Allegations of insider trading over prediction-market bets tied to Iran conflict
morningstar.com

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96 points

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paulpauper

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a day ago

55 comments

ardanur ・ a day ago

Polymarket is effectively an assassination auction list, you just need to find out which low likelihood resolutions can be swayed by someone's death. But you would need to have money to start which is something aspiring assassins aren't likely to have. And you would also need the skills to launder cryptocurrencies effectively.

This is also true with traditional stock markets, except that laundering real money is much harder to do alone. In the real world an assassin can't really involve more people as those people would realize they are loose ends since they have a get-out-of-jail card in turning on you.

The markets could get ahead of this by stipulating that a resolution via murder will always lead to resolution at prices at a time prior to the death. This would technically incentivize a potential assassin to commit a deniable murder, but if they succeed it won't be the market's [PR] problem.

  • Rapzid ・ a day ago

    > will always lead to resolution at prices at a time prior to the death

    But there might be an incentive to freeze the price? I think polymarkets should be banned.

    • hedora ・ a day ago

      "I bet X will not be assassinated on this date in this way" financial products were the primary reason polymarkets were banned over a century ago.

      No idea if they've somehow been legalized as a rider to a 10,000 page appropriations bill, or if they're already illegal in the US.

      • Rapzid ・ 18 hours ago

        There is just something about it that feels off about these prediction markets. Like there is no end to the terrible incentives and negative externalities.

        Personally I don't like banning vices. Regulation is much better. So I always use the ban on selling organs to anchor the "yeah, sometimes things just need to be banned" side. Online gambling in general, but particularly these prediction markets, just really don't sit right. I can see perhaps how gaming gambling could be effectively regulated(I don't believe it is currently), but these prediction markets..

georgehotz ・ a day ago

There's no such thing as "insider trading" on prediction markets. Are you telling me people with secret knowledge profited by making correct predictions? That's the whole point of prediction markets! Provide accurate information = get paid. It doesn't matter where the information came from, as long as it's correct.

  • olalonde ・ a day ago

    If you hold confidential information, using it to bet on prediction markets could arguably violate secrecy rules since the market effectively receives the information. If you are not bound by confidentiality, participating should be fine.

    Note that this isn't about making the market "fair" for other participants but about ensuring confidential information remains confidential (especially relevant in the context of national defense).

  • protocolture ・ a day ago

    If they provided the information, "Hey I am bob in the pentagon and we are doing war soon", it wouldnt be insider trading.

    But all they are doing is updating a financial instrument that suggests an increased likelihood, and getting massive bank for not providing the information that would make everyone else bet the same way.

    • gruez ・ a day ago

      >But all they are doing is updating a financial instrument that suggests an increased likelihood, and getting massive bank for not providing the information that would make everyone else bet the same way.

      That's the incorrect way of thinking about this, at least according to how US insider trading laws work. If a hedge fund has reason to believe oil prices will spike due to some secret info (eg. they paid some intern to camp out at US airbases and spot outgoing flights), and then they made massive bank on that trade, that's not insider trading. It's not a crime to hoard material nonpublic information and trade on it (ie. "updating a financial instrument ... and getting massive bank for not providing the information that would make everyone else bet the same way"). Now, if they paid off some guy inside the base, that might be breaking a bunch of laws around national security, but still not insider trading.

      • mlazos ・ 19 hours ago
        ・ 2 more

        That’s 100% insider trading. If you use material non-public (including confidential) information to perform the trade it’s illegal. Paying someone to provide confidential info is still insider trading. Paying someone to observe planes (public information) is not insider trading. Researching using publicly available information (even though you don’t share your research) is not insider trading. The key point is the channel from which you receive the information.

        • s1artibartfast ・ 8 hours ago

          The distinction isnt public private information. If I am a farmer and I know harvest will be poor, buying futures isnt insider information. I pay to conduct a confidential survey of farmers, that still isnt insider trading.

  • HWR_14 ・ a day ago

    Of course insider trading is a US federal crime in prediction marketplaces.

  • camillomiller ・ a day ago

    Yeah well you outlined perfectly well why they should be banned from the known universe

  • watwut ・ 18 hours ago

    Whole point of prediction market is unregulated gambling and manoy extraction and facilitatiom for psychopats.

    It is not about "accurate prediction". That is just dumb rationalization.

  • exogeny ・ a day ago

    There’s two different things to argue here.

    First, yes, you’re right.

    Second, they raised a shit ton of money under the bull case of mass consumer adoption, which is going to be impossible if that said consumer feels it is rigged.

    Let’s all be real here; for 95% of their use cases both now and in the future, they’re a sportsbook. Which is fine! But they’re not going to get to anywhere near returning a multiple on their manic valuation until they act like one. And the first thing to do is to stop with all of the pseudo-academic bullshit about what a prediction market is. And the second is for them to hire someone, anyone, who knows even the first thing about sports because everyone even tangentially connected to this market knows that before six months ago, Tarek and Shayne couldn’t differentiate between a football and a buttplug.

  • bdangubic ・ a day ago

    I bet I’ll punch you in a mouth and then I punch you in a mouth and collect a billion dollars

    • georgehotz ・ a day ago

      Who took the other side of that bet? I sure didn't. Participants in a market should be well aware that other participants can alter the outcome and bet accordingly.

      • creato ・ a day ago
        ・ 3 more

        > other participants can alter the outcome and bet accordingly.

        Do you think it is acceptable that someone may have altered their behavior due to the outcome of a bet on attacking Iran?

        • metalcrow ・ a day ago
          ・ 2 more

          What you're describing is know as an "assassination market". To my knowledge it's considered mostly a non-issue (It's talked about in good detail here https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-market-faq?open=...), because you could do a lot of the same stuff with the normal stock market. If you have advance knowledge that Iran is gonna be attacked, it's just as easy to trade on that info there via oil or similar, with the added downside that now no one else gains extra info about if Iran will be attacked or not, and anything more hyper-specific would just be illegal to bet on for normal law reasons.

          • hedora ・ a day ago

            I didn't read the link, but you have a fundamental misunderstanding of assassination markets.

              I bet $1B that Julius Caesar will not be killed on March 13 with nightshade.
  I bet $1B that Julius Caesar will not be killed on March 13 with hemlock.
  ...
  I bet $1B that Julius Caesar will not be killed on March 15 by being stabbed to death in the back.
  ...
  I bet $1B that Julius Caesar will not be killed on March 17 with nightshade.
  I bet $1B that Julius Caesar will not be killed on March 17 with hemlock.
  ...
  1,000,000 automatically generated bets omitted.
            Since there can only be one assassination of Julius Caesar, the person ordering the hit only has to pay $1B, and only if the assassination succeeds.

            Sure, people can bet some cash and attempt to get a cut of the assassin's money. Traditionally, you put that cash back into the pot, so (for all but the successful event) it goes to the assassin's pockets.

            The first-order issue is that the assassin needs to bet a bunch of cash to out-bet the zero-information speculators. Some Roman trillionaire could bet $100K that the assassination would happen for each slot, drowning out the cash of the actual assassin. Of course, this would cost them $100B if placing bets are free, and there are a million scenarios.

            The next big problem arises if people can watch for movements on a given position in real time. The market can fix that by running the feed on, say, a 1 hour delay. So, while they're sharpening their knives at the Senate, the Roman congress-critters can each put in a bet via cell phone.

            Of course, then the (totally ethical, I'm sure) people running the assassination market could siphon money off by spying on the realtime feed. This tertiary problem is solved by making sure those people are generally well-known, giving them an incentive to not piss off assassins.

      • hedora ・ a day ago

        The person that wants them to be punched in the face takes the bet, of course!

        This was the primary use case for polymarkets before they were banned, and the reason they were banned.

        (Well, secondary use case, and secondary reason for the ban. The first was stealing retail investors' retirement funds, and a series of financial panics that led to the Great Depression and creation of the SEC.)

      • NoOn3 ・ 10 hours ago

        Maybe even someone who wants you to get punched in the face. :)

      • QuadmasterXLII ・ a day ago
        ・ 2 more

        If some addled gambling addict is dumb enough to take the bet, it’s their dollars and your mouth.

      • bdangubic ・ a day ago
        ・ 2 more

        For example, In my comment replace “I” with “Trump” and replace punch with “started another war”

        We can go on and on (I can give you 7 million other examples too, this is easy one), the entire prediction market is meant for idiots to give their money to non-idiots that are rigging the whole thing (without any regulation).

        • collingreen ・ a day ago

          That's roughly correct though? Like the alleged point is exactly that - provide an incentive to establish true information earlier than otherwise. If you view prediction markets like that it's only weird to see people taking the other side with no information (I was going to say "like bar bets" but that's the same kind of thing! Don't bet on things you know nothing about if you hate losing money!)

    • s1artibartfast ・ a day ago

      Yep. And it will have been predicted. What seems to be the problem?

      Do you want to bet what I'll eat for dinner next?

      • bdangubic ・ a day ago

        Idiots will always bet on rigged outcomes, the “prediction” markets are living proof of that

    • camillomiller ・ a day ago

      Congrats! You provided correct information! That is apparently more valuable than anything according to a lot of deranged data nerds nowadays, so enacting violence to get to that outcome is perfectly fine! Good job!

fourseventy ・ a day ago

prediction markets need to be illegal in the USA, its total insanity.

  • mr_00ff00 ・ a day ago

    You could argue that certain prediction markets are better than the alternative. Maybe not for this, but take sports betting.

    People taking sides against each other means the losers and winners are individuals.

    Meanwhile sports betting is growing but the winners are “the house”, the companies.

    • xboxnolifes ・ a day ago

      The problem with prediction markets is not who wins, its the incentives that lead to who wins.

      • mr_00ff00 ・ 12 hours ago
        ・ 2 more

        Well right, so like I said, in sports that’s a good thing

        • xboxnolifes ・ 2 hours ago

          Even in sports it's not a good thing, but the consequences tend to be limited only to game outcomes. Nobody wants teams throwing matches because their players bet on the loss, but that's nothing compared to government actions being influenced by prediction-market bets.

    • IncreasePosts ・ a day ago

      Parimutuel betting is a thing, especially in horse racing. There's no reason that it couldn't be played in place of fixed odds betting except that it seems that the consumers don't want it.

muzani ・ a day ago

So I guess the new war heuristic is pizza and polymarket.

7777777phil ・ 17 hours ago

This is the third major case in about three months.

Before the Iran bets there was a suspected Google insider who made $1.15M on Polymarket (22 of 23 correct bets in 24 hours) and Israeli soldiers criminally charged for monetizing classified intelligence on event contracts.

Textbook Akerlof: without enforcement the adverse selection spiral kills these markets before they get a chance to prove useful. I tracked all three cases here: https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-absolute-insider-mess-of...

sherr ・ 19 hours ago

According to the Economist recently [1], Israel recently caught a couple of men who bet on the timing of the Iran attacks last year :

"Last summer one “ricosuave666” won more than $150,000 on Polymarket, a betting platform. Their true identity was not clear, but the source of the winnings was: ricosuave666 had bet, with suspicious accuracy, on the precise timing of Israel’s attacks on Iran."

So, these people can be found. Overall however, the magazine does not think that these markets should have a blanket ban.

[1] https://archive.is/W8Ga8 (Prediction markets are rife with insider betting)

khazhoux ・ a day ago

Why are people saying the attacks were a surprise? It was widely reported the day before that embassies were told to clear out “now!”

  • rtkwe ・ a day ago

    The signs it was possibly soon were pretty strong it's the exact day that wasn't really known.

    • khazhoux ・ a day ago

      > US ambassador to Israel tells embassy staff if they want to leave they ‘should do so TODAY’

      https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/27/middleeast/us-embassy-israel-...

      Friday ^^

      • rtkwe ・ 6 hours ago

        That's definitely in the soon camp but I've also seen quite a few of those notices come and go without strikes happening too and rarely the day before, that's not really enough time to get out even if you wanted to.

      • mr_00ff00 ・ a day ago
        ・ 2 more

        Maybe slightly unrelated, Would this not heavily tip off Iran that an attack was coming?

        Surely that’s easy for Iran to hear about.

        It seems weird to know the attack was coming and yet their leader still gets killed.

        • burnerRhodov2 ・ 21 hours ago

          And what could they do about it? Khamenei has been in hiding since we started moving our armada to centcom after maduro

  • xfil ・ a day ago

    I agree; exact day was predictable enough for people to place confident-enough bets on. Notices to evacuate non-essential personnel from US military bases, embassies, & consulates in the region also went out 1-2 days prior to Israel's strikes on Iran on June 13, 2025.

    My social circle had largely expected that Iran was getting bombed on Saturday or Sunday once the evacuation notices went out Friday, and this intuition was merely from laymen who follow the news. I don't doubt that insider trading was involved as it's the norm with this Admin, but I also don't doubt that many savvy people could've legally placed successful bets.

  • adampunk ・ a day ago

    If it was so obvious, how come you didn’t make a half milion dollars?

    More generally, if it was so obvious how come the odds were so long?

    If it were so obvious that winning required no insider knowledge the odds should be better.

instagib ・ a day ago

“all fees would be refunded to users who participated in these markets, and that positions from before his death would be cashed out at the last-traded price.”

  • mikercampbell ・ a day ago

    I know it’s cliche, but I hate this timeline.

    For a good while there, the headlines went from “oniony” to “sim-city news headline flavor text” to “I can’t believe I share a finite existence with the people being discussed”

    • mlinhares ・ a day ago

      Same. I also wonder why would anyone take the other side on stuff like this, this is clearly to incite insider traders, so either there's a lot of stupid people out there willing to part with their money or this is a very efficient money laundering scheme.

      Or both.

    • kace91 ・ a day ago

      I’m seriously contemplating blocking the news completely. It’s not like me being informed has any influence anyway, now that belief can be manufactured to such an extent. Might as well lower my blood pressure.

      • lotsofpulp ・ a day ago

        Skip the technical blocking step and internalize the fact that it is pretty much all irrelevant to your (average person’s) day to day life. Ideally, then even knowing it won’t affect your blood pressure. And the fact is, do you even have reason to believe the claims are true?

        I am commenting in this thread to pass time, but I assume there is a such a high chance the linked article is not true, or at least has a hidden agenda, such that it should be ignored or treated as entertainment. Could be product placement, could be completely manufactured rage-bait, who knows, and more importantly, I have no reason to care.

rmm78 ・ a day ago

[flagged]

  • MathMonkeyMan ・ a day ago

    And how noisy it can get! I hope that things go as well as they can for Iran.