Luck or Inside Knowledge: User made $436,000 betting on Maduro's downfall.

[AmoreJaz]

Obviously these are commonly seen in Trump's time, but this is the first one that I have heard of in something that is related to prediction markets like this but which is very possible. Where I have noticed it before was in trading. I saw a trader last year that used huge amount of money to open a position, close the position, Trump came with his announcement and the market went opposite direction. I did not think it was a coincidence at the time. Government officials should be banned not only from prediction markets but also trading if possible.

This is like a day time robbery, taking advantage of others using inside information, obviously government officials should totally get banned from participating in anything prediction market, be it trading or any type of betting. But even if they got banned, This set of people would still go ahead using the information and give to their close confidants. There should be a level playground, not a situation where some people get information which they're not supposed to.

We don't know who really did place that bet but that's quite a larget bet for 32k. It seemed like he knows what's to come. Because an average bettor won't bet that amount especially if it is hard to determine the political turmoil as you have no idea what they are cooking. So maybe, there's really inside info here.

[LogitechMouse]

Re: Luck or Inside Knowledge: User made $436,000 betting on Maduro's downfall.

I don't think that it's neither luck or inside knowledge... or maybe there's an inside knowledge that helped that bettor, but that's not the main reason why he won that huge amount of money.

Just for context, Trump during in his first term in 2020 already accused Maduro leading a narco-terrorism conspiracy as part of the "Cartel of the Suns" (Cartel de los Soles), an organization involving high-ranking military officials. There's already an allegation towards him, and Trump also says that Maduro is bringing drugs to the US thru these big drug organizations. Now that he's the President again, he just fulfilled what he wants to do which is to capture Maduro and face the court.

This isn't private information, but it's a public one, and that could also helped the bettor in betting on this one. He went all in on the fact that Maduro will someday fall down or will be getting captured by Trump. It's a high-risk, high-reward though, and there might be a bit of inside information to this one. Well, if Trump is related on this bet then there's no surprise on it anymore. Remember that there's a whale who entered a short position just a few hours before the big dump happened on the 10th of October.

[Judith87403]

To be suspicious about the timing and profit is understandable, and a lot more commentators and makers of law see it as a possible insider-information issue. Polymarket odds jumps sharply only before the public announcement of President Trump, and fresh built account just transformed about $32,000  to over $436,000 in profit, this has triggered the concerns of insder-trading. Such uncertainty is what drove Rep. Ritchie Torres to proposing a bill to the government of bar employees from trading based on prediction markets if they are holding a material with nonpublic information. To call for rules that are clearer is a reasonable step; prediction markets don't become a loophole for making profit on privileged knowledge.

[changaa]

If you are talking about gambling and the Polymarket prediction betting site winning almost half a million, as far as I know, it is not something strange and suspicious about the arrest of Venezuelan president Maduro, what's more, the arrest was carried out by the US.

For me Maduro is not a high-class fugitive in hiding, there are even more dangerous ones besides Maduro, such as Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, but they can be caught. It's just that at that time the Polymarket site didn't exist yet, if at that time Polymarket had existed maybe we would also see gamblers predicting they would win millions of dollars at that time.

Obviously when we talk about these characters, we are clearly talking about a considerable amount of wealth accumulated by playing with people's lives, but i certainly don't see betting on something like this as a very ethical thing, but who am i to say

[Ronsbit]

TBH, prediction markets have changed the life of many people. Yesterday, I watched a video where a guy won a huge amount of money by betting on Osimehn to remove his mask in the game. Such options cannot be found in a regular casino or sports book unless it is a prediction market. Last year, some folks were lucky to bet on Trump's tariff war with China and other countries, where they cashed out huge as well.

It is true that people are making a good profit from the prediction market. You will agree with me that people are also losing heavily in this same prediction market because the money the winners take home is the same money the losers use in staking, so all things being equal, there must be a winner, and also there must be a loser, so it works. The lucky one takes it all home, and also note that it involves risk and can also be rigged by the organisers without anyone knowing what goes on or happens behind.

[crwth]

Just like the other members here, it feels like it's insider knowledge. Imagine betting $32k to something so out of this world. It feels fishy at the same time; he can just be lucky, and someone who could lose that amount of money just like that.

[DrBeer]

With Maduro, the situation was more or less predictable, especially in the last 3-4 weeks before his arrest. The question now is whether we can bet on the fall of Khamenei's regime. In my opinion, this is quite a good option, as the symptoms of the process are quite clear. There are two key questions: how long it will take for this to happen and how it will be achieved — by the country's population or by external influence.

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

Just like the other members here, it feels like it's insider knowledge. Imagine betting $32k to something so out of this world. It feels fishy at the same time; he can just be lucky, and someone who could lose that amount of money just like that.

Drake once place $1million bet on which team to win the world cup final few years ago and lost his bet simply because the match ended draw, and for that reason, it also tells us that there are likely to also be high risk gamblers who stake huge sum of money on prediction markets too. It all depends on how much risk they are willing to accept. So when it comes to this issue of Nicolás Maduro's downfall, the president of Venezuela who was kidnapped few days ago by Trump's soldiers, it is obvious a good political analyst and a good, high risk prediction markets gambler must have seen the slight change in odds and wanted to take advantage of such opportunity, knowing fully well that how Nicolas Maduro was challenging Donald Trump online, that he might possibly come for him in due time, and he came. So to me , it could be luck too, despite the fact the amount staked was huge.

[noorman0]

This sudden change in predictions has caught the attention of Congressman Ritchie Torres who introduced a bill on Monday that seeks to ban government employees from engaging in prediction markets if they have "material nonpublic information" that relates to the bet

Yes, it's absolutely necessary, and it would be better if the policy were extended not only to government employees but also to their families. If necessary, oversight should be implemented from multiple perspectives. The government can collaborate with relevant platforms for real-time monitoring. The public also needs to be educated about the risks of prediction market manipulation, especially regarding politics.

[banana33]

On Friday, 2nd January, the odds of Maduro's removal were 6.5%. Before midnight the odds had jumped to 11% and surged in the early hours of January 3rd. The sudden change happened just before Trump announced on Truth Social that Maduro was in US custody. A new Polymarket account that registered last year made more than $436,000 from a $32,537 bet.

There is suspicion that some top government officials had prior information about the attacks and captured the president. This is not new, as some people have also accused Trump's inner circle of benefiting from the tariff war. This sudden change in predictions has caught the attention of Congressman Ritchie Torres who introduced a bill on Monday that seeks to ban government employees from engaging in prediction markets if they have "material nonpublic information" that relates to the bet

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

Crazy, I'd missed this, and in some ways it means that our world, the world of cryptocurrencies that politicians have always mocked, is actually now being used silently by them.
I think it's very interesting to see that those who used to criticize us are now using our products.
I don't know what to say about the bet, i am speechless