In brief
- Linked Polymarket accounts made $2.4 million by accurately betting on U.S. military actions tied to the Iran conflict.
- Bubblemaps said the accounts won 98% of their wagers and appeared coordinated.
- The trades follow a recent case involving a U.S. soldier accused of using classified information to make Polymarket bets.
Weeks after a U.S. soldier was arrested for allegedly placing insider bets predicting America’s recent attack on Venezuela, crypto sleuths have detected another series of suspect wagers related to the Iran war—and these are far more lucrative.
A cluster of nine interlinked Polymarket accounts has netted some $2.4 million placing well-timed bets on U.S. military actions in Iran, according to an investigation from on-chain sleuthing firm Bubblemaps.
The anonymous accounts, all created days prior to America’s initial bombardment of Iran in late February, have been remarkably successful. Their wagers on U.S. military decisions have paid out 98% of the time. Only on a handful of occasions did the wallets ever lose money—and always in tiny quantities, worth a few hundred dollars, that Bubblemaps contends were lost intentionally to throw investigators off their scent.
When it comes to significant wagers, the accounts have traded flawlessly. They accurately predicted the timing of numerous U.S. strikes on Iran, the ousting of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and the establishment of a temporary ceasefire between Iran and the United States.
Those wagers netted the interrelated accounts over $2.4 million on Polymarket.
Nicolas Vaiman, the CEO of Bubblemaps, told Decrypt that only a small, circumstantial clue ties the accounts in question to the United States: the fact that one of the suspicious accounts was named “whopperlover.”
“Other than the silly names… there is no evidence these users are American,” Vaiman said. “They did primarily focus on U.S. military markets related to Iran. However, it could still be anyone.”
Bubblemaps analysts told Decrypt the winnings were ultimately off-ramped to Bybit, a centralized crypto exchange based in Dubai—but also touched other exchanges including Binance and HTX, and may have been funneled through those platforms by a third-party service.
Polymarket did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.
The Bubblemaps investigation, first revealed on 60 Minutes, comes after Gannon Ken Van Dyke—a U.S. soldier stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina—was arrested by federal law enforcement last month for allegedly netting over $400,000 on wagers related to America’s capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.
Van Dyke used classified intelligence to make accurate wagers about America’s planned attack on Venezuela, federal prosecutors claim. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The proliferation of insider trades on prediction market platforms like Polymarket has roiled U.S. politics in recent months, as some lawmakers seek to introduce new restrictions on the emergent sector, and the Trump administration argues existing laws are sufficient to handle the problem.
The founding fathers of the exploding sector, however, have long maintained that insider trading is a feature of prediction markets, not a bug—one that makes markets more accurate, albeit less ethical and fair.