As details emerge regarding the prediction betting scandal surrounding the US attacks on Venezuela, it’s becoming harder and harder to imagine any explanation other than the obvious: that an insider took advantage of nonpublic knowledge to make a quick buck.
Fresh reporting by the Wall Street Journal found that the anonymous bettor on Polymarket doubled down on their wager just five hours before over 150 US aircraft rocked the nation’s capital of Caracas. At least 80 civilians and military personnel have died from the US attacks, which satisfied the conditions of the anonymous bettor’s wager — netting them a cool $410,000.
What’s really astonishing is the timing of the bets placed. The WSJ breakdown shows just how close the mysterious insider came to the wire: on January 2nd, between 8:38 and 9:58pm, the bettor took out over $20,000 betting on an eminent attack on Venezuelan soil. At 10:46pm, president Donald Trump issued orders authorizing the military strike — not even an hour after the final bet had been placed.
At around 1:00am on January 3rd, explosions began to shake Caracas, destroying government buildings, civilian apartments, and even technical buildings at the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research. By 8:41am that same morning, the trader began to cash out their earnings — some $410,000, likely won at an unspeakable cost.
Making matters even more suspicious is the fact that the account was only one week old by the time the strikes hit, as political researcher Tyson Brody pointed out on social media.
Sure, it’s possible that someone registered a brand new account and made a series of unfathomably lucky bets, with no insider information, that just happened to pay off spectacularly.
But given the incredible timing, it also seems likely that the insider was someone either within the Trump administration or US armed forces — or someone else with advance knowledge of the attacks, like an employee at one of the media companies that knew about the administration’s plans before they happened, but chose not to report on them.
“It’s more likely than not that this was an insider,” Polymarket analyst Tre Upshaw told the WSJ. “That’s a lot of money to put in at that price, without a lot of news.”
As the WSJ notes, insider trading — placing profitable bets based on nonpublic information — is heavily regulated when it comes to the stock market, with major penalties for violations. When it comes to prediction markets like Polymarket, however, it’s the wild wild west, in part thanks to Trump’s own policy moves throughout his second term in office.
Earlier this week, Democratic representative Richie Torres introduced a bill which would penalize insider trading for all government officials on prediction markets, though the final vote remains a long way off — if it comes at all.
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