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

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

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

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

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

"insider trading" for me

"harmless betting" for thee

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

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

What was the payout rate?

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...

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.