Polymarket is hoping to turn doomscrolling into a night out. The crypto-based prediction platform says it plans to open a pop-up bar in Washington, DC, this weekend called The Situation Room, pitched as a sports pub-style venue where betting on global events will be the main attraction—think live X feeds, flight trackers, Bloomberg stations, and betting screens, per Inc. "Imagine a sports bar ... but just for situation monitoring," the company said Wednesday in an X post.
The unique venue, which Axios notes will temporarily take over DC's Proper 21, has already gotten its hands on close to 80 screens, interactive touch screens, and a 6-foot globe for the occasion. It continues the company's flair for attention-grabbing stunts, following February's dueling free pop-up grocery stores it erected along with rival prediction market Kalshi in New York, per Inc. It also lands as Polymarket acquires crypto infrastructure startup Brahma, and as the broader prediction market industry draws more scrutiny.
On Tuesday, Arizona filed criminal charges against Kalshi, accusing it of running an illegal gambling scheme. Lawmakers are also pushing to limit bets on war, terrorism, and assassinations after concerns about trades tied to military actions. DC could prove more welcoming: Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has praised prediction markets as socially useful, and Donald Trump Jr. is both an investor in Polymarket and a volunteer adviser to it, as well as a paid adviser to Kalshi.
The announcement has spurred mixed reaction. "They're calling it the Worst First Date Option In DC History," one detractor snarked online, per Fast Company, which calls the pop-up "a bar where you can drink and watch the world unravel in real time." "Brain rot, but in public" was another assessment. At least one commenter is calling it "an intriguing concept" that "sounds a lot like drinking in an airport," but with more community. "I can imagine a place full of other people just as hopelessly addicted to doomscrolling as me, but we're all looking up at the info screens instead of our phones, and also at one another," Mike Pearl writes for Gizmodo. It's not clear if Polymarket has plans to eventually turn this venue into a more permanent one.
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