A Polymarket user made $436K on the USA capture of Maduro

• A fairly new account on Polymarket logged in and placed several Venezuela-tied bets "shortly" before President Trump announced the US had captured President Maduro
• The account holder won a total of $436,000, with one specific bet worth $32,000
• This has raised worries about insiders benefiting from prediction markets at the expense of everyone else

The special ops operation the United States conducted in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, on Friday, January 2, caught most people by surprise. Only a select few knew about the President’s plan to deploy 150 aircraft, suppress the country’s defense capabilities, while a Delta Force team was conducting an on-the-ground operation, extracting Nicolás Maduro.

Showy Operation Has Subtler Undertones for Prediction Markets

However, speculation swirled after it transpired that shortly before news about Maduro’s capture broke, someone had placed a $32,000 bet on the President’s removal from power on Polymarket, a prediction market. The bet resulted in a $436,000 payout for the customer who remains anonymous.

Observers have suggested that the bet had all the trappings of a person benefiting from insider information, with whoever the bettor was, placing the wager just before President Trump announced Maduro’s capture at 4:21 am on Saturday on Truth Social, his social media platform.

"This particular bet has all the hallmarks of a trade based on inside information. It happened very late, right before the very event they were betting on happened; it was a relatively large amount of money; and it happened in a market that is not really regulated and where there is no transparency," Better Markets CEO and cofounder Dennis Kelleher, told CBS News.

The account reportedly was newly registered, and it had specifically placed bets around Venezuela’s political future and that of its notorious leader. The other bets that the account holder included a $1,000 wager that the US would be invading the country, along with a $250 flutter on whether the President would use the War Powers Act to justify action against the Latin American country.

Another wager worth $146 was placed on the US forces showing in the country by the end of January. This supposed transgression puts most customers at a disadvantage, as people with inside knowledge could easily benefit at the expense of everyone else - or at least those who are not betting on the same outcome as they are.

Insider Traders and Prediction Markets - Not Regulated

Worse still, sports betting platforms would normally target such behavior and possibly even refuse a payout if they suspect that someone is breaking the rules, but prediction platforms are usually happy to pay because they are not overly scrupulous over "inside information."

Polymarket, though, may also be wilfully turning a blind eye, as its future in the United States may partly be tied to how predisposed the current administration and the Trump family feel towards the company.

A few suspicious bets are nothing to lose sleep over.

Image credit: Unsplash.com