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 (ACDC) analyzed over 435,000 markets and $54.4 billion in cumulative volume on Polymarket from January 2021 to mid-March 2026, revealing unusually high win rates for low-probability bets on military and defense outcomes. These success rates, which have topped 50% in some cases, are difficult to explain by skill or luck alone. 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.
This creates an environment where a small group of informed traders can consistently outperform others. The ACDC report's findings are consistent with previous research, which found that roughly 3% of traders account for most price discovery on Polymarket, and that profits are highly concentrated, with fewer than 1% of wallets capturing 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 profits of about $1.8 million for eight wallets. The Pentagon's use of decoy bombers and stealth aircraft to avoid detection did not prevent a small number of traders from placing well-timed bets on the outcome.
The report found that, across Polymarket's military and defense category, winning longshot bets outnumbered losing ones in five of the six two-hour windows before market resolution, contrary to what market prices imply. The consistency of these patterns suggests that some participants may be operating with information advantages that others do not have. The ACDC 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. The report concludes by calling for an evidence-informed debate about whether the public should be betting on these outcomes at all.