A new series of well-timed trades on Polymarket is once again raising questions about whether insiders profited from nonpublic information. This time, trades related to the U.S.-Iran ceasefire are at the center of the controversy.
The result was a familiar one: a few anonymous accounts walked away with hundreds of thousands in profits.
In what has become a common pattern, the suspicious activity unfolded in the hours before President Donald Trump officially announced that a ceasefire had been agreed upon between Iran and the United States.
Blockchain analysts on X who monitor Polymarket activity for signs of insider trading were the first to flag several wallets that appeared to have made unusually precise bets on the ceasefire.
In a post on X, blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain identified one trader, “Fernandoinfante,” who turned a $13,200 stake into more than $463,000, a 35x return on the trade, after betting “Yes” on the ceasefire outcome.
Lookonchain also said four other suspected insider wallets netted a combined $663,000, with most of them being created and funded the same day the U.S. and Iran agreed to the two-week ceasefire.
All of the activity in question took place on Polymarket’s offshore platform, which, unlike its domestic counterpart, is not a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)-regulated exchange.
These new allegations come just a couple of weeks after Kalshi and Polymarket announced they were implementing new guardrails to protect against insider trading on their platforms.
Calculated Wagers & Almost Perfect Timing
While the traders involved made a decent amount of money on their trades, that’s not what’s raising eyebrows; instead, it’s the pattern behind those trades.
The trail of evidence leading people to believe insiders were behind these trades comes from the bets’ extreme precision. The wallets entered the market when the odds of a ceasefire by April 7 were only 3.9%, 10.3%, 6.7%, and 2.9%, according to Lookonchain.
Another trader, “BlueHorseshoe86,” who previously made $260,000 betting that Nicolás Maduro would be out by January 31, reportedly cleared another $194,000 on U.S.-Iran ceasefire markets.
On-chain forensics firm Bubblemaps posted on X that it had uncovered a cluster of interconnected accounts that correctly called the February surprise attack on Iran and the April ceasefire. Those accounts walked away with more than $600,000 from the ceasefire trade alone.
One of the best-performing wallets in the group cleared over $400,000 in total profit while frequently changing handles, going from “nothingeverhappens911” to “nothingeverfrickinghappens” and currently “djijaij83jdo4jdlwjflsg” in what appears to be an attempt to make the wallet harder to track.
All of these seemingly too-good-to-be-true records have social media users and market watchers speculating that these traders are operating with access to nonpublic information and trading with “tomorrow’s headlines” open on a second monitor.
Ceasefire Bets Fit a Wider Pattern on Polymarket
The ceasefire market on Polymarket is part of a documented pattern of exceptionally well-timed bets on the platform.
In February, the same thing happened at the opening of “Operation Epic Fury,” the joint U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran, when six newly funded wallets netted $1.2 million by betting the attack would happen just hours before it occurred.
Similarly, in January, three wallets made over $630,000 betting on the capture of Maduro. Those accounts were often pre-funded days in advance and focused exclusively on single-outcome “insider” markets.
All of this suspected insider trading has gotten the attention of lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who’ve urged the CFTC to crack down on illegal insider trading by federal employees on prediction market platforms.
Lawmakers have also introduced several bills seeking to rein in insider trading by government officials on these event contract exchanges. The most recent proposed legislation is a bicameral bill, the STOP Corrupt Bets Act, sponsored by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR).
