A cluster of nine interlinked Polymarket accounts has netted some $2.4 million placing well-timed bets on U.S. military actions in Iran, according to an investigation from on-chain sleuthing firm Bubblemaps.
The anonymous accounts, all created days prior to America’s initial bombardment of Iran in late February, have been remarkably successful. Their wagers on U.S. military decisions have paid out 98% of the time. Only on a handful of occasions did the wallets ever lose money—and always in tiny quantities, worth a few hundred dollars, that Bubblemaps contends were lost intentionally to throw investigators off their scent.
When it comes to significant wagers, the accounts have traded flawlessly. They accurately predicted the timing of numerous U.S. strikes on Iran, the ousting of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and the establishment of a temporary ceasefire between Iran and the United States.
Those wagers netted the interrelated accounts over $2.4 million on Polymarket.
Nicolas Vaiman, the CEO of Bubblemaps, told Decrypt that only a small, circumstantial clue ties the accounts in question to the United States: the fact that one of the suspicious accounts was named “whopperlover.”
“Other than the silly names… there is no evidence these users are American,” Vaiman said. “They did primarily focus on U.S. military markets related to Iran. However, it could still be anyone.”
Bubblemaps analysts told Decrypt the winnings were ultimately off-ramped to Bybit, a centralized crypto exchange based in Dubai—but also touched other exchanges including Binance and HTX, and may have been funneled through those platforms by a third-party service.
Polymarket did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.
