Six wallets created on Polymarket in February turned roughly $1 million in profit after correctly betting that the United States would strike Iran before month’s end, Bloomberg reported, citing data from analytics firm Bubblemaps SA. Onchain investigators flagged the timing and pattern of the trades as potentially consistent with insider activity.
The wallets focused their activity on contracts that predicted the timing of a possible U.S. strike. In several cases, positions were opened just hours before explosions were first reported in Tehran; some shares were bought at about $0.10, according to the report. Investigators said the pattern resembled behavior they’ve seen before in suspected insider trading on prediction markets.
“In cases involving war or conflict, information can circulate within a broader circle before becoming public,” Bubblemaps CEO Nicolas Vaiman told Bloomberg, noting that Polymarket’s wallet-only trading model permits high anonymity and can create incentives for informed participants to trade early.
Cointelegraph reached out to Polymarket for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.
Polymarket saw roughly $529 million flow into strike-related contracts during the escalation. The contract betting on a Feb. 28 strike drew about $90 million in volume—the largest of the dates—while a Jan. 31 contract attracted around $42 million. One of the flagged accounts had earlier lost on a different prediction before placing a larger wager that later returned more than $170,000, a detail cited by investigators to stress that trades alone do not prove wrongdoing. Public warnings from Washington about possible military action in the weeks beforehand also appear to have driven speculative interest on the platform.
This episode follows previous controversies. A cluster of Polymarket wallets recently earned more than $1.2 million on an outcome tied to an onchain investigation into DeFi firm Axiom shortly before investigator ZachXBT published findings alleging insider trading. Last month, a Polymarket account reportedly made roughly $400,000 from a well-timed bet on the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro after placing about $32,000 shortly before the news broke.
Concerns about trading by people with privileged information have prompted legislative attention. U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres has drafted the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026, which would prohibit elected officials, political appointees and executive-branch employees from trading prediction contracts tied to government policy or political outcomes when they possess nonpublic information.
Polymarket has also faced regulatory pushback globally. Authorities in several countries—including the Netherlands, Hungary, Belgium, France, Italy, Romania, Poland, Singapore and Portugal—have blocked or banned the platform after classifying event-based contracts as unlicensed online gambling rather than regulated financial trading.
Readers are encouraged to verify reporting independently as coverage of onchain markets and trading behavior continues to develop.