Earlier this month, an account on Polymarket, one of the most popular prediction market websites, bought €100 (about 117 USD) worth of shares betting that the highest temperature in Paris would exceed 18°C on April 15. Shortly after, the weather station referenced by Polymarket showed, for a few minutes, temperatures well above 18°C (around 64°F), and the user cashed out for over $21,000. Was this user simply a meteorological genius, able to predict an out of season, seemingly random warning? The French weather service, Météo-France, thinks it is more likely that someone tampered with the weather monitoring station outside of Charles de Gaulle Airport, probably with a lighter or a hair dryer. French investigators have yet to make any arrests and the account responsible for the bets has since been deleted.
Last week, an indictment was unsealed by the Southern District Court of New York, detailing the charges against Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a special forces soldier involved in the operation to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Van Dyke is charged with misappropriating classified information by using Polymarket to place around $34,000 in trades relating to U.S. action towards Venezuela, which he later cashed out for over $400,000. Van Dyke allegedly used an anonymous account 13 times leading up to the operation, the last bet coming hours before U.S. forces invaded the country. Ironically, the only bet Van Dyke lost was on the U.S. “invading” Venezuela, as special forces soldiers on the ground did not meet Polymarket’s definition of an invasion.
Websites like Polymarket offer markets on nearly every current event, from how many posts Elon Musk will make in a month to changes in the battle lines in the war between Russia and Ukraine. When asked about prediction markets, Trump himself said: “Well I think that the whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino.” The potential for corruption and insider trading is limitless, and considering Donald Trump Jr. has an advisory role at both Polymarket and Kalshi, the two largest prediction market sites, it is unlikely the federal government will step in to regulate in any meaningful way.
