Allegations of insider trading over prediction-market bets tied to Iran conflict

https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20260301140/allegations-of-insider-trading-over-prediction-market-bets-tied-to-iran-conflict

by paulpauper • 5 months ago

97 51 5 months ago

morningstar.com

instagib• 5 months ago

“all fees would be refunded to users who participated in these markets, and that positions from before his death would be cashed out at the last-traded price.”

mikercampbell• 5 months ago

I know it’s cliche, but I hate this timeline.

For a good while there, the headlines went from “oniony” to “sim-city news headline flavor text” to “I can’t believe I share a finite existence with the people being discussed”

mlinhares• 5 months ago

Same. I also wonder why would anyone take the other side on stuff like this, this is clearly to incite insider traders, so either there's a lot of stupid people out there willing to part with their money or this is a very efficient money laundering scheme.

Or both.

torben-friis• 5 months ago

I’m seriously contemplating blocking the news completely. It’s not like me being informed has any influence anyway, now that belief can be manufactured to such an extent. Might as well lower my blood pressure.

georgehotz2• 5 months ago

There's no such thing as "insider trading" on prediction markets. Are you telling me people with secret knowledge profited by making correct predictions? That's the whole point of prediction markets! Provide accurate information = get paid. It doesn't matter where the information came from, as long as it's correct.

bdangubic4• 5 months ago

I bet I’ll punch you in a mouth and then I punch you in a mouth and collect a billion dollars

georgehotz2• 5 months ago

Who took the other side of that bet? I sure didn't. Participants in a market should be well aware that other participants can alter the outcome and bet accordingly.

camillomiller2• 5 months ago

Congrats! You provided correct information! That is apparently more valuable than anything according to a lot of deranged data nerds nowadays, so enacting violence to get to that outcome is perfectly fine! Good job!

s1artibartfast2• 5 months ago

Yep. And it will have been predicted. What seems to be the problem?

Do you want to bet what I'll eat for dinner next?

camillomiller2• 5 months ago

Yeah well you outlined perfectly well why they should be banned from the known universe

HWR_14• 5 months ago

Of course insider trading is a US federal crime in prediction marketplaces.

olalonde• 5 months ago

If you hold confidential information, using it to bet on prediction markets could arguably violate secrecy rules since the market effectively receives the information. If you are not bound by confidentiality, participating should be fine.

Note that this isn't about making the market "fair" for other participants but about ensuring confidential information remains confidential (especially relevant in the context of national defense).

protocolture• 5 months ago

If they provided the information, "Hey I am bob in the pentagon and we are doing war soon", it wouldnt be insider trading.

But all they are doing is updating a financial instrument that suggests an increased likelihood, and getting massive bank for not providing the information that would make everyone else bet the same way.

gruez• 5 months ago

But all they are doing is updating a financial instrument that suggests an increased likelihood, and getting massive bank for not providing the information that would make everyone else bet the same way.

That's the incorrect way of thinking about this, at least according to how US insider trading laws work. If a hedge fund has reason to believe oil prices will spike due to some secret info (eg. they paid some intern to camp out at US airbases and spot outgoing flights), and then they made massive bank on that trade, that's not insider trading. It's not a crime to hoard material nonpublic information and trade on it (ie. "updating a financial instrument ... and getting massive bank for not providing the information that would make everyone else bet the same way"). Now, if they paid off some guy inside the base, that might be breaking a bunch of laws around national security, but still not insider trading.

exogeny• 5 months ago

There’s two different things to argue here.

First, yes, you’re right.

Second, they raised a shit ton of money under the bull case of mass consumer adoption, which is going to be impossible if that said consumer feels it is rigged.

Let’s all be real here; for 95% of their use cases both now and in the future, they’re a sportsbook. Which is fine! But they’re not going to get to anywhere near returning a multiple on their manic valuation until they act like one. And the first thing to do is to stop with all of the pseudo-academic bullshit about what a prediction market is. And the second is for them to hire someone, anyone, who knows even the first thing about sports because everyone even tangentially connected to this market knows that before six months ago, Tarek and Shayne couldn’t differentiate between a football and a buttplug.

watwut• 5 months ago

Whole point of prediction market is unregulated gambling and manoy extraction and facilitatiom for psychopats.

It is not about "accurate prediction". That is just dumb rationalization.

muzani• 5 months ago

So I guess the new war heuristic is pizza and polymarket.

khazhoux2• 5 months ago

Why are people saying the attacks were a surprise? It was widely reported the day before that embassies were told to clear out “now!”

rtkwe2• 5 months ago

The signs it was possibly soon were pretty strong it's the exact day that wasn't really known.

khazhoux2• 5 months ago

US ambassador to Israel tells embassy staff if they want to leave they ‘should do so TODAY’

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/27/middleeast/us-embassy-israel-...

Friday ^^

adampunk• 5 months ago

If it was so obvious, how come you didn’t make a half milion dollars?

More generally, if it was so obvious how come the odds were so long?

If it were so obvious that winning required no insider knowledge the odds should be better.

xfil• 5 months ago

I agree; exact day was predictable enough for people to place confident-enough bets on. Notices to evacuate non-essential personnel from US military bases, embassies, & consulates in the region also went out 1-2 days prior to Israel's strikes on Iran on June 13, 2025.

My social circle had largely expected that Iran was getting bombed on Saturday or Sunday once the evacuation notices went out Friday, and this intuition was merely from laymen who follow the news. I don't doubt that insider trading was involved as it's the norm with this Admin, but I also don't doubt that many savvy people could've legally placed successful bets.

ardanur• 5 months ago

Polymarket is effectively an assassination auction list, you just need to find out which low likelihood resolutions can be swayed by someone's death. But you would need to have money to start which is something aspiring assassins aren't likely to have. And you would also need the skills to launder cryptocurrencies effectively.

This is also true with traditional stock markets, except that laundering real money is much harder to do alone. In the real world an assassin can't really involve more people as those people would realize they are loose ends since they have a get-out-of-jail card in turning on you.

The markets could get ahead of this by stipulating that a resolution via murder will always lead to resolution at prices at a time prior to the death. This would technically incentivize a potential assassin to commit a deniable murder, but if they succeed it won't be the market's [PR] problem.

Rapzid2• 5 months ago

will always lead to resolution at prices at a time prior to the death

But there might be an incentive to freeze the price? I think polymarkets should be banned.

hedora3• 5 months ago

"I bet X will not be assassinated on this date in this way" financial products were the primary reason polymarkets were banned over a century ago.

No idea if they've somehow been legalized as a rider to a 10,000 page appropriations bill, or if they're already illegal in the US.

fourseventy• 5 months ago

prediction markets need to be illegal in the USA, its total insanity.

mr_00ff003• 5 months ago

You could argue that certain prediction markets are better than the alternative. Maybe not for this, but take sports betting.

People taking sides against each other means the losers and winners are individuals.

Meanwhile sports betting is growing but the winners are “the house”, the companies.

xboxnolifes2• 5 months ago

The problem with prediction markets is not who wins, its the incentives that lead to who wins.

IncreasePosts• 5 months ago

Parimutuel betting is a thing, especially in horse racing. There's no reason that it couldn't be played in place of fixed odds betting except that it seems that the consumers don't want it.

ChrisArchitect• 5 months ago

A new Polymarket account made over $500k betting on the U.S. strike against Iran

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47209773

sherr• 5 months ago

According to the Economist recently [1], Israel recently caught a couple of men who bet on the timing of the Iran attacks last year :

"Last summer one “ricosuave666” won more than $150,000 on Polymarket, a betting platform. Their true identity was not clear, but the source of the winnings was: ricosuave666 had bet, with suspicious accuracy, on the precise timing of Israel’s attacks on Iran."

So, these people can be found. Overall however, the magazine does not think that these markets should have a blanket ban.

[1] https://archive.is/W8Ga8 (Prediction markets are rife with insider betting)

7777777phil• 5 months ago

This is the third major case in about three months.

Before the Iran bets there was a suspected Google insider who made $1.15M on Polymarket (22 of 23 correct bets in 24 hours) and Israeli soldiers criminally charged for monetizing classified intelligence on event contracts.

Textbook Akerlof: without enforcement the adverse selection spiral kills these markets before they get a chance to prove useful. I tracked all three cases here: https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-absolute-insider-mess-of...

Allegations of insider trading over prediction-market bets tied to Iran conflict

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