A new Polymarket account made over $500k betting on the U.S. strike against Iran
twitter.com

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119 points

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doener

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3 hours ago

91 comments

geor9e ・ 6 minutes ago

There's no victim here. This is how prediction markets should work. People who already placed their bids are completely unaffected by later traders. And if they choose to become a later trader because they were offered an attractive bid, there's an information exchange there. That's saying they have non‑public information that you don't have. Or they're bluffing that they do. You're not forced to trade with them, and if you do, then you are accepting that they might win the whole pot and be telling the truth. Trading with them is calling their bluff.

docdeek ・ 3 hours ago

"That “brand new account” was created in October 2024 and has 88 predictions based upon your own evidence.”

https://x.com/pearsonm103/status/2028176543264969145

  • signorovitch ・ 3 hours ago

    That same account[0] has also already lost at least 100k betting on similar middle eastern conflict markets. Not at all ruling out insider information, certainly looks suspicious, but it’s easy just to find one big win or winner.

    [0] https://polymarket.com/@magamyman

    • rustyhancock ・ an hour ago

      Yes this is just survivorship bias.

      Polymarket is huge some people are bound to have impressive runs.

      This person hand multiple stacked bets for this outcome by varying dates.

      • godelski ・ 31 minutes ago 

          > Yes this is just survivorship bias.
        If you're looking for insiders it's generally helpful to start with the "survivors". Not because insiders can't lose but because winning insiders are those effectively exploiting their unfair knowledge. You need filters, so concentrate on the worst offenders first.

        Of course, not all winners are insiders. You still need to filter more, but it's definitely the first filter. Big winners are the second, for the same reason: scale of exploitation.

  • dymk ・ 3 hours ago

    [flagged]

tim-tday ・ 3 hours ago

We thought betting markets would bring out our best predictions. Instead they’re exposing our inherent corruption.

  • dylan604 ・ 3 hours ago

    Who thought this? Be careful with your wild use of we here. I'm not part of your we. Opening betting markets has only one ultimate ending where everything is done for the betting.

    • avaer ・ 3 hours ago

      Prediction was certainly the pitch. I don't know how many people genuinely believed it, beyond the level required to extract a profit.

      It's hard to measure what anyone actually believes in the current social landscape, where nobody tells the truth. Maybe that's the real purpose of prediction markets.

      • godelski ・ 22 minutes ago

        I remember people claiming that it would capture the wisdom of the crowds[0]. Seemed silly as wisdom of the crowds depends on independent decisions. As soon as you reveal other people's guesses you bias the results.

        [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd

        Edit:

        Actually, turns out "people claiming" includes Polymarket lol

          # What is Polymarket
  ...
  Our markets reflect accurate, unbiased, and real-time probabilities for the events that matter most to you. Markets seek truth.

  # How accurate are Polymarket odds?

  Research shows prediction markets are often more accurate than experts, polls, and pundits. .... Their economic incentives ensure market prices adjust to reflect true odds as more knowledgeable participants join.
 
  This makes prediction markets the best source of real-time event probabilities. People use Polymarket for the most accurate odds, gaining the ability to make informed decisions about the future.
        What a load of BS. "Research shows"? Bull!

        https://help.polymarket.com/en/articles/13364060-what-is-pol...

  • cortesoft ・ 2 hours ago

    The traditional espoused financial market purpose of these prediction markets is based on the premise that actors on it will have inside information.

    The point is for business with vested interests (and therefore often inside information) to use these markets to hedge for things that will materially affect their profitability.

    For example, in this case, suppose you ran a company that was shipping goods through the Middle East, and a war would disrupt your business. You would then place bets on there being a war, so that if it does happen you will recover some of your losses. You might know inside information because your work in the region, but that is expected.

  • markus_zhang ・ 3 hours ago

    Insider gambling has been common since the invention of gambling I think.

    • estearum ・ 3 hours ago

      Most gambling "games" are quite a lot harder to acquire and use insider knowledge on though.

      People don't play in corrupt markets for very long.

      • mountainriver ・ 3 hours ago
        ・ 2 more

        Sports betting has been around forever, and it has been gamed forever. Gambling is often an addiction and some cheating doesn’t stop people from doing it

        • estearum ・ 3 hours ago

          To corrupt a Polymarket bet, there needs to be only one person with inside knowledge of a planned event's timing, outcome, duration, etc in order to destroy the other side. The vast majority of Polymarket-bettable events have at least a few dozen if not hundreds or thousands of people with prior knowledge. Polymarket is now a known market where they can (conveniently through crypto) participate. It is basically a billboard saying "do you have interesting inside knowledge? Come here and make some money!"

          To corrupt a sport bet, there needs to be an actual manipulation of events perpetrated by a very small, very closely watched and analyzed group of people (athletes or officials).

          In my view, it seems immediately obvious that as prediction markets become even more mainstream (and so the billboard effect gets stronger), Polymarket bets will have a significantly higher rate of corruption than sports bets.

      • yndoendo ・ 3 hours ago
        ・ 4 more

        The movie _Casino_ highlights how insider information was and is used to improve the house odds [0].

        Information about a players wellbeing and their life goes a long way. Example, they would pay paper boys to talk to coaches to find out non public information. Such as if a player of the team is going through relationship problems.

        [0] https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/524-casino

        • estearum ・ 3 hours ago

          All of which is significantly harder than putting up a gigantic billboard that says "Have insider knowledge on an important event? Place a bet here using crypto!"

          Every important event in the world has dozens if not hundreds of people "in the know" before it happens. Not everyone has paper boys, chatty coaches, or the time/energy required to connect all those dots.

          The entire flow insider information is reversed from "go out and look for it" to "invite it in anonymously"

        • Barbing ・ 3 hours ago
          ・ 2 more

          Scorsese and De Niro, looking forward to watching.

          • dylan604 ・ 21 minutes ago

            Was the ", again" left off, or is this going to be the first time you've seen the movie when you do watch it? I know new people are born every day, but Casino is one of those movies that I'd have expected any one old enough to be reading this board to have seen already. This is no judgment on anyone for not seeing it. Just a comment on my skewed view of the world I guess

      • blazespin ・ 3 hours ago
        ・ 4 more

        "People don't play in corrupt markets for very long." ... ahhh, it's not a bug with Polymarket - it's a feature.

        • estearum ・ 3 hours ago
          ・ 3 more

          Someone has to take the other side of the bet. As these stories become more common and well-known, it'll degrade the market

          • blazespin ・ 3 hours ago
            ・ 2 more

            All I've ever seen is it encouraging people and not discouraging them. The thrill of the easy money, right?

            Forget it jake, it's Polymarket.

            • estearum ・ 3 hours ago

              This stuff is turning me off of prediction markets and I'm actually a huge fan of them conceptually (and have bet on them myself for quite a while).

              As the billboard glow inviting insiders to trade gets brighter, the markets get less useful, less fun, less interesting, and obviously less rewarding.

  • nkrisc ・ 3 hours ago

    Did anyone really think that? The corruption is inherently far, far easier than accurate predictions.

    • blazespin ・ 3 hours ago

      Yeah, trying to beat the market on actually predicting will get you pretty lame returns. Probably do better in non zero sum games like the stock market. At least there you get the benefit of the market always going up eventually.

      No, the best way to win on Polymarket is purely by insider trading. Which is why it's a useful thing to watch. Insider news..

      That said, the definition of 'insider trading' is always tricky. At what point does it become insider? Some things people call insider others just call clever detective work.

      • dylan604 ・ 18 minutes ago

        > Yeah, trying to beat the market on actually predicting will get you pretty lame returns

        That maybe true in a normal world, but we left normalcy in this world a couple of administrations ago. I absolutely would not put it past a member of this admin to be keeping an eye on things like this to suggest it would be better to start the attack on specific day just to pad the coffers. Any other admin, and I'd say that would be an insane line of thought, but it is this admin.

      • streetfighter64 ・ 2 hours ago

        It's not useful to watch, almost by definition. If you're an insider obviously you want to sit on the information as long as possible and make a big bet just before it will be revealed. For example: the account in TFA whose bet was 71 minutes before the first news article about the attacks.

        So how useful is it really to see a big bet and know that probably the thing in question will happen in the next hour?

        The only kind of use case I can see for these markets is what another commenter mentioned, as a kind of strange insurance by betting against what you hope will happen. But even then, the finicky rules and untrustworthiness of the Polymarket admins make them much less reliable than a traditional insurance policy...

  • hn_throwaway_99 ・ 3 hours ago

    Only for very narrow definitions of "we".

    I think it's pretty obvious when betting on events that are inherently just decisions by one or a few people (e.g. when will Trump launch an attack on Iran, when will a company launch a new product, will some company acquire another one, etc.) that they will attract insider trading and corruption by their very nature - all that's necessary is to have information about the decision maker. This is fundamentally different than events that are subject to forces that no single individual controls - e.g. who will win an election, where will a crypto price be in a year, movie box office results, etc.

    I think betting on "single decision maker" events is just a "sucker is born every minute"-type bet.

  • bawolff ・ 2 hours ago

    Those aren't mutually exclusive. The best predictions are going to be those based on non public information.

  • softwaredoug ・ 3 hours ago

    They actually encourage insider trading as to influence the prediction and make it more accurate.

    Some insider selling changes the prediction downwards

    The WANT the information

  • ekjhgkejhgk ・ 3 hours ago

    The best predictions are made when you already know the answer.

    • livestories ・ 3 hours ago

      And even better when others wrongfully think they know a better answer...

  • seydor ・ 3 hours ago

    We knew that already from every betting market in the history of betting markets

  • yieldcrv ・ 3 hours ago

    This is exactly what I wanted prediction markets for

    Looks like “we” need to update our relationships with markets

    Price discovery is a visualization of the collective conscious, and the evolution of markets gets closer and closer to direct exposure to an event. Share and derisk a transaction, cleanly, quickly

    Reduce all frictions towards doing so

    Frictions include finding the person making the transaction, negotiating with them, trusting them to perform, disputing resolution, insurance. These hamper anything from occurring, or occurring quickly, and the pricing is too variable. Prediction markets are an example of all of those frictions being reduced to almost non-existent. And dispute resolution will improve further and attract more liquidity.

    • streetfighter64 ・ 2 hours ago

      They certainly could reduce friction in bribery, just make a public bet like "The court will decide in favor of XYZ Evil Corp v. United States", then buy "No" shares for a million dollars, and hope the judge in the case picks up a bunch of "Yes" shares. Quick, simple, effective bribery via cryptocurrencies.

      • yieldcrv ・ an hour ago

        they could, slightly suboptimal way of doing it but its there

        crypto anarchist papers described prediction markets to be used for something like this in the 90s, but there are several levels of infrastructure that didn't exist then

        if you are predicting such things are occurring then you could also buy the no shares, making it the most egalitarian social mobility opportunity out there. I think the focus on bribery and corruption is distracting because people are imagining exclusion, but its the opposite at this point.

        Imagine when the soviet union fell and only people that built relationships got dibs on all the assets and revenue streams to become "the oligarchs" almost overnight, but instead of only them, everyone paying attention could take part in it. That's what is happening now and the markets will continue existing autonomously

  • watwut ・ 2 hours ago

    I definitely never thought so. It seemed primary as an unregulated casino to me - which usually implies criminality and frauds.

    I dont think I was special or unusual.

    • dylan604 ・ 17 minutes ago

      People have been saying the same about crypto in general, yet, here we are. Another level of the scam built on top of a scam.

  • bdangubic ・ 2 hours ago

    if it is not regulated, you can always safely assume that it is a scam / corruption :) almost universally applicable

  • deadbabe ・ 3 hours ago

    Isn't exposing corruption a good thing? If betting markets are giving the masses access to knowledge about events that would normally be restricted from them, what is wrong with that? Information wants to be free. You can make use of metrics from betting markets without actively participating in them.

  • alephnerd ・ 3 hours ago

    Anyone who's followed the news since the 2000s would have realized a strike on Iran would have happened around now.

    Notice how the bettor hedged and bet on multiple days and hedged each of their bets with a "by" clause. This is a bog standard hedging strategy that anyone who's been to a racetrack would know.

    On a separate note, gamified prediction markets should not exist - they create perverse incentives and are basically a gamification of futures contracts (which requires a degree of risk management and hedging experience the median individual simply lacks), but this specific example doesn't seem like insider trading, just a seasoned gambler who knows basic hedging strategy.

    • dylan604 ・ 3 hours ago

      > this specific example doesn't seem like insider trading, just a seasoned gambler who knows basic hedging strategy.

      why can't it be both? you think degenerate gamblers have never had a government job?

      • alephnerd ・ 3 hours ago

        There are other much more lucrative, obfuscated, and legally defensible methods someone with insider information could take to monetize on insider information.

        Using a public betting platform with KYC vetting is not that.

    • csense ・ 3 hours ago

      > prediction markets should not exist

      If you don't like prediction markets, you don't have to use them.

      Why do you think other people shouldn't be allowed to use prediction markets if they want to?

      • gmd63 ・ 3 hours ago

        Because we don't want people whose profession is maximally exploiting perverse incentive structures to flourish. A society that grants outsized rewards to bad faith citizens is bad for everyone. The more influence those cheaters have over the economy the worse off we all are.

        You should not be able to get rich to the tune of a 600% daily return just because you're insider trading. That doesn't incentivize sharing your information with the market. On the contrary that incentivizes delaying communicating your secret information until the last second to maximize the return on your unexpected information.

      • collinmcnulty ・ 3 hours ago

        1. It gives people a reason to influence events toward outcomes that they can make money on rather than the best outcome. The geopolitical equivalent of going down in the fourth on purpose.

        2. It encourages the leaking of classified information.

      • alephnerd ・ 3 hours ago

        To quote golden age Simpsons - "Gambling is the finest thing a person can do IF he's good at it" [0].

        In aggregate, most participants lack the background and experience needed to hedge against risk and bet intelligently.

        Gamifying a financial instrument (futures) that is supposed to be used as an risk management device and advertising it to the lowest common denominator without providing the right checks and balances will leave a large portion of bettors worse off.

        Heck, I'm decently good at blackjack, poker, and backgammon because it's fun to apply probability theory principles, but I would never dare put my personal money on such an investment when I would do significantly better in aggregate with other more diversified personal investments.

        [0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Viz_cr8PCkk

    • yieldcrv ・ 3 hours ago

      No they were not hedging they were seeking liquidity because they couldnt get a total fill and ROI in the lowest probability market

      • alephnerd ・ 3 hours ago
        ・ 2 more

        What I mean is they placed multiples bets saying "US strikes Iran by $DATE" and set a window of various dates with each overlapping over the other in order to help hedge against earlier bets failing.

        Betting a strike would be on Friday also tracks - anyone who's been outside the West knows they have Friday/Saturday off in Muslim and Jewish countries. It's the same way we in the West tend to conduct strikes on Saturday.

        Edit: Ah I get what you are saying now.

        • yieldcrv ・ 2 hours ago

          I responded to exactly what you mean. The lowest probability date was the Friday because Friday was almost over, it had the highest ROI. It didn't have liquidity for their full amount capital without adversely altering their potential ROI. They searched for liquidity in other markets that would resolve "yes" to the same event. It wasn't a hedge, it wasn't uncertainty, it was liquidity seeking.

bawolff ・ 2 hours ago

Maybe, but also the strike was super telegraphed. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that when USA pulls its embassy staff from israel, britian pulls its embassy staff from iran and USA creates the biggest build up of military hardware in the region in 20 years, that shit is about to go down.

Especially when everyone notices the polymarket bets that win big but nobody notices the ones that fall on their face. There is huge survivorship bias in these sorts of analyses

powerpcmac ・ 3 hours ago

"insider trading" for me

"harmless betting" for thee

squibonpig ・ 3 hours ago

Considering the scale of these events I feel like the insiders aren't really value betting appropriately (not to hurry them).

etyhhgfff ・ 38 minutes ago

It is unfortunate that Polymarket did not exist prior to 9/11. It would have been very telling.

lokimedes ・ 3 hours ago

Why are most recent US foreign actions taken during the weekend, when the markets are closed?

  • avaer ・ 3 hours ago

    To soften the economic blow in a fast paced media cycle.

    • chatmasta ・ 2 hours ago

      Saturday is the first day of the working week in Iran which is why Israel struck at daytime when senior leadership was in a working meeting.

      • sillyfluke ・ an hour ago

        >Iran which is why Israel struck at daytime because

        Israel struck because they had info that some people were going to be at a specific place at a specific time. One would suppose they could have chosen Saturday for another reason only if they had the luxury of continuous intelligence providing multiple options with equal chances of success. In that case, choosing that day to avoid unnecessary economic volatilty for you and your allies makes sense.

TrackerFF ・ 2 hours ago

When I worked the military (not the US), we'd get some briefs from time to time on risks like espionage. They'd present us with cases, and It always surprise me just how little money people are willing to risk their lives and careers for. You'd think people that are willing at worst to become traitors, but at best break confidentiality laws - and face years in prison - would do it only for life-changing money. Nope, not even close. People have gone to prison for a fraction of $500k.

If someone truly made this bet with inside information, they for sure broke laws. Not only did they do that, they could have jeopardized parts of the mission.

No doubt in my mind, part of OSINT gathering for most intel agencies is to monitor these betting markets.

  • streetfighter64 ・ 2 hours ago

    I mean, one of the purported utilities of this sort of betting market is that they "make hidden information public", so they explicitly encourage "insider" trading. But I don't see how it's that useful to know (or "know" with a fair amount of uncertainty) of the attack only 71 minutes before the news break.

evan_ ・ 2 hours ago

Has anyone analyzed the odds on particular days to see if there’s a chance that the timing was influenced by the amount to be made on the betting market and not the other way around?

  • Arcuru ・ 2 hours ago

    Are you seriously suggesting that someone timed this military strike in order to make $500k?

    • streetfighter64 ・ 2 hours ago

      I don't think that the suggestion is true, but it's far from outlandish. Are you seriously suggesting the US president rugpulled his supporters with crypto? Are you seriously suggesting the entire US government and academia is tied to a sex trafficking ring? Are you seriously suggesting that the current US president's cabinet contains 20 appointees whose main qualification is being Fox News personalities? Etc etc.

      • Arcuru ・ 2 hours ago

        lol fair enough. I only meant that in this case the amount is so small as to be insignificant. If you can choose when the US/Israel bombs Iran then 500k is nothing.

UncleMeat ・ 3 hours ago

These betting markets create a wild new perverse incentive to power. No need to get gifts from business interests. Just be in the room where it happens and extract piles of cash from betting markets.

These markets claimed to be useful tools for discovering truth. I'm not sure what being able to maybe predict a military strike a bit earlier provides to society, but I do know that creating a system for near-unlimited wealth extraction for those with power is a very bad thing.

  • iron_albatross ・ 3 hours ago

    On the other hand, these are markets, right? Your ability to make profit is limited by the available liquidity. I wonder, if enough people get burned by insider trading, will liquidity dry up? At the same time, I suppose you don’t need that much volume to make a decent amount of money. And these platforms keep growing…

    • rebuilder ・ 2 hours ago

      If you play at a casino, you’re statistically guarantee to lose money, edge cases not withstanding. Do you see casinos closing down because people stop playing?

  • jatari ・ 2 hours ago

    No one is forcing anyone to bet on prediction markets. People use polymarket fully aware of the near certainty of insider trading.

    • streetfighter64 ・ 2 hours ago

      A sucker is born every minute, and I personally don't think it's great to create more effective channels for funneling money from suckers to corrupt politicians.

  • hsuduebc2 ・ 3 hours ago

    This is such a ridiculous cope that these betting platforms provide any other value than entertainment. But they must sell themselves somehow I guess.

  • emtel ・ 3 hours ago

    They don’t allow unlimited “extraction” of wealth. It is inherently limited by the need for people to take the other side of a trade.

    Importantly, people who either thought they had better information (and were sadly wrong) or people who were simply gambling. It’s not like prediction markets are taking money from orphanages.

MagicMoonlight ・ 3 hours ago

Just ban these services. There’s no legitimate purpose in betting on people being shot or blown up. And the only people who could win reliably, are the people doing the shooting.

  • dylan604 ・ 3 hours ago

    With rules like that, we'll never get to have TV shows like The Running Man.

  • parineum ・ 2 hours ago

    I look forward to your future policies based on the "no legitimate purpose" doctrine.

dismalaf ・ 3 hours ago

It was pretty obvious it would happen this weekend, no corruption needed.

The Iran protests happened, Iran massacred a bunch of protesters, Trump said "Help is on the way". Then US aircraft carriers started moving towards the middle east. Trump started negotiating with Iran, making demands Iran would never agree to. Trump gave his usual ultimatums, aircraft carriers finally got into position, Iran still being belligerent, and nearing the end of Trump's ultimatum... Like, all the signs were there. There's a strange consistency to Trump's erratic behaviour...

  • jeroenhd ・ 2 hours ago

    Plans were changed last minute because an opportunity arose to take out Iran's leader. It was obvious something was going to happen, but not what or when. The American war fleet deploying would've served as an effective containment strategy if the US military would do another simple kidnapping like they did in Venezuela.

    The large protests passed their peaks a while ago. The American military has been deploying to the area for a while. This attack could've happened any day in the past weeks, or it could've taken another couple of weeks of shit flinging, slow escalation, and meaningless threats from Iran's government.

  • knallfrosch ・ 2 hours ago

    Somehow, someone still lost $500k against that bet. Not that kind of 'obvious' then.

    • dismalaf ・ 2 hours ago

      Doesn't mean everyone's always paying attention.

      Also, do you have a link that someone lost $500k? Because it's not in the original link.

      • bawolff ・ 2 hours ago
        ・ 4 more

        If someone made 500k, then someone lost 500k.

        Any money you win gambling has to come from someone else, it doesn't just appear.

        • dismalaf ・ an hour ago
          ・ 3 more

          So you don't know anything about gambling lol.

          Yes, generally both sides of the book balance (minus a cut for the bookie). But there's not automatically another exactly opposite bet of the same size lol.

          • bawolff ・ an hour ago
            ・ 2 more

            I don't think knallfrosch's post was implying it was a singular someone.

            Like if you say "someone is at the door", you don't literally mean that exactly one person is at the door.

            • dismalaf ・ 17 minutes ago

              Saying "someone lost $500k" definitely implies one person. 10,000 people losing $50 isn't noteworthy.

              And someone at the door? If you see 3 people, you don't say someone. You'd only say someone if you're expecting it to be one person (which it usually is knocking at a door).

  • rrr_oh_man ・ 3 hours ago

    Nah, it was the surf & turf in the chow hall.

  • colechristensen ・ 3 hours ago

    To be fair, Trump usually chickens out.

    But in this case I guess there wasn't enough pushback. And the thing that made it if not obvious certainly rather likely was the aircraft carrier movement which isn't exactly subtle, though very often just used for intimidation.

    The thing which is at least a little surprising is the talk about aircraft carriers being very vulnerable to attack with drones / cheap missiles / etc. didn't materialize and if it were going to, Iran would be the one to realize it unless a full on world war were to erupt.

    • bawolff ・ 2 hours ago

      > To be fair, Trump usually chickens out.

      I feel like he mostly chickens out on tarrifs or things that have a large potential for high costs or where the opponent has some actual leverage.

      Here he is blowing up Iran. Iran doesnt really have the ability to blow up america in return. This is exactly the sort of thing i would expect him to follow through on.

      > The thing which is at least a little surprising is the talk about aircraft carriers being very vulnerable to attack with drones / cheap missiles / etc.

      I think that is because it was largely wishful thinking. At least when it comes to Iranian capabilities. I dont think people who were experts in the field believed Iran had the capabilities to seriously harm american aircraft carriers.

IshKebab ・ 3 hours ago

I mean Trump did say he was going to. It's not an outlandish bet.

Also this needs waaay more information before you can say if it is statistically significant. How much did they stand to lose? How many other people made similar bets? Etc.

As it stands this is not a story.