Prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi have long garnered a reputation for facilitating cheating and insider trading — allowing an athlete, for instance, to place a bet on a game they could then lose on purpose.
Now there’s compelling evidence that someone with inside information about the Trump administration’s regime change plans in Venezuela used that foreknowledge to profit massively from the conflict.
As spotted by researcher Tyson Brody, an unidentified user bet tens of thousands of dollars on various predictions that Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro would be imminently “out” or that the US forces would show up “in Venezuela by” a specified date during the runup to the incursion.
The account “existed for only one week and quickly became the biggest ‘yes’ holder in the Maduro out market,” Brody tweeted.
The evidence of insider trading is compelling, to say the least, given the highly suspicious timing. The account invested over $30,000 less than two days before the United States launched its invasion to kidnap Maduro and his wife and “profited $400,000 in less than 24 hours,” as sports entrepreneur Joe Pompliano calculated in a post on Bluesky.
“Seems pretty suspicious!” he added. “[Secretary of defense] Pete Hegseth making some beer money on the side?” Brody joked.
“Insider trading is not only allowed on prediction markets; it’s encouraged,” Pompliano argued.
Who was behind the Polymarket account remains a mystery. Accounts on markets like Polymarket are anonymous, and payouts are in cryptocurrency, making them hard to track.
As Semafor reported over the weekend, news organizations also had early intel of the US raid on Venezuela, but held off publishing the information so as not to put US troops in danger.
In other words, could it have been an insider at a New York or Washington newsroom who was trying to make a buck — or was it an operative inside the Trump administration?
Prediction markets have long raised concerns over exactly these types of situations. Case in point, one Polymarket user made $1 million in 24 hours in early December after betting on Google’s 2025 Year in Search rankings. Per Forbes, the account had a “near-perfect record of 22 correct predictions out of 23 attempts.”
As The American Prospect points out, critics of the Trump administration have long accused officials of dabbling in similar behavior. The administration has also allowed the prediction market to flourish by dropping enforcement cases in the crypto world and failing to introduce meaningful regulations.
Even Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), which owns the president’s social network, Truth Social, entered the prediction markets business last year, showing a pointed appetite for the space.
“Of course insiders shouldn’t be able to get rich off of policy decisions — but even more concerning is the possibility that people are skewing policy outcomes in order to make their bets pay off,” Demand Progress executive director Sean Vitka told The American Prospect.
One thing’s for sure: while insiders profit, those without that privileged information lose out — and when the bets are on a deadly conflict, innocent people stand to suffer as well.
“And questions related to whether or not, and when, military action might be undertaken are especially vulnerable to such manipulation because the president frequently moves with discretion over the timing and (legally or not) without notice to the public or Congress,” Vitka added.
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