Crypto Speculators Betting on ‘No Airdrop’ for Arbitrum Lose 95%

Crypto traders making bearish side bets on the possibility of layer 2 network Arbitrum issuing its native tokens were caught off guard on Thursday as ARB tokens were launched.

Users of Arbitrum, which has seen immense growth in the past few months, were expecting the network to issue its native tokens for a long time. Arbitrum developers have previously denied they planned to issue tokens, but that didn’t dissuade traders from making bets on the possibility of the tokens in the future.

“Arbitrum airdrop by March 31st?” proved to be a popular market on the decentralized prediction market place PoolTogether, attracting $4 million in volume since its March 10 launch.

Traders could place bets on “no” or “yes,” based on whether Arbitrum would both launch and "airdrop" a native token by March 31. The launch was defined as a token deployed to Arbitrum's main network in a way that was actively transferrable or tradable and was listed on an exchange, such as Uniswap.

Bets on “no” trended until Thursday. Such claims sold for 70 cents each until last week, sliding down to 64 cents on Thursday morning. On the other hand, claims on “yes” fell to as low as 20 cents in the past week as the expiration date approached – before moving to 50 cents mark early Thursday.

The tables flipped after Arbitrum’s announcement, which may have come as a surprise to traders, confirmed the airdrop of tradeable ARB tokens starting March 23.

Yes claims jumped to 96 cents almost instantly, gaining a further 2 cents at writing time on Friday. Over $600,000 is now scheduled to be paid out to bettors on March 31.

No claims dumped to just 3 cents, netting investors a 95% haircut on their wager in just over two weeks, had they invested in the initial period.

All hope’s not lost for the no claims, however. A listing on any exchange has, as of Friday, not been announced – meaning the market could potentially still shift in their favor in the coming days.