The Polymarket account that profited from Nicholas Maduro’s capture and removal as president is no longer accessible. This news raises more questions about insider trading on prediction markets.
You can’t get to a Polymarket account that made roughly $400,000 from a wager that was both controversial and well-timed on the detention of Nicolás Maduro, who was then the president of Venezuela.
Around 1:00 p.m. UTC on Thursday, the page showed an error message that said, “Oops… we didn’t predict this.” Other users’ pages were still available.
Suspicious trading activity draws industry scrutiny
The news comes as more and more people in the crypto industry are worried by big bets and strange trading on prediction markets.
According to information on the Wayback Machine, the Polymarket account in question made a number of related bets on Polymarket.
The user also bet that Maduro would be overthrown, that US troops would be in Venezuela by January 31, that the US would “invade Venezuela” by January 31, and that President Donald Trump would “invoke War Powers” against Venezuela by January 31.
Source: Wayback Machine
Blockchain transactions add to transparency questions
On January 3 at 1:41 pm UTC, the Polymarket CTF Exchange sent around $436,700 in USDC to the account’s address on the Polygon blockchain. At 11:54 pm UTC, $437,800 of USDC departed the address.
According to Polymarket’s privacy policy, users can ask the site to erase or return all of their personal information, including copies and backups.
Regulatory pressure builds around prediction platforms
People are becoming more and more worried about insider trading and lack of transparency in prediction markets, even outside of the crypto world.
Some US officials, like Representative Ritchie Torres, have supported laws that would stop insider trading on these kinds of platforms.
The news comes as another trader with an account that reportedly wins 100% of the time placed a bet on Polymarket that the US will attack Iran by the end of January. This has led to even more scrutiny of insider activity among industry analysts.