Online gamblers made a killing from auspiciously opportune bets placed in the days and hours right before President Donald Trump took the U.S. to war in the Middle East.
More than a dozen anonymous accounts, identified by the Financial Times, placed a total of $66,993 on Polymarket, a crypto-based online prediction marketplace, wagering the White House would launch an attack against Iran by Saturday.
Crypto-wallets linked to the accounts placed almost all of their bets within a 24-hour window before the first bombs fell that morning. The users behind the wallets walked away with combined total profits of $330,000.
Around half of the wagers, in fact, came in just six hours prior to the attack. Of the 13 accounts behind the bets, 12 had been created within the past week.
“If a new wallet makes a very large bet on a single issue, you have to wonder why they’re doing that,” Matt Saincome, CEO of Unusual Whales, a financial data provider, told the FT.
“We do see people do that who are wrong,” he added. “But it makes you think, perhaps that’s an insider.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House and the Pentagon for comment on this story. “The only special interest guiding the Trump Administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said.
It’s not the first time Polymarket accounts have cashed in on bets placed immediately before the Trump administration took military action abroad.
FT reports the betting platform put odds of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s removal from office at 9 percent in the hours before he was captured by U.S. forces on Jan. 3.
Six accounts, created just days before their operation and which registered no other betting activity, placed $9,807 on Maduro’s downfall and eventually walked away with $133,878.
A seventh account, set up around the same time, apparently placed $32,000 on other, “Maduro-related markets,” netting $404,222 as a result of his capture.
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