I noticed an interesting story that shows how wild the situation on prediction markets can be. On Polymarket, six accounts literally made over $74.12k by predicting a U.S. strike on Iran on February 28. And it’s not just a coincidence — blockchain analysts from Bubblemaps analyzed everything in detail.

The most amusing part is in the details. Most of these wallets received funding within 24 hours before the attack itself, then quickly bought "Yes" on the market about the strike on Iran, and within a few hours, they already knew about the explosions in Tehran. One account, for example, bought over 560,000 shares at about 1 cent each, well, almost 10.8 cents, and this investment turned into $560,000 profit when the market closed at a dollar. Another guy made six-figure profit on nearly 150,000 shares. All six profiles were created in February, and none of them traded anything else afterward.

Trading volume for this contract reached $90 million, and if you count all related markets from February to March, it’s over half a billion. Bubblemaps even released a visual map showing that all these wallets were funded through similar channels.

And the background for all this — the strike caused Bitcoin to fall, while oil futures on Hyperliquid soared by five percent. By the way, about Bitcoin itself: it briefly broke through $76,000 but then retreated to $74.12k and has been unable to break through for two months. Funding on perpetual contracts remains negative for 46 days straight, indicating persistent bearish sentiment despite the growing open interest.

All this is happening against the backdrop of regulators already sounding the alarm. On a competing platform, Kalshi, two users were literally banned and fined this week for insider trading. One was even a visual effects editor for the MrBeast show, trading based on information about the results. The CFTC issued a warning that such operations violate U.S. law, and the chairperson called exchanges the first line of defense.

Kalshi disqualified an employee for two years and imposed a fine of over $20,000. There was even a case where a political candidate was caught betting on their own elections.

And the funniest part — traders on Polymarket were literally insider trading on a market they created to catch insiders. ZachXBT hinted at an investigation into the crypto platform Axiom, and immediately a contract about that investigation appeared on Polymarket. Lookonchain found 12 wallets that actively bet on Axiom even before the results were published. It was second-level insider trading.