The alleged $400,000 insider bet by a Green Beret on a Venezuelan raid initially seemed like an isolated incident. However, a recent report suggests it might be just the tip of the iceberg. The Anti-Corruption Data Collective, a nonprofit research organization, analyzed over 435,000 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 have success rates that are difficult to attribute to skill or luck alone.
Typically, such 'longshot' bets succeed around 14% of the time across political markets. In contrast, military-linked contracts have seen success rates exceed 50% in some cases. The authors of the report noted that markets related to specific government policies, including military and defense, as well as foreign affairs, are particularly challenging to forecast using publicly available information. This makes them more vulnerable to information asymmetries, including insider trading or specialized knowledge.
In these markets, the gap between informed and uninformed traders may be the widest, creating an environment where a small group of traders can consistently outperform others, not just by reacting faster, but by having access to more information. Polymarket emphasizes its market surveillance teams and cooperation with the Department of Justice regarding the Venezuela case. The platform prohibits trading on confidential knowledge, a policy also in place on Kalshi. The report's findings contribute to a growing body of research pointing in the same direction.
A working paper from the London Business School and Yale found that approximately 3% of traders are responsible for most price discovery on Polymarket. Separate analysis by blockchain analytics firm Solidus Labs revealed that profits are even more concentrated, with less than 1% of wallets capturing about half of all gains. The ACDC report examines the June 2025 U.S. strikes on Iran as a case study.
Polymarket had listed several date-specific contracts on whether a strike would occur. The strike took place at 18:40 ET on June 21. In the hours leading up to it, 19 longshot bets totaling $164,292 were placed across the contracts that ultimately resolved in favor of the strike. Eight wallets shared approximately $1.8 million in profits, with one wallet taking nearly $500,000.
The Pentagon had designed the operation to be difficult to detect from the outside, using decoy bombers and long-range stealth aircraft. Despite these efforts, a small number of traders placed large, well-timed bets on the outcome.
The pattern extends beyond this single event. Across Polymarket's military and defense category, the report found that in five of the six two-hour windows before market resolution, winning longshot bets outnumbered losing ones, contrary to what market prices would suggest.
While longshot bets can outperform due to other factors such as mispricing or shifts in public expectations, the consistency of the patterns, especially in markets tied to military decisions, suggests that some participants may be operating with information advantages not available to others. The ACDC, as a nonprofit research group funded through the Fund for Constitutional Government, does not have a surveillance product to sell, unlike Solidus Labs, whose recent Polymarket analysis also serves as a marketing case for the platform it licenses to Kalshi.
The ACDC's recommendations include implementing identity verification for bettors, conditional payouts on suspicious wagers, restrictions on markets whose outcomes are decided by small groups, and limits on the granularity of contracts. The report concludes by calling for 'an evidence-informed debate about whether the public should be betting on these outcomes at all.'