Wagers on the war set off alarms about potential insider trading in the Trump administration
A few anonymous accounts created in the days before the attacks on Venezuela and Iran make notable profits on prediction platforms
BarcelonaThe war in Iran has raised alarms about the role of betting platforms in relation to the United States administration and the circle of President Donald Trump. According to various North American media outlets, anonymous accounts created shortly before the military interventions in Iran and Venezuela have fueled suspicions of possible insider trading –or even classified information– by government members or Trump's allies and family members.
"Prediction" platforms are companies that allow anyone to bet online on practically anything, from political events to sports competitions, within a legal framework that is unclear about the limits that both bettors and the companies themselves must follow. Betting contracts typically have a yes or no outcome (i.e., they consist of correctly predicting whether a specific real-world event will occur or not). Among the most used platforms in the United States are Kalshi and, to a lesser extent, Polymarket.
According to the financial news outlet Bloomberg, in the days leading up to the hostilities of the U.S. and Israel against Iran, approximately 150 million dollars were bet on the removal of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Iran's supreme leader, and, according to the Reuters agency, an additional 529 million dollars were bet on a series of contracts linked to the timing of the attacks on Iran. The analysis firm Bubblemaps identified six accounts opened the day before the attacks that made a combined profit of 1.2 million dollars on Polymarket by correctly predicting the date of the military intervention, which was February 28. Furthermore, another blockchain analysis company, Lookonchain, has indicated that three specific accounts created a few days before the war had earned about 480,000 dollars on a bet that would close a ceasefire before April 7.
Despite this, although this type of high-profit bets has raised alarms among Trump's opponents, the fact that they are anonymous accounts makes it impossible to know who is behind them and who has finally taken the winnings. In this regard, Bloomberg cites a study by Columbia University in New York and the University of Haifa on bets on Polymarket, which suggests that various coordinated operations with patterns compatible with the use of insider information have yielded profits of 143 million dollars in two years, although the same report recalls that this type of operations and winnings are not conclusive proof that there have been malpractices.
Suspicions with Venezuela
Suspicions about possible use of confidential or privileged information already arose in January of this year, when the USA sent a military force to Caracas to detain and transfer the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, to North American territory. On that occasion, an anonymous user's account on Polymarket profited $400,000 after betting just hours before the military operation would occur.
Along the same lines, California Democratic congressman Mike Levin has also focused on bets made shortly before the attacks in Iran. In fact, Congress has various proposals in progress to tighten legislation on this type of betting in order to prevent the use of insider information.