The recent revelation of a Green Beret's alleged $400,000 insider bet on a Venezuelan raid 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 Polymarket contracts and $54.4 billion in cumulative volume 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 exceeding 50%.
This raises concerns about information asymmetries, including insider trading or specialized knowledge, which may be contributing to the unusually high win rates. The report's authors note that markets tied to government policies, such as military and defense, are particularly susceptible to these issues due to the limited availability of public information. As a result, a small group of informed traders may be consistently outperforming others by leveraging their access to confidential information.
The report's findings are consistent with previous research, which has shown that a small percentage of traders account for the majority of price discovery on Polymarket, with fewer than 1% of wallets capturing about half of all gains. The study 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 report concludes that the patterns of winning longshot bets in military and defense markets are consistent with the presence of information advantages, and recommends measures such as identity verification, conditional payouts, and restrictions on certain markets to mitigate these issues. Ultimately, the report calls for a broader debate about the appropriateness of allowing the public to bet on these outcomes.