Recently, the decentralized prediction platform Polymarket has drawn attention due to several unusually large bets. According to on-chain tracking tool Lookonchain, a new wallet named “Idothisfromtimetotime” placed a bet of approximately $50,000 on the event of whether Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz just hours before the incident, and subsequently faced a rapid loss of about 36%. This address had no prior transaction history, and the identity of its owner remains undisclosed.
Even more strikingly, some analyses have pointed out that several newly created wallets concentrated their bets before U.S. military actions in Iran, profiting nearly a million dollars within hours after the events occurred, raising widespread suspicions of “insider trading.” This pattern of “precise prediction” is highly synchronized with politically sensitive events, bringing the ethical boundaries of prediction markets back into focus.
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has proposed legislation to ban prediction markets involving government actions, emphasizing that such platforms could be exploited by insiders to profit from undisclosed military or diplomatic decisions. Meanwhile, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has already clearly prohibited contract trading involving terrorist attacks, assassinations, or wars, drawing a regulatory line for compliant platforms.
In contrast, the regulated domestic platform Kalshi has a “death exclusion clause” and an automatic cancellation mechanism for events related to leadership, while Polymarket, as an offshore platform, allows anonymous participation and opens up a broader range of event categories, leading to significant differences in information disclosure, dispute resolution, and legal accountability mechanisms. Users face risks including unilateral cancellation of contracts by the platform, dynamic adjustments to rules, and the misuse of non-public information without effective recourse—meaning that even if the prediction direction is correct, the final gains may still be nullified due to regulatory intervention.
In this context, the energy sector, such as ExxonMobil, has shown strong short-term performance, reflecting the market's ongoing concern about changes in energy supply triggered by geopolitical events. However, it is important to note that stock market performance is not directly correlated with prediction markets and should not be used as an investment basis.