Large Polymarket, Wall Street bets on Trump’s war news under scrutiny
Al Jazeera
Well-timed trades regarding Iran war news this week lead critics to argue White House may be engaged in insider trading.
From cryptocurrency-based online platforms to oil futures and the United States S&P 500 stock benchmark, traders have made bets worth hundreds of millions of dollars since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran with suspiciously well-timed trades that suggest knowledge of key White House decision-making.
One of the most well-documented examples has been Polymarket, a platform that lets users anonymously bet on event outcomes from sports tournaments to ceasefires without uploading an identity document.
Polymarket gained mainstream popularity during the 2024 US presidential election, but it has become synonymous with suspected insider trading since January after well-timed bets on US plans to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, followed by the start of the war on Iran two months later.
Researchers have tracked dozens of examples of anonymous new accounts betting big but also correctly just before a critical event like the February 28 US-Israeli strikes that began the Iran war.
As of Wednesday, there were 355 live prediction markets on Polymarket linked to outcomes in the war, such as the identity of the next leader of Iran, the date of a US-Iran nuclear deal and when Iran will launch military action against Israel.
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