An anonymous user on the cryptocurrency betting platform Polymarket netted more than $400,000 by wagering on a U.S. invasion of Venezuela and the ouster of President Nicolás Maduro, raising alarms that insiders with access to sensitive information could exploit such sites for profit.
The bets, publicly visible on Polymarket’s website, totaled $33,934.34 across 13 wagers placed between December 27 and January 3. All focused on the likelihood of a swift U.S. military move against Venezuela and Maduro’s removal from power.
The payout reached $436,759.61 after the operation unfolded.
U.S. forces captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in an early Saturday morning raid, transporting them by helicopter to the USS Iwo Jima before heading to New York. Maduro faces impending narcoterrorism charges in the United States.
President Donald Trump, who had declared in December that Maduro’s days were “numbered” without elaborating, authorized the mission before Christmas, according to U.S. officials. The exact timing remained undecided until late Friday, with limited awareness even at the Pentagon.
That Friday night, before any public disclosure, the bettor placed their largest stake, exceeding $14,000. The account’s creation date and location remain unclear, and Polymarket, which does not enable user interactions, did not reply to inquiries, NBC 5 DFW reported.
Speculation of insider knowledge grew amid reports that Trump and top aides considered action against Venezuela as early as Christmas Day, before pivoting to potential airstrikes on ISIS in Nigeria — delayed by poor weather.
The bettor’s identity, whereabouts, and possible ties to classified details — or mere luck — are unknown.
A spokesperson for Chainalysis, the firm that monitors cryptocurrency flows, noted that the user made no effort to obscure transactions. Winnings were withdrawn from Solana via a prominent U.S. exchange, making them easy for authorities to trace.
At least four additional Polymarket accounts placed wagers solely on Maduro’s removal from office by January’s end, though on a smaller scale. Those bets, made between Thursday and Saturday, ranged from $700 to $900 and yielded profits of $7,000 to $14,000. It remains undetermined if those bettors possessed insider knowledge or merely guessed right.
The swift expansion of prediction markets has spawned betting opportunities on virtually any event, from the everyday to the profound or improbable. Users can stake funds on outcomes such as whether entrepreneur and reality TV personality Kim Kardashian will pass the bar exam, whether a nuclear weapon will detonate this year, or whether the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will happen in the next 12 months.
Yet this vast array, combined with the open-source methods firms use to resolve bets, opens avenues for possible manipulation.
For instance, in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Polymarket allows bets on which military controls specific cities, based on a map from the independent Institute for the Study of War. Those who bet that Russia would take Myrnohrad by November 15 won when the market settled in their favor, as indicated on the map. However, the institute later stated that “an unauthorized and unapproved edit to the interactive map of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was made on the night of November 15-16 EST.”
Last month, 404 Media reported the edit temporarily indicated Russian control before vanishing.
Platforms also host numerous political bets, enabling wagers on primary and general election outcomes nationwide.
Notable controversies include D.C. insider Sean McElwee, who was once with the progressive data firm Data for Progress. He departed in 2022 amid the midterm elections and the fraud indictment of ally Sam Bankman-Fried, who was tied to the FTX crypto exchange. A 2023 Washington Post book excerpt revealed McElwee wagered thousands on races his firm handled, confiding he ordered polls “mostly” to gather betting insights.
Prediction markets exist in a regulatory gray zone, with past limits easing partly under the Trump administration. Polymarket once barred U.S. users in accordance with Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) rules.
This summer, the CFTC ended its investigation into the company, and on November 25, Polymarket announced CFTC approval to function as a U.S. exchange. New sign-ups still require affirming non-U.S. status or location, but the platform is phasing in U.S. betting access.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) intends to introduce legislation this week, dubbed the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026, to outlaw profiting from nonpublic data on these sites, according to his office spokesperson.
David Chase, a onetime Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer now in securities defense, said exploiting insider details for commodity trading gains typically amounts to fraud, though case law lags in addressing such betting.
“I think that the courts are going to have to catch up to this, as they typically do,” Chase said, per NBC 5.
