Users on prediction markets made major bets — and in some cases major profits — tied to the bombing of Iran by U.S. and Israeli forces.
According to Bloomberg, $529 million was traded on Polymarket contracts predicting when the attack would happen. A separate analysis from analytics firm Bubblemaps SA found that six newly created accounts earned $1 million in profit by accurately betting that the United States would strike Iran by February 28. That kind of activity, the report noted, could point to possible insider trading.
Of course, those wagers may reflect wider public speculation about U.S. intentions toward Iran. Still, Bubblemaps CEO Nicolas Vaiman said that the spread of information "involving war or conflict," combined with Polymarket's anonymous nature, can create incentives for informed participants to act early."
Earlier, in January, analytics firm Polysights had also flagged an apparent jump in betting activity on whether Iran's now-deceased Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would no longer remain in that position by the end of March.
Addressing concerns that markets like these could effectively create a financial incentive around assassination, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said, "We don't list markets directly tied to death. When there are markets where potential outcomes involve death, we design the rules to prevent people from profiting from death." He also said Kalshi would refund all fees collected from those bets.
