The alleged insider trading by a Green Beret, who made a $400,000 bet on a raid in Venezuela, may be just the tip of the iceberg. A new report by the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, a nonprofit research group, has analyzed over 435,000 markets and $54.4 billion in cumulative volume on Polymarket from January 2021 to mid-March 2026. The findings indicate that low-probability bets on military and defense outcomes have success rates that are difficult to explain by skill or luck alone, with some cases reaching success rates of over 50%.
This is significantly higher than the average success rate of 14% for such bets in political markets. The report suggests that markets related to government policies, such as military and defense, are more susceptible to information asymmetries, including insider trading or specialized knowledge, due to the difficulty in forecasting outcomes using public information alone. The gap between informed and uninformed traders may be widest in these markets, creating an environment where a small group can consistently outperform others.
The report's findings add to existing research that shows roughly 3% of traders account for most price discovery on Polymarket, with fewer than 1% of wallets capturing about half of all gains. The analysis of the June 2025 U.S.
strikes on Iran as a case study reveals that 19 longshot bets totaling $164,292 were placed in the hours leading up to the strike, with eight wallets sharing about $1.8 million in profits. The report recommends identity verification for bettors, conditional payouts on suspicious wagers, restrictions on markets whose outcomes are decided by small groups, and limits on how granular contracts can become. Furthermore, it calls for an evidence-informed debate about whether the public should be betting on these outcomes at all, given the potential for insider trading and information asymmetries.