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Manifold Markets: what mana is, where crypto comes in, and its code

Manifold is a play-money prediction market: you trade in mana, which cannot be cashed out, and anyone can create a market. Barely. Trading is in mana; crypto appears only when a prize drawing pays its winner in USDC to a crypto wallet.

By Settled desk
·Checked against 7 primary sources·VERIFIED 7 OCT 2026·2 MIN · 7 SOURCES
Screenshot of manifold.markets, the primary source for this page, captured 8 OCT 2026
Source page: manifold.markets · captured 8 OCT 2026
7 PRIMARY SOURCES · CHECKED 7 OCT 2026
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Manifold is a play-money prediction market: you trade in mana, which cannot be cashed out, and anyone can create a market.
Barely.
Manifold briefly ran a real-money sweepstakes currency, sweepcash, and ended it: the last day to redeem was 28 March 2025.

What it is

Manifold is a play-money prediction market: you trade in mana, which cannot be cashed out, and anyone can create a market.

Manifold is the world's largest social prediction market.

Mana (Ṁ) is the play-money currency used to bet on Manifold. It cannot be converted to cash.

No purchase is required to join and use Manifold.

Is Manifold crypto

Barely. Trading is in mana; crypto appears only when a prize drawing pays its winner in USDC to a crypto wallet.

Manifold runs regular prize drawings where you can win real USDC.

Winners will need a crypto wallet to receive their winnings.

The sweepcash experiment

Manifold briefly ran a real-money sweepstakes currency, sweepcash, and ended it: the last day to redeem was 28 March 2025.

These questions are denominated in sweepcash instead of mana. On resolution, successful predictors can redeem their sweepcash for real USD withdrawable to their bank account.

TL;DR: We’re shutting down sweepstakes to make the mana experience better than ever. Make sure to redeem any sweepcash by March 28th.

We want to double-down on the user-created markets that make Manifold unique and think returning to our previous pure play money model is the best way to do it.

GitHub and the API

Manifold’s code is open source on GitHub at github.com/manifoldmarkets/manifold, under the MIT licence. See the repository.

MIT License Copyright (c) 2022 Manifold Markets, Inc.

"pushed_at": "2026-10-07T06:24:03Z"

Yes. Manifold publishes an official API, limited to 500 requests per minute per IP. Read the API docs.

There is a rate limit of 500 requests per minute per IP.

Real-money markets

For prediction markets with real money in the US, see Kalshi fees and Polymarket fees; for a forecasting site without money, what is Metaculus.

Frequently asked questions

EVERY ANSWER IS QUOTED FROM THE PAGE ABOVE
What is Manifold Markets?−
Manifold is a play-money prediction market: you trade in mana, which cannot be cashed out, and anyone can create a market.
Is Manifold crypto?+
What happened to sweepcash on Manifold?+
Is Manifold Markets on GitHub?+
Does Manifold have an API?+
Sources. 7, each read on or before 7 Oct 2026: api.github.com/repos/manifoldmarkets/manifold, docs.manifold.markets/api, news.manifold.markets/p/focusing-on-mana-bringing-sweepst..., manifold.markets/about, docs.manifold.markets/faq, news.manifold.markets/p/cash-prizes-are-here, raw.githubusercontent.com/manifoldmarkets/manifold/main/L.... Every figure on this page is quoted from the source named next to it, captured on 2026-10-07 and checked word for word against our saved copy. Press reports are marked as press; where nothing was found, the page says so.
Settled desk
The Settled desk writes from each venue’s own documentation and from regulator filings. Every number passes a gate that re-checks it against its source before the page publishes.

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