Anonymous crypto gambler made $436,000 on Maduro capture

[Mr. Sparkle]

Source: BBC

A gambler made nearly half a million dollars on the capture of Venezuela's president just before it was officially announced, raising questions about whether someone profited from inside knowledge of the US operation. Wagers on Polymarket, a crypto-powered platform, that Nicolás Maduro would be out of power by the end of January rose in the hours before President Donald Trump announced on Saturday the Venezuelan leader had been seized.

One account, which joined the platform last month and took four positions, all on Venezuela, made more than $436,000 (£322,000) from a $32,537 bet. It remains unclear who placed the bet. The anonymous account had a blockchain identifier of letters and numbers. Polymarket data shows traders put the odds of Maduro's exit at just 6.5% in the afternoon of Friday 2 January.

But they had jumped to 11% by shortly before midnight and surged in the early hours of 3 January, indicating a sudden change in positions just before Trump posted on Truth Social that Maduro was in US custody. Polymarket did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dennis Kelleher, chief executive at Better Markets, a non-partisan group that advocates for financial reform, told the BBC's US partner CBS: "This particular bet has all the hallmarks of a trade based on inside information."

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gn93292do

[wolfie001]

1. tRUMP the fat orange imbecile and his corrupt cohort of criminals

Just never ends with that mutherfucker.

[Brother Buzz]

2. Junior, is that you?

[gAI Obsession]

3. Or just a wise individual following the Epstein deadlines.

Do we remember our good friend Jeff?

[mdbl]

4. Ah Yes, crypto - where crooks go to launder money.

[William Seger]

5. As I said on the first thread about this, it could have been anybody who knew the attack was coming

It wouldn't take much imagination to realize that the market on that proposition bet would spike as soon as the attack was announced, and a hefty profit could be made immediately without waiting for the actual results. (The way those proposition markets work, you can sell your bet, like a stock market, and make tons of money on a spike even if it eventually doesn't become true. If Maduro had been killed, that would have been an instant winner, but if Maduro is still alive and somehow got himself returned as president before the end of the month, the bet would be lost.)

[snot]

6. I've read that the NYT & WaPo

had advance notice of the operation but refrained from reporting on it, supposedly out of concern for the troops' safety (although I have to say, it seems like they never met a military operation they didn't love reporting on, and this one might not have happened had more people known what was planned).

So yes, there were probably a number of people who might have had inside info.

Trump's own behavior illustrates perfectly why profiting from inside info, whether you're the pres., a congresscritter, or whatever – should be illegal and prosecuted.

[Igel]

8. But if it's a reporter or somebody close to a reporter that had the inside info,

the reporter (or friends and family) aren't exactly "insiders." Sure, they're privy to the information, but it's not like it's one of the planners making moola of something they're involved in planning and keeping hush-hush.

As for prosecution, NPR raised an interesting point: That this kind of "market" is really a futures contract of some sort and it's far, far from clear that the laws would apply even if it were Hegseth himself doing the gambling.

[snot]

9. I think the law prohibits trading on non-public info,

Last edited Wed Jan 7, 2026, 07:09 PM - Edit history (1)

regardless of how related or unrelated you are to the origins of the info or or how you came to possess it (remember Martha Stewart's prosecution – she simply profitted from inside info that a broker told her about a biological sciences co.)

However, I take your point about the nature of activity in predictions markets, which I understand to be currently treated more like credit derivatives.

That said, I happen to believe that credit derivatives should be MUCH more restricted and much more heavily regulated and policed than they currently are.

Fwiw, speaking broadly, traditional principles of fraud generally hold that in situations in which one party possesses info that the other party couldn't discover with reasonable due diligence, the party possessing the info usually has a duty either to disclose the secret info to the other party or to refrain from taking advantage of it.

I understand the law contains many exceptions to this general principle, but I think it should apply unless clear, specific reasons can be shown justifying an exception on the basis of what will likely yield the best result for society as a whole and over the longer term.

[PSPS]

7. From The Atlantic

When U.S. Delta Force commandos slipped into Venezuelan airspace over the weekend, they did so in secrecy. And yet, in the hours before President Donald Trump gave the final order for the strike, someone bet more than $20,000 that Nicolás Maduro would be ousted as the country’s leader by the end of January.

On Polymarket, the online platform that lets people wager on almost anything, an anonymous trader somewhere in the world placed a series of suspiciously well-timed bets. Using a fresh account created last month, the individual made just a few bets in the days leading up to the raid, according to The Wall Street Journal—all on the possibility of imminent regime change in Venezuela—and appeared to come away with more than $400,000.

Perhaps the bettor just got phenomenally lucky. Or perhaps they knew about the raid ahead of time and leveraged it for a quick payout. We can’t know, because Polymarket, a so-called prediction market where people turn their idle hunches into real cash, allows some of its customers to remain anonymous. Traders place their bets using crypto, which could provide another layer of cover. The Maduro trade has generated a huge amount of speculation and controversy; the internet is now full of jokes that Barron Trump, hunched behind dual monitors in his NYU dorm room, may have been behind it.

This is not the first instance of a well-timed bet on Polymarket raising questions about insider trading. Just before María Corina Machado, a leader of Venezuela’s opposition to Maduro, was declared the winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, the probability that she would win the award began to spike on Polymarket (despite a highly secretive selection process). The Nobel Institute has said that it may have been a victim of espionage. Early last month, a trader made a series of bets related to Google’s most popular searches of 2025. Just before the company released its “Year in Search” report, the user bet on some of those top searches with uncanny accuracy. In the end, the account netted more than $1 million.

The rest: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/01/venezuela-maduro-polymarket-prediction-markets/685526/