One day before the United States and Israel launched an attack on Iran, a surge in big bets placed on Polymarket on Friday suggested that some bettors may have seen the strike coming.
Polymarket, one of the world’s largest prediction markets, allows its users to wager anonymously on just about any future event, including elections and sports. It has also allowed betting on war, and since the end of last year more than $529 million has been traded on predictions of when the United States would attack Iran next, after it struck Iranian nuclear facilities last June.
A New York Times analysis of Polymarket data over that period found that it was relatively uncommon for someone to bet a significant sum of money that a U.S. strike would happen by the next day.
But over the course of Friday, more than 150 accounts placed hundreds of bets of at least $1,000, correctly predicting an American strike on Iran by Saturday.
Bets of $1,000 or more that the U.S. would strike Iran by the next day
The 11th-hour betting, which totaled about $855,000, “makes you think it was someone who knew something about the timing,” said Eric Zitzewitz, a professor of economics at Dartmouth, who has studied prediction markets.
At least 16 accounts that placed bets Friday predicting a strike by Saturday each ultimately profited by over $100,000, according to the Times analysis. At least 109 accounts made over $10,000. One anonymous wallet that spent over $60,000 on “yes” shares, mostly in the days before the attack, made nearly half a million dollars.
Those betting that the strike would happen by Saturday were in the minority. Polymarket users bet against one another, so there was also a spike Friday in money wagered that the United States would not strike Iran by Saturday.
Based on the prices of the contracts, Polymarket’s overall forecast viewed a strike by Saturday as unlikely: The odds of a U.S. attack ranged on Friday from 7 percent to 26 percent throughout the day. That meant those who wagered “yes” on Friday won their money back many times over when the strike did happen.
Polymarket wagers have previously raised suspicions of insider trading. Earlier in February, Israeli authorities arrested several people after accusing them of using insider information from their roles in the army to place bets on military operations.
Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, who has criticized such markets as “insane” and unethical, said the unusual betting on the Iran strike suggested that even decision makers might have had a stake in the outcome, though he acknowledged there was no public evidence of misconduct by any officials.
“I think it’s likely there were people making the decision on war with Iran that had a financial interest in doing so because they had placed a bet on one of these markets,” Mr. Murphy said in an interview. “It’s worse than insider trading.”
Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, rejected that suggestion. “The only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people,” he said in a statement.
In a “60 Minutes” interview last November, Shayne Coplan, the founder of Polymarket, when asked about using information to gain an edge on the market, noted that “it’s sort of an inevitability that this will happen and there’s a lot of benefits from it,” while also stressing the importance of following trading ethics.
The company said on its website that “accurate, unbiased forecasts” on events in the Middle East are “particularly invaluable in gut-wrenching times like today.” It did not respond to a request for further comment.
Polymarket bets are made using cryptocurrency on a publicly viewable ledger, but the identities of the accounts making the trades are anonymous.
“It’s nearly impossible to identify the individuals behind these accounts,” Nicolas Vaiman, the chief executive of Bubblemaps, a blockchain analytics platform, said in an email. Over the weekend, Bubblemaps flagged six Polymarket accounts that had made a total of $1.2 million betting on the timing of the Iran strike, noting that most of the accounts were relatively new and had specifically traded on a strike by Saturday.
There may be benign explanations for at least some of the trades on Friday. President Trump was known to have been considering military action against Iran, and the two countries held talks on Thursday to try to avert a war. Casual bettors might have been basing their trades on such public information, and investors might have wanted to hedge against conflict in the region. Traders may have also based their bets on social media chatter or other rumors.
But betting on world events has raised concerns about insider manipulation and risks to military planning. In the hours before U.S. troops captured the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3 — an operation that was perhaps more surprising to the world than the Iran strike — a Polymarket user placed a $32,000 bet that Mr. Maduro would be out of power by the end of January, and profited by more than $400,000.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is charged with regulating U.S.-based prediction markets, prohibits them from listing markets related to war. But Polymarket, which has allowed only a limited number of customers in the United States, listed its Iran market on its main platform, which still bars U.S.-based customers.
Kalshi, another prediction market and Polymarket’s primary competitor, did not list a market on an American strike on Iran.
Ben Blatt contributed reporting.
Amy Fan is a Times reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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