Betting on Elon Musk fulfilling one of his promises is one hell of a risky venture. But that's what users did on the crypto-based prediction hub Polymarket anyway — and now they're on the verge of losing millions of dollars after Tesla's Robotaxi service failed to live up to its CEO's sky-high assurances. 

With over $8,800,000 worth of total bets placed, the prediction, titled "Will Tesla launch a driverless Robotaxi service before July?" is now at a less than one percent chance of success, seeing that it is now no longer the month of June and that the service has turned out to be a glorified beta test.

In an especially ironic twist, Electrek points out, Musk himself highlighted the bet several weeks ago, when Tesla had a still unlikely 14 percent chance of success, encouraging his fans to cash in.

"Money-making opportunity," Musk said in tweet, reminiscent of how he used to casually pump his favorite crypto.

The prediction is still awaiting a final decision: the proposed outcome of "NO" has been disputed twice, with Musk fanboys raging at the site admins in the comments, adamant that "YES" will prevail.

"Should resolve to yes," wrote one user who bought over 21,000 shares in favor of Tesla. "If not, cabal trying to scam."

Technically, Tesla has been operating robotaxis in Austin, Texas, since June 22. But with only ten to 20 cars in operation, it's at best an extremely limited test, and does not meet the Polymarket bet's definition of a full-blown, driverless service. 

In the rules section, it stipulates that a "program that is restricted to Tesla employees, invite-only testers, closed-beta participants," will not qualify. Nor will a program in which there is a human in the vehicle positioned to take control, it states. Tesla's service is currently invite-only — the recipients overwhelmingly being pro-Tesla "influencers" — and the vehicles are all supervised by a human "safety monitor" who rides in the front passenger seat, and who've already had to make several interventions.

Notably, the service doesn't live up to its creator's own promises. In an earnings call in January, Musk was unequivocal that Tesla robotaxis would launch fully "unsupervised" with "no one in the car" in June — hence the nature of the Polymarket bet. The conspicuous inclusion of the "safety monitors" wasn't revealed until just days before the launch date.

That should've been a sign for the Tesla bulls to pull out, but many were clearly inspired by Musk's tweet. On the day that Musk declared the robotaxi bet a "money-making opportunity," the market odds spiked to a 40 percent chance of success as the billionaire's fans piled in, bringing what was then less than the $500,000 total money on the line to the nearly $9 million that it is today. One user, Electrek found, is set to lose $50,000 for believing in Musk's robotaxi vision.

Don't worry, though. There's plenty of dubious Musk promises to bet on in the future. Such as: having over 1,000 robotaxis roaming the streets of Austin "within a few months" of launching, or having a staggering one million robotaxis on American roads by the end of 2026.

With the cars still requiring safety monitors to babysit them, seemingly breaking traffic laws, and frequently driving erratically  — and all this while being limited to a tiny "geofenced" area where driving conditions are as ideal as possible, something that Musk once said wouldn't count as real self-driving — it's looking like the real "money-making opportunity" is betting against any of the above ever happening.

More on Tesla: Tesla's Robotaxi Program Is Failing Because Elon Musk Made a Foolish Decision Years Ago


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