Well-timed wagers made on the online betting platform Polymarket about U.S. military action in Venezuela have users wondering if insider information is involved.
Two bets are the focus of scrutiny and speculation: one predicting when former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro would be ousted and another on when the U.S. will invade Venezuela.
The latter remains unresolved.
One user is eyeballing a nearly half-million-dollar payday after betting that the Venezuelan president would be kicked to the curb by the end of January, raising concerns about the possibility of insider knowledge being used.
The unidentified trader bet $32,000 hours before President Trump ordered the raid, according to reports. When an official announcement was made, the trader made more than $400,000 in profit.
The user created an account last month, placing an initial bet on Dec. 27 that the U.S. would invade Venezuela by Jan. 31, before upping the ante by placing multiple more bets on similar topics.
Now, a bubbling conspiracy holds that someone with inside information about the operation in Venezuela used that to walk away with a pretty penny.
Polymarket has also not paid out wagers that predicted the U.S. would invade Venezuela — a trading volume almost reaching $11 million. The bet says it will be resolved once the U.S. “commences a military offensive intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela.”
A day after the U.S. military launched an operation to capture Mr. Maduro, Polymarket said that the raid did not qualify as an invasion. Now, bets predicting an invasion by Jan. 31 are at a standstill, prompting anger from wagers who want to cash out.
Bets on a military engagement between the U.S. and Venezuela have resulted in over $87.4 million in trading volume, and bets on Mr. Maduro’s ouster have surpassed $56.6 million.
The popular crypto-based betting platform falls under the supervision of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, with fewer guardrails than the stock market’s protections against insider trading. But even as the commission can enforce policies that target such fraud, it has significantly fewer enforcement resources.
Rep. Ritchie Torres, New York Democrat, said he plans to introduce a bill to bar federal elected officials, political appointees and executive branch employees from placing bets in prediction markets where they have relevant nonpublic information or could obtain it.
Some news organizations had early information about the U.S. raid in Venezuela but held off publishing to avoid endangering U.S. troops.
