using crypto. So, I would put a wallet, I would put an amount, I would select the They're going to give me a little fee here, very minor fee. And then you click
on withdraw, and you sign the transaction. Now, again, another popular question I got is how do I get my money from Polymarket directly into my bank account or Venmo or whatever? Unfortunately, you cannot. You have to
send it to a centralized exchange or another platform that allows you to connect crypto to your bank. There is no direct link yet between Polymarket and your bank. For now, I would just chat GPT which crypto exchanges are available
in my country that allow me to cash out into my bank, and it's going to give you It's probably like Coinbase, Binance, OKX, or one of the really popular exchanges. So, let's now talk about trading on Polymarket. So, Polymarket is
a prediction market that has a ton of different topics. You can see up here we got politics, crypto, e-sports, finance, tech, culture, even the weather. You could trade the weather. And that's what
I like about this cuz you might not be a good commodities trader or crypto trader or follow politics, but maybe you watch a lot of Netflix and you understand which shows are going to be popular. And believe it or not, there is a market for
Netflix series. So, there's a market for everyone, and you probably have an edge somewhere. Now, this is an information game because you're going to see information is very important. So, I strongly suggest focusing on one niche
or one sector. Don't try tracking politics and crypto and weather and tech you are not going to perform at your best. Now, the way these markets work is you are answering a question. So, in this case, which company has the best AI
model by the end of April? And you are answering them by buying shares representing yes or no, each with a monetary value that is constantly fluctuating. Now, the way these are priced is between $0 and $1. So, you can
see here we have 95 cents, 2 and 1/2 cents, 1 and 1/2, and so on in the yes side, and then same thing on the no side. This is the current going price for these shares. Now, if I purchase a yes share of Google at 2 and 1/2 cents,
I'm spending 2 and 1/2 cents to get one share. If I am correct and I hold until finalized and closed and cannot be traded anymore, my share is going to be traded anymore, my share is going to be worth $1. So, I will have made 97.5
worth $1. So, I will have made 97.5 cents per share. And if I'm wrong, my share is going to be worth $0. So, I will have lost my 2 and 1/2 cents on this share. However, the cool thing about prediction markets, especially
where you're playing against the house and you buy it and then wait for the outcome, is here you do not have to wait for the outcome. Here you are trading against other users on the platform. So, you could see by this chart, prices are
constantly fluctuating based on new information coming into the market and the demand changing for these shares. So, that means I don't need to hold until resolution. I could buy Google at 2 and 1/2 cents, and if next week they
announce they released some crazy AI model and people start getting bullish on it, these shares are going to go up in value. And let's say it goes to 25 cents, I can sell. I will have 10X'd my money from 2 and 1/2 cents to 25 cents
per share. I have that profit, and I don't care if Google loses this market by the end of April because I have already sold. I am already out of the market. So, this has created a whole new way to trade, which is very dependent on
data, on information. You need to be tracking the right people. If you're trading a market like this one, you should be tracking all the Twitter accounts for these products and the parent companies and the CEOs,
employees, people who are knowledgeable in the AI space just to get all of that data, which is exactly why I'm building Waypoint Tools, which is a free Discord bot that has alerts for prediction markets, NFTs, crypto, very soon stocks,
commodities, and just overall narratives happening in the market. We're also tracking sports. We're going to have everything, and it's free to add to your Discord. Or we're opening up a read-only for now. There'll be a chat eventually,
Discord that you could join. I'll put it in the description down below. Again, anything. You could just take advantage of those alerts and hopefully stay ahead of the market. Now, before I show you how to trade, there's a few things you
need to be aware of when trading. The first of which is volume. Volume is very You're going to see right here, the volume number on some of these markets is literally like $3. So, you need to be careful if you're aping a big amount of
money. For example, right now Google is trading at 2 and 1/2 cents. So, if I put a dollar, I'm going to get filled at 2 and 1/2 cents. If I'm correct, I make 40 and 1/2 cents. If I'm correct, I make 40 bucks. That is a 40X return. However, if
I come in and put $10,000, I'm only getting a 2X. What happened to my 40X? Shouldn't my money be worth $400,000? No. And that is because right here you could see my average fill price is almost 50 cents.
And to see that, we have to look at the order book. Right now, if I want to buy at 2 and 1/2 cents, there's only a dollar and 39 cents of volume of somebody willing to sell me these shares. If I want to get in $10,000, we
got to scroll up very high here. Let's go We got to go all the way to 90 cents on average. So, my average price is from 2 and 1/2 cents all the way to 90 cents
just to get filled. So, in cases like this, you're going to want to switch to limit orders, which I'll show you how those work in just a second. But, you're going to want to utilize limit orders, and don't just ape any market with a big
amount of money. And then the other thing you absolutely need to always check. This is probably the most important thing are the rules because these titles can be misleading compared to what is in the rules. And I've seen
some people get absolutely wrecked because they didn't read the rules. For example, if we take a look at the Mega ETH market, we have here Mega ETH's market cap 1 day after launch. Currently, the consensus is roughly 600
million. But, if we look on Hyperliquid, right now, the the futures are trading at 1.3 billion dollars. That is less than half which doesn't make sense. However, the
reason for this is in the rules. If you look at the rules, there is an expiry date on this market of June 30th, and a lot of people don't expect this token to be out by June 30th. So, let's say I
were to purchase yes on 600 million, and on July 3rd, the coin drops and it's at 50 billion, I am way in the money at with 600 million, I would still lose
because this market will have expired. But, if you didn't read the rules and you only looked at the title, you would have gotten wrecked. Now, another market where this is also true is this one about Trump acquiring Greenland before
about Trump acquiring Greenland before 2027 cuz in my opinion, there is a 0% chance that Trump, the individual, purchases an entire country, right? That would never happen in a million years. But, if you read the rules, it has
nothing to do with Trump and it has to do with the United States government, But, we don't have government in the title, we have an individual's name. Again, you need to read the rules always. Before purchasing anything, read
the rules. So, now that we understand volume, we understand the rules, let's go ahead and purchase some shares. So, I'm just going to take a gamble here and I'm going to bet 10 bucks on Google. Maybe we're going to have some massive
like we saw, I don't even need them to win, I just need momentum in these shares and then I can flip for two, three, four, five X or I just lose my money, right? It's not a guaranteed. So, to purchase, you enter the amount. I'm
currently doing a market buy, so I'm just buying all of the limit orders that are currently available on the market. So, my average price, we're going to check, is still under 3 cents, so I'm cool with that. I'm going to click buy.
It's going to pop up my wallet. Remember I said this is a decentralized platform, you always need to sign with a decentralized wallet. I'm going to click on sign. I'm going to confirm and voila, I immediately have my shares. You can
also see them right here. Now, if I wanted to do a limit order and say buy slowly because I want to get filled at 2.5 or even less. Let's say I want to get filled at 2 cents. It's the number of shares rather than a dollar value, so
it's kind of annoying here. I'm just going to put so it'll be 500. Yeah, so going to put so it'll be 500. Yeah, so I'm spending $10 to win $500 if I get that I get filled, but let's just go ahead and put this order in. Once again,
I have to sign and confirm the transaction. You can now see I have an order that is open and if we go right here, I'm not first, but I am here in They currently have rewards on this market. Somebody put rewards up for
grabs. So, as long as I'm within the spread by, I guess this is 4 cents, I'm bucks like it's nothing. I'm literally earning pennies, but maybe this is going
based on how many rewards that you've earned. So, I'm just going to kill this cuz I don't want to buy more by clicking the X and now my order has been canceled. Very quick, I don't need to sign anything. So, now let's say I want
to sell my shares into the market, right? I I want to get out or I'm happy with the price, whatever. To do that, I would click on sell. But, you'll notice the price is changing. I'm not getting 2.9 cents per share, I'm getting at
maximum 2.4 cents. And again, the reason is the order book. The highest somebody is willing to pay me for my shares by selling into the market, not a limit order. I can set a limit order to be at 2.9 cents, but the highest somebody is
2.9 cents, but the highest somebody is willing to pay me is 2.4 cents. So, if I come in here and I just try to dump all my shares, I am losing a dollar and 92 cents because I just purchased for 10 bucks, right? So, I would click sell.
hold these and see if Google goes up, if they make a little bit of a comeback. But, same thing, I would click sell, I would sign a transaction, my order would immediately go through unless I'm doing limit orders, in which case I set a
price like I don't want to sell until it's at five. I'm going to do max and it's at five. I'm going to do max and then I'd make $7.45 profit if somebody picks up these shares. Now, let's pretend I held something until
resolution, right? The market resolved, I won or even lost, but I want to see how do I get my money? I would go to my profile or click up here, you go to your profile and then I can see all my history. I didn't claim these just cuz I
literally a penny on some of these, but I did it for the video. So, I would click on, let's say this one and my outcome, it was down. I bet on down, so I made 81 cents profit. To claim it, I would just click on this claim button
and then I would have to sign the transaction and voila, I redeemed my shares. If I go, it might take a second or two, but if I go back to my profile, eventually it'll appear here that I redeemed my shares and voila, right here
it says claimed. Now, I also do this on the markets that I lost even though I'm literally claiming $0 for tax purposes, right? I've bought a market for a thousand bucks, lost it, but I still want to take that thousand dollar loss,
you need to sell your shares. Next, let's talk about how these markets are not claimed this one. You could see I had three different markets, they all hit, so I won all three, but I couldn't claim right away. Now I can claim, but
when it ended, even though you can look at the data because this was about a price of a coin and it didn't hit these prices, it was obvious they still needed to verify the data. So, you're going to have that down here, outcome proposed no
on this specific market, no dispute and then final outcome no and I can claim my winnings. However, there are going to be cases where people dispute the outcome. For example, this market right now about, you know, war and it's a very bad
topic, but it's the only one that's in dispute that I can use it in as an example, people are disputing if they did or they did not enter into the war zone. You could see in review. So, somebody proposed no, it was disputed.
Somebody once again said, "Hey, I'm not happy with the outcome." It's disputed again and now it's being brought up to higher levels. So, basically, to propose an outcome, you have to put up money and then somebody can come come in and
dispute by putting up money and then there's something called UMA or UMA, which is people who hold tokens, a ton of money in tokens, they have to vote on resolutions and if they vote incorrectly, they get slashed. Now,
right now, this is going to go on for another day. I think it's like two or lot of controversy about this. A lot of people say, "Oh, they're able to rig it because they buy up markets that they're going to vote on." Which, look, I don't
know if that's true or not. I have seen some pretty weird outcomes, but not on things like, you know, who won the Super Bowl or what's the price is Bitcoin at a million dollars. Like, you can't lie about that, right? But, there's certain
things where the descriptions are vague or there's some irregularities in how the words are said or like the sentence and grammar, whatever. Those are the kind of markets that I understand people getting really upset about based on the
vote. At the end of the day, this stuff is still human error. Like, there's going to be some of these mistakes or outcomes that you disagree with. So, always keep that in mind when you're betting on these vague markets where
it's up to interpretation. The next thing I did want to talk about quickly platform. Originally, it was just free to trade and then they added fees for the 5-minute and 15-minute crypto markets. Now, there's fees on a lot more
markets. I believe on politics and a few other topics, there are not fees. I will reading it for yourself. The fees are nothing crazy, right? You could see it's only a maker fee. So, you could see the percentages here, but it's also a
variable fee. So, it depends on the price that you're buying the shares at, right? Obviously, if you're buying at 99 cents, the fee is not going to be anything crazy based on your profit. But, if you're buying something that's
at 40 cents, the fee is going to be higher. So, I'm seeing a lot of prediction market tools and prediction markets use this kind of variable fee reading up on this cuz you do need to be aware now that there are fees. And then
last but not least, if you want to get your own referral link, you would get it from up here, refer and earn. They just turned referrals on, so you're going to have to make a code. Mine is Crypto Gorilla YT. If you want to use it to
sign up, that helps me out a lot cuz I currently get 30% of your fees and then 10% of whoever you invite and you get the same thing as far as I know or all our accounts are the same. There's currently a 90-day boost, so it's in
your favor to invite as many people as you can right now and you'll get 30% of their trading fees, which if you're able to invite a lot of people, these kind of platforms can be very profitable because it's a popular topic. Everybody's
talking about prediction markets and Polymarket and all that. So, this is the time to be onboarding people if you're into prediction markets. Just please they're getting into. You could even send them this video after they've
signed up with your link. Okay, I'm not trying to farm your own referrals, but the win rates on prediction markets are very low. It's almost as bad as meme coins. I've seen some studies where it's like 84% of people lose money on
risky, especially when you treat it like gambling. The average person is not treating it like trading where they go and get data and information and study, they are just gambling on like Bitcoin up and down or whatever the outcome is,
right? Of of certain markets. So, please be careful with this stuff. This is not the timeline. You're trying to copy trade wallets, whatever it is, it is risky. So, that's it for today's tutorial. I hope you enjoyed it and
found it educational. If you have any questions, anything I missed, ask it in the comment section down below. I will answer you even if it's been 3 years, okay? I check my comment section daily. If I miss a comment, ping me, ask it
again, whatever and I'll try to answer it as fast as possible. Again, if make, let me know down below. I know you guys want copy trading bots, you want AI bots. I just got a right here, boom, Mac
Mini. So, I've been doing some AI stuff. I'm going to start a separate channel for AI, but all the trading stuff will be on this channel. So, hit the subscribe button. Thank you for watching another Crypto Gorilla video.
another Crypto Gorilla video. Peace.