OUR DAILY THREAD: Even The Future Is A Grift
You bet your life
THE SET-UP: Polymarket claims to be “the world’s largest prediction market” and it pitches its unique brand of wagering as an opportunity to “stay informed and profit from your knowledge by betting on future events across various topics.”
But what if you had foreknowledge of a future event and you cashed-in by placing timely, predictive bets that are the functional equivalent of insider trading on the stock market?
That’s exactly what appears to have happened when a series of anonymous wagers were placed on Polymarket just hours before the Trump regime revealed it had captured Venezuelan President Maduro.
In fact, the suspiciously prescient bets rolled-in even as Delta Force fighters rolled-out on their mission to capture the Venezuelan leader. When Trump announced Maduro’s capture a few hours later, a bettor identifiable only by a blockchain code scored a $436,000 payday because they “predicted” Maduro’s fall. As The Telegraph noted:
Within hours, the account, which was created a few days earlier, had cashed out and has not traded since.
Welcome to the not-so-brave new world where tech gamifies and monetizes anything and everything possible. As The Guardian aptly put it:
Polymarket and its rival Kalshi have gamified all corners of life – from tomorrow’s weather to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl outfit – and in effect, turned reality itself into a casino.
Polymarket and Kalshi are the two top online prediction markets with a combined valuation of $20 billion. Ironically, Polymarket’s good fortune can be traced to an auspiciously-timed reversal of fortune that, like the Maduro trade, begins with a pre-dawn raid. Here’s how the Wall Street Journal described it in their deep dive into prediction markets:
Just before dawn on Nov. 13, 2024, FBI agents smashed through the door of Shayne Coplan’s penthouse apartment in Manhattan, barged into his bedroom and grabbed his phone.
Federal prosecutors were investigating whether the cryptocurrency-based betting platform he founded, Polymarket, where users can wager on everything from presidential elections to the identity of the next James Bond actor, was violating laws designed to prevent money laundering.
Fourteen months later, the fortunes of the shaggy-haired 27-year-old couldn’t be more different. The Justice Department has dropped its probe. Donald Trump Jr., whose venture-capital firm is an investor, joined the company as an adviser. The New York Stock Exchange’s parent company struck an investment deal that boosted Polymarket’s value to $9 billion and made Coplan a billionaire. And his startup, which had long been off-limits to U.S. users, was cleared to launch a betting app for them.
Polymarket’s rise comes as wagering on sports, bitcoin, elections and just about everything else has grown ubiquitous, and barriers between traditional investments, crypto and gambling are eroding.
Isn’t that an interesting chain of events?
Coplan’s rapid ride of from perp to paydirt is a perfect example of corruption that is so blatant, it almost seems like they want people to see it. In this instance, Copland’s business scored the equivalent of a preemptive pardon. Once Trump’s DOJ dropped the investigation and let Copland and Polymarket off the hook, Polymarket just-so-happened-to land a key investor—the President’s son!
Donald Trump Jr-backed venture capital firm 1789 Capital announced a deal rumored to be in the “double-digit millions of dollars,” according to a Reuters report last August. And yes, it is “rumored” because they haven’t disclosed the details of an investment by the President’s son in a business the President’s DOJ decided to stop investigating. What’s more, that business’s model is thriving in no small part because the President’s *unique style* of governance is constantly generating new opportunities to place bets on the President’s next move.
Even today a reporter on The Julie Mason Show commented on the uncertainly surrounding Trump’s next move on Iran. Guessing what he will do next, though, isn’t a parlor game. Don Jr. has a significant financial stake in a business that is actively monetizing speculation about his father’s official decisions as President.
Given Trump’s reputation for impetuous moves and capricious decisions, prediction markets must’ve looked like a golden opportunity to the Trumps. After the Supreme Court legalized sports betting in 2018, the appetite for wagering quickly spread to that year’s midterm election. It portended explosive growth in betting on all things political. That growth was, however, curtailed by the Biden Administration. Here’s The Guardian:
Event contracts are considered derivatives, so online prediction markets fall under the jurisdiction of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), who, under Biden, had fought hard to block them.
Election markets are “contrary to the public interest”, Rostin Behnam, former CFTC chair said in 2023, adding that regulating them would be both “impractical” and force the agency to act as “an election cop”.
Guess what happened next?!?!
But under Trump, the CFTC has pulled back. It dropped its legal fight to ban Kalshi’s election markets, and permitted Polymarket to operate domestically under its jurisdiction.
Business has been booming ever since: the total value of bets bought on the sites in just the month of December surpassed $8.3bn, up 1,300% from February, according to DefiLlama data. That’s about the same as the monthly sales of Target.
So, not only did the DOJ drop their investigation, so, too, did the CTFC … the one agency tasked with protecting the American people from fraudsters, scammers and corrupt business practitioners.
You know that wasn’t going to last.
And it didn’t.
Among the first things Trump’s acting chair of the CFTC did upon taking the reins was to “move away from ‘regulation by enforcement.’” Regulation without enforcement sure sounds like a euphemism for not enforcing laws you or your cronies don’t like. Perhaps that’s why the CFTC:
…implemented a reorganization of the Division of Enforcement, resulting in the elimination of a number of specialized task forces — including the Cybersecurity and Emerging Technologies Task Force and Environmental Fraud Task Force…
Free from criminal investigation and then freed from regulatory constraints, Polymarket has since taken off … in no small part because President Trump happens to be a constant source of things to wager on. Here’s an excerpt from The Washington Post’s recent deep dive into prediction markets:
Betting on political events on prediction markets has grown sharply in recent months. There is $129 million at stake on political markets on Kalshi, the company said. About 370,000 people are staking more than $90 million on politics at Polymarket, which lacks regulatory approval to serve American bettors, according to a Washington Post analysis of data provided by Dune Analytics.
Many of those wagers hinge on actions by President Donald Trump or his administration, including whom he will name as the next Federal Reserve chair, whether the United States will strike Iran in the next six months, and even the words Trump might say in his State of the Union address next month.
Many already harbor suspicions about the timing of Trump’s tariff threats and corresponding moves in the stock market. Here’s ProPublica from May of last year:
More than a dozen high-ranking executive branch officials and congressional aides have made well-timed trades since Trump took office in January, most of them selling stock before the market plunged amid fears that Trump’s tariffs would set off a global trade war, according to a ProPublica review of disclosures across the government.
All of the trades came shortly before a significant government announcement or development that could influence stock prices. Some who sold individual stocks or broader market funds used their earnings to buy investments that are generally less risky, such as bonds or treasuries. Others appear to have kept their money in cash. In one case unrelated to tariffs, records show that a congressional aide bought stock in two mining companies shortly before a key Senate committee approved a bill written by his boss that would help the firms.
If you think about the daily barrage of jolts Trump inflicts on the news cycle … the sudden policy shifts, seemingly impetuous tariff threats, off-the-cuff insults and insinuations … his “Presidency” might be better thought of as a glorified stock manipulation scheme. That’s what Paul Oudin, Assistant Professor of Law at ESSEC Business School, pondered in an April 2025 entry on the Oxford Business Law Blog:
Whatever one may think of the Trump administration’s recent shifts in tariff policies, they sure provoked wild swings in securities’ prices worldwide. About ten days ago, President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing tariffs ranging from 10% to 46% on various US trading partners, knocking down stock prices across the globe and triggering fears of a recession. A week later, he signed another order bringing those rates to 10% for three months—except for China, whose unwillingness to cooperate was rewarded with a whopping 125%, then 145% rate— thereby provoking an immediate surge in stock prices.
The substantial agitation in stock markets caused by these changes in tariff policy created fantastic trading opportunities for anyone who had prior knowledge of the forthcoming policy changes. Trump himself was very much aware of this, as he enthusiastically announced to his followers on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday 9 April that ‘THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!’ (emphasis his) just a few hours before announcing the new tariff policy.
The question of whether he’s just “aware” of it or he’s actively manipulating markets is one that seems unlikely to be answered as long as Congress remains in thrall to Trump. In the interim (that’s assuming this is an interim until the House flips), the Departments of Justice and Treasury are, like the CFTC, going out of the their way to ignore enforcement of regulations. The Wall Street Journal surveyed the landscape for white collar criminals and found an inviting path has been paved by Pam Bondi’s Justice Department, which has…
…stepped back from the kinds of complicated investigations into foreign bribery, money laundering and public corruption that former department leaders often cited among their greatest successes.
Along with that shift, administration officials have undone a number of notable Biden-era white-collar prosecutions. In some, the department dropped charges against executives that were pending. In others, Trump has used the pardon power to forgive a string of top company officials charged with or convicted of crimes related to their businesses.
Predictably, WSJ also reported, one of the “most notable shifts” has been in foreign bribery cases. Simply put, enforcement (there’s that word again) of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act “fell off a cliff” in 2025:
The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which share authority to investigate violations, brought about 33 cases a year against companies or individuals between 2015 and 2024, according to data maintained by law firm Gibson Dunn. This year, the Justice Department brought six new FCPA cases. The SEC brought none.
As for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC):
The SEC under the Trump administration brought four enforcement actions in nine months against public companies, according to data from Cornerstone Research. The agency brought 52 enforcement actions against public companies during the prior three months, when it was under the Biden administration.
I can almost guarantee that behind many of these decisions there are stories similar to Polymarket’s otherwise improbable tale of sudden success. That’s because the Administration is bursting with billionaires and populated with industry insiders. Most of them joined MAGA because they wanted something. Silicon Valley wanted lots of “somethings” and they’ve mostly gotten them all. But they’ve given, too … just like the legion of corporate and private donors who paid to play Trump’s gamified presidency.
Sadly, Trump’s “transactional style” is often referred to without the obvious implication that Trump can be purchased … that there is a potential price tag on every decision … that there is usually something of value going out in trade. Like flattery, it’s often framed as lever foreign leaders can use to navigate his mine field. But what it’s also done is inure far too many of us to the idea that everything is rigged and corrupt and politicians are corrupt and self-dealing all the time. “At least Trump doesn’t try to hide it” is presented as a step-up from the sleazeballs who actually have the good taste to at least try and hide their corruption … that is, unless they kinda get caught gaming the prediction market with insider knowledge.
Unlike the still-unrevealed source of pre-9/11 put options on United and American Airlines, the author of the Maduro bets used their crypto wallet and is safely obscured by blockchain’s cryptographic codes. The author of the put options remains hidden because the Philip Zelikow-led 9/11 commission conveniently decided it was neither necessary nor prudent to reveal the trader’s identity. That extra layer of inherent anonymity makes crypto an attractive option for malicious or illegal transactions.
It’s no wonder that the Trump Family has gone all-in on crypto after Trump turned on a dime during the 2024 campaign. At the time, his conversion from Bitcoin critic to Crypto-Bro champion looked like pure electoral opportunism. It quickly became obvious that the family’s opportunism was also financial. - jp
The Wild Markets Behind Polymarket’s ‘Truth Machine’
https://www.wsj.com/finance/regulation/polymarket-prediction-markets-kalshi-dd4702d6
Millions in bets ride on what Trump will say, do or invade next
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/01/28/polymarket-kalshi-trump-prediction-markets/
On Polymarket, ‘privileged’ users made millions betting on war strikes and diplomatic strategy. What did they know beforehand?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2026/jan/30/polymarket-prediction-markets-betting
You can bet on anything in Trump’s America. Insiders are cashing in
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/01/14/the-insider-trading-craze-taking-over-trumps-america/
America’s shift to an insider economy
https://www.ft.com/content/1d3b1f8c-7968-4dcd-8982-9295da15a186