“Six Polymarket accounts earned roughly $1.2 million after correctly betting that the U.S. would strike Iran on Feb. 28.”
“Most of the wallets were funded within the last 24 hours… and bought ‘Yes’ shares… just hours before explosions were reported.”
“The accounts had no activity beyond these predictions.”
“One account… purchased more than 560,000 ‘Yes’ shares at about 10.8 cents… paid out near $560,000.”
“Bubblemaps… showed the six wallets clustered together and funded through similar paths.”
These wallets acted like they already knew.
Eventually they will likely try to mitigate this will betting maximums on new accounts.
They certainly might. I believe the first prediction markets did that with presidential elections.
not surprising, a huge amount of people must have known about the attack once final preparations were underway.
and after various recent cases of Polymarket bettors getting deanonymised and investigated, it should be no surprise that a fresh account is used for this.
it might be a little disappointing to discover it's just Barron Trump again...
Prediction markets are supposed to surface information, not reward insiders. If this holds up, it’s a credibility test for Polymarket.
The timing and wallet clustering here is almost suspiciously obvious, which makes me wonder if this was inside knowledge or just very confident public information analysis. Either way, it's a fascinating stress test for prediction markets — they work great for true uncertainty, but they break down fast when one side has material information the other doesn't. The fact that these accounts had zero other activity is the tell; you don't see that pattern unless someone is running a one-off play. This is probably going to accelerate conversations around KYC requirements for prediction market participation, which creates its own tradeoffs. But it's a good example of why prediction markets need thoughtful design around information asymmetry, not just technical trustlessness.