The alleged insider trading incident involving a Green Beret and a $400,000 bet on a Venezuela raid may be just the tip of the iceberg. A recent report by the Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC), a nonprofit research organization, has analyzed over 435,000 Polymarket contracts and $54.4 billion in cumulative volume from January 2021 to mid-March 2026. The findings suggest that bets on military and defense outcomes are winning at rates that cannot be explained by skill or luck alone, with some cases seeing success rates of over 50%.
This is in stark contrast to the typical 14% success rate for longshot bets across political markets. The report's authors note that markets related to government policies, such as military and defense, are more susceptible to information asymmetries, including insider trading and specialized knowledge. This can create an environment where a small group of informed traders can consistently outperform others. The report's findings are consistent with previous research, which has shown that a small percentage of traders 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, finding that a small number of traders placed large, well-timed bets on the outcome, despite the Pentagon's efforts to keep the operation secret. The report's recommendations include implementing identity verification for bettors, conditional payouts on suspicious wagers, and restrictions on markets whose outcomes are decided by small groups. Ultimately, the report calls for an evidence-informed debate on whether the public should be allowed to bet on these outcomes at all.