The alleged insider bet of $400,000 by a Green Beret on a Venezuelan raid, initially perceived as an isolated incident, may be just the tip of the iceberg. A recent report by the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, a nonprofit research organization, has analyzed over 435,000 settled Polymarket contracts from January 2021 to mid-March 2026, totaling $54.4 billion in cumulative volume. The findings indicate that low-probability bets on military and defense outcomes achieve success rates that are difficult to attribute to skill or luck alone, with some cases reaching success rates of over 50%. Typically, such "longshot" bets succeed around 14% of the time across political markets.
The authors of the report suggest that markets related to government policies, including military and defense, are particularly challenging to predict using publicly available information, making them more vulnerable to insider trading and specialized knowledge. This creates an environment where a small group of traders can consistently outperform others, not just by reacting more quickly, but by possessing more information.
Polymarket emphasizes its market surveillance and cooperation with the Department of Justice, particularly in the Venezuela case, and prohibits trading based on confidential knowledge, a policy also upheld by Kalshi. The report's findings contribute to a growing body of research indicating that a small percentage of traders dominate price discovery and profits on Polymarket. A working paper from the London Business School and Yale found that roughly 3% of traders are responsible for most price discovery, while separate analysis by Solidus Labs showed that less than 1% of wallets capture about half of all gains.
The ACDC report examines the June 2025 U.S. strikes on Iran as a case study, where Polymarket listed date-specific contracts on the likelihood of a strike. Despite the operation being designed to avoid detection, a small number of traders placed well-timed, large bets on the outcome, with eight wallets sharing about $1.8 million in profits. This pattern is not isolated, as the report found that in five of the six two-hour windows before market resolution, winning longshot bets outnumbered losing ones in Polymarket's military and defense category.
While longshot bets can outperform due to mispricing or shifts in public expectations, the consistency of these patterns, especially in markets tied to military decisions, suggests that some participants may be operating with information advantages. The ACDC, funded through the Fund for Constitutional Government, recommends measures such as identity verification for bettors, conditional payouts on suspicious wagers, restrictions on markets decided by small groups, and limits on contract granularity. The report concludes by calling for an informed debate on whether the public should be allowed to bet on these outcomes at all.