The alleged $400,000 insider bet by a Green Beret on a Venezuela raid may be just the tip of the iceberg. A recent analysis by the Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC) of over 435,000 Polymarket contracts and $54.4 billion in trading volume has uncovered unusually high win rates for low-probability bets on military and defense outcomes, with some success rates exceeding 50%. This is significantly higher than the typical 14% success rate for such bets in political markets. The ACDC report suggests that these markets are more susceptible to insider trading and information asymmetries due to the difficulty in forecasting outcomes using public information alone.
The findings support previous research indicating that a small group of traders, approximately 3%, drive price discovery on Polymarket, while fewer than 1% of wallets capture about half of all gains. The report examines the June 2025 U.S.
strikes on Iran as a case study, where 19 longshot bets totaling $164,292 were placed in the hours leading up to the strike, resulting in eight wallets sharing about $1.8 million in profits. The consistent patterns of winning longshot bets in military and defense markets suggest that some participants may be operating with information advantages.
The ACDC recommends identity verification for bettors, conditional payouts on suspicious wagers, and restrictions on markets whose outcomes are decided by small groups. The report concludes by calling for a debate on whether the public should be allowed to bet on these outcomes at all.