By TheCradle | Source
Online prediction markets have seen traders wager over a billion dollars this year on global military outcomes, often with using inside information, a CBS News investigation published on 29 June shows.
Paris-based data analytics firm Bubblemaps identified nine connected Polymarket accounts that collectively made $2.4 million in profits by betting almost exclusively on US military operations, achieving a 98 percent win rate.
The linked accounts placed dozens of successful bets using insider knowledge to predict specific dates of key events in the US war on Iran, including the timing of the first US strikes, the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and the announcement of a ceasefire on April 8.
In another prominent case, US Army soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke allegedly bet $34,000 predicting that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro would be abducted by the US in early January.
Van Dyke, who earned about $400,000 from the wager, helped plan the operation to remove Maduro. He is now prosecuted for using classified info to place the bet, seen as a new form of “insider trading.”
Many of the bets predicting military decisions and outcomes have been “suspiciously timed and with information seemingly too specific for a civilian outsider — on when and how an attack might happen; even the fate of world leaders,” CBS News stated.
Michelle Kendler-Kretsch of the Anti-Corruption Data Collective analyzed long-shot wagers on Polymarket about military events, defined as bets with less than 35 percent odds. She said that although these wagers had poor odds, they “won more than they lost,” indicating “systemic insider-trading.”
While sports bets have a 7 percent success rate, military bets are successful 52 percent of the time, a rate that is wildly disproportionate to what conventional probability would predict.
A recent analysis by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) found that 67 percent of Polymarket profits go to just 0.1 percent of accounts. Of the 1.6 million accounts reviewed by the WSJ, more than 1.1 million were unprofitable.
Inside information from the White House has also allowed traders to profit from traditional commodity markets.
According to data from the financial firm LSEG, on 23 March at 6:50 a.m., a trader wagered more than $800 million predicting that the price of oil would fall.
Fifteen minutes later, US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that the White House and Iran had “very good and productive conversations” about ending the war.
In response to the news, the price of oil crashed more than 10 percent, allowing the trader to collect some $80 million in profits.