Polymarket's Rough Weekend: 60 Minutes, Wall Street Journal Scrutinize Insider Trading And Resolution System

Polymarket faced back-to-back scrutiny from two of the country’s most prominent newsrooms on Sunday night, with 60 Minutes airing a 13-minute insider trading probe and The Wall Street Journal publishing a separate exposé on its dispute resolution system hours apart. The 60 Minutes segment, reported by Jon Wertheim, centered on findings from blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps. Nine connected Polymarket accounts netted more than $2.4 million betting almost exclusively on U.S. military actions, with a 98% win rate across more than 80 bets, according to the firm. The accounts hit the specific dates of the first U.S. strikes on Iran, the removal of the supreme leader and the ceasefire announcement. CBS reported more than $1 billion has been staked online this year on military decisions and outcomes. An Active-Duty Indictment And A Journalist Threatened The segment grounded the blockchain data in a criminal case. Army Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke was indicted last month for allegedly using classified intelligence to net more than $400,000 on the U.S. raid that captured former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. 60 Minutes also profiled Times of Israel military correspondent Emanuel Fabian, who received threats from Polymarket bettors after a report about an Iranian strike voided one side of a wager. One message read, “You’re going to make us lose $900,000. And we’ll invest even more than that to finish you.” Federal Probe Into Oil Futures Trades Roughly $800 million was staked on oil prices dropping at 6:50 a.m. ET on March 23, according to LSEG data cited in the segment. President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social fifteen minutes later that the White House and Iran had “very good and productive” conversations. Oil fell more than 10%. Former commodities trader David Kovel estimated the profit at as much as $80 million. Federal investigators are probing the trades, per CBS. No one has been charged. WSJ Targets UMA Arbitration Unlike rival Kalshi, which resolves disputes internally, Polymarket outsources arbitration to a third-party service called UMA, where holders of digital tokens vote on outcomes. At least 60% of active UMA voters over the past year could be directly linked to Polymarket accounts, according to a Journal analysis. In nearly one in five disputes, at least one voter had a financial stake in the outcome. More than 50% of voting power in most disputes is concentrated in just the 10 largest wallets, undercutting UMA’s “decentralized” framing. Polymarket told the Journal only 0.2% of contracts trigger UMA votes. One UMA voter known as “Scout” told the Journal he routinely bets on the disputes he helps resolve, and defended the practice. “You can either have traders with a conflict of interest, or morons with no conflict of interest,” he said. “There’s not really a good middle ground.” Kalshi has pulled ahead on prediction market weekly volume, capturing 72.1% of the combined market in early May. Image: Shutterstock