The alleged $400,000 insider bet by a Green Beret on a Venezuela raid may not have been an isolated incident. A recent report by the Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC) analyzed over 435,000 Polymarket contracts and $54.4 billion in trading volume, revealing that low-probability bets on military and defense outcomes have success rates that defy explanation by skill or luck alone. Typically, such 'longshot' bets succeed around 14% of the time, but in military-linked contracts, success rates have reached as high as 50% in some cases.
This disparity suggests that some traders may be operating with information advantages that others do not have, potentially due to insider trading or specialized knowledge. The report's findings add to a growing body of research indicating that a small group of traders, roughly 3%, account for most price discovery on Polymarket, with fewer 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, 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 report's authors suggest that identity verification for bettors, conditional payouts on suspicious wagers, restrictions on markets whose outcomes are decided by small groups, and limits on contract granularity may help mitigate these issues. Ultimately, the report calls for an evidence-informed debate on whether the public should be allowed to bet on these outcomes at all.