From cryptocurrency-based online platforms to oil futures and the United States S&P 500 stock benchmark, traders have bet hundreds of millions of dollars on Iran since the start of the US-Israeli war with suspiciously well-placed trades that suggest the wisdom of key White House decision-makers.
One of the most well-documented examples is Polymarket, a platform that lets users bet anonymously on outcomes ranging from sports tournaments to warfights without having to upload identification documents.
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PolyMarkets gained mainstream popularity during the 2024 US presidential election, but since January it has become synonymous with suspected insider trading after betting on the timing of US plans. kidnapping The war on Iran began two months after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Researchers have tracked dozens of examples of anonymous new accounts, largely speculative, but also right before a significant event, such as the February 28 US-Israeli attacks that triggered the Iran war.
As of Wednesday, there were 355 live prediction markets on Polymarket related to war outcomes, such as the identity of Iran’s next leader, the date of the US-Iran nuclear deal and when Iran will launch military action against Israel.
Andrew 10, an independent on-chain analyst known as GWEI, told Al Jazeera one of the most “fascinating” recent examples of suspicious betting was that he discovered 38 accounts he believes belonged to the same person and correctly placed more than $2 million in bets on the February 28 attacks.
According to research shared by Andrew on X, each account placed four to 10 bets with a near 100 percent success rate. Also noteworthy was the fact that users began preparing accounts with cryptocurrency transfers on February 22, before placing bets on the probability of a February 28 strike between 11:00 and 12:00 GMT on February 27.
red flags
While successful Polymarket bets can be based on everything Open-Source Intelligence For simple beginners’ luck, researchers look for several red flags that suggest questionable betting.
They include practices like “wallet splitting,” or dividing stakes among a series of accounts to avoid detection, or opening multiple wallets to place a new bet, said Ben York, a former research analyst at Cointelegraph Consulting and founder of Starchild, which lets users develop personalized artificial intelligence agents.
“The most important aspect of a suspicious wallet would be a wallet with no prior history,” York told Al Jazeera. “An average user of Polymarket will have a long history, but if you’re insider trading, you won’t want that link, so you’ll create a new wallet.”
A more recent case was identified this week on the
Fintech platforms have not been the only source of questionable speculation over the past week, as a series of well-timed Wall Street trades have also raised questions of possible insider trading.
The latest round of suspicious trades began on Monday before markets opened in the US and Trump announced on his Truth social platform at 7:04 a.m. (11:04 GMT) that he was going to delay threatened attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure after “very good and productive conversations” with Tehran.
In the 15 minutes before the announcement, 6,200 West Texas Intermediate oil contracts traded with a notional value of 6,200 Brent crude and $580 million, according to Bloomberg data.
The price of oil has fluctuated wildly since the start of the Iran war as it has responded to the ups and downs of the conflict. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz to Middle Eastern oil and gas exports has put additional pressure on prices.
Following Trump’s news on Monday, the price of Brent crude fell sharply from $112 a barrel to about $99, while West Texas Intermediate dropped from about $99 to $86, leaving a small fortune for anyone who had placed a big bet on the price falling.
At the same time, pre-trading volume on the S&P 500 e-mini, which trades on the future performance of the S&P 500, rose at 6:50 a.m. (10:50 GMT) on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
As an index of the 500 largest publicly traded companies in the US, the S&P 500 is considered a signal for the US economy and often reacts to major news events, including Trump’s announcement.
‘Exploiting information for profit’
Unusual Whales, a platform that tracks unusual activity by large or influential investors known as “whales”, reported that one trade involved buying S&P 500 futures with a notional value of $1.5bn and selling oil futures with a value of $192m.
“These orders were 4-6 times larger than anything else at the time. It appears the trader made huge profits,” Unusual Whales wrote in a post on X.
According to Bloomberg, spikes were also seen on other futures markets such as DAX index futures and the Euro Stoxx 50 index and the Nasdaq and Russell 2000 indexes.
Observers said such activity was highly unusual because it occurred before markets opened on Monday and on a day with no anticipated news hook, such as the release of key U.S. economic data or a company’s earnings call.
Independent commodities trader Peter Brandt told Al Jazeera that he found the timing of the trades suspicious amid other large, recent “market-shaking announcements”.
“I’ve traded long enough (five decades) to know that where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire,” Brandt said, adding that the trade was nonetheless legal because there is no law in the US against “this type of insider trading” of oil and S&P 500 futures contracts.
Taking a much harsher view, American economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman wrote on Substack that there was an “obvious explanation” for Monday’s otherwise “surprising” trading.
“Someone close to Trump knew what he was up to, and they took advantage of that inside information to make huge, immediate profits,” they wrote, arguing that this was more than simple insider trading.
He wrote, “We have another word for situations in which people with access to confidential information related to national security – such as plans to bomb another country or not – exploit that information for profit. That word is ‘treason’.”
The White House did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment, but a White House spokesperson told the Financial Times this week that it “does not tolerate any administration official illegally profiting from insider knowledge” and that allegations of insider trading were “baseless and irresponsible reporting.”
‘Insider trading’
Amid growing scrutiny of recent trades on Iran-based news, members of the Democratic Party have called for greater regulation of prediction sites like PolyMarket.
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who has accused Trump’s Republican administration officials of “insider trading” on Iran war news, introduced the Banning Event Trading in Sensitive Operations and Federal Operations (BETS) Act in Congress last week.
The Bets Off Act would prevent platforms like Polymarket and its competitor Kalshi from allowing bets to be placed on “government actions, terrorism, war, assassination and events where a person knows or controls the outcome”.
In the short term, Polymarket and Kalshi both moved to address insider trading questions this week.
Polymarket said on Monday it had updated its rules to clarify that trading using stolen confidential information, illegal tips or by someone who can influence an outcome is prohibited as insider trading.
Kalshi, which unlike Polymarket requires users to present identification, said it was launching “new technical guardrails that prevent politicians, athletes and other relevant people from trading in certain politics and sports markets”.
Neither company immediately responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
Critics like Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Tuesday the changes don’t go far enough.
“On the policy side alone, there are too many people – staffers, advisers, consultants, cabinet secretaries, spouses and more – who could be trading inside information. This is just a sideshow to deflect criticism. We need to do more,” he tweeted.
