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\n A trader made nearly $1 million since 2024 from dozens of well-timed Polymarket bets that correctly predicted US and Israeli military actions against Iran, according to an analysis shared with CNN.\n <\/p>\n
\n The bettor won a staggering 93% of their five-figure wagers about Iran, even though the events they predicted were unannounced military operations.\n <\/p>\n
\n The trader had a pattern of prescient bets, including hours before Israeli strikes in October 2024 during its tit-for-tat conflict<\/a> with Iran, hours before US airstrikes against<\/a> Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025, and hours before the joint US-Israeli surprise attack in February, which started the current war<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n The findings from Bubblemaps, an analytics company that tracks blockchain transactions, highlight the rising concerns about the potential for insider trading on some prediction markets, where users can wager on everything from sports to elections to warfare.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAll of this is strong signaling of insider activity, based on the amount they made, the markets they bet on, the timing of their trades, the success rates of these trades, and the fact that they are connected on-chain,\u201d Bubblemaps CEO Nick Vaiman told CNN. \u201cThis is pretty suspicious in my book.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n It isn\u2019t clear whether the trader flagged by Bubblemaps is an insider, and the accounts they used are anonymous and can\u2019t be publicly traced to a specific person.\n <\/p>\n \n The bets were placed on Polymarket\u2019s international site, which is out of the reach of US regulations. Polymarket didn\u2019t respond to CNN\u2019s multiple requests for comment.\n <\/p>\n \n The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal agency that regulates prediction markets, approved Polymarket to start offering trades for American customers last year. Its US-facing site isn\u2019t fully operational yet, but experts say Americans can easily access the offshore site with a virtual private network, or VPN.\n <\/p>\n \n The CFTC\u2019s approval came months after the Trump administration closed<\/a> a Biden-era criminal probe into whether Polymarket was improperly letting US users onto its offshore platforms.\n <\/p>\n