Several mysterious millionaires have placed huge bets on online prediction markets in the past two days – all of it in favor of a Donald Trump win – triggering wild speculation about who is behind the massive wagering spike.
Political prediction platforms have become all the rage in the 2024 campaign cycle and are closely followed by campaigns as a way to monitor candidate support akin to more traditional polling.
Over the course of the campaign cycle Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have swung in popularity as options, and many have taken to checking their odds as a sort of poll.
Polymarket, one of the most popular of these election prediction sites, allows users to wager on whether they believe Trump or Harris will win the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
But in the past 48 hours the crypto-powered network has had some unidentifiable high rollers throwing millions behind Trump, potentially swaying the results and raising questions as to who is behind it.
Polymarket – which bills itself as the largest prediction market in the world – is a decentralized crypto platform where users can wager on things like elections and other political events. As the platform’s popularity has risen it has been increasingly referenced as a poll
As of Thursday afternoon, the ex-president held a staggering 62 percent to 38 percent lead on the platform when it came to chances of winning, surging ahead of Harris.
However, just five days ago, on October 12, Polymarket showed that Trump had a 54 percent chance to Harris’ 46.
Harris had a 52 percent chance of winning a month ago.
Trump’s campaign advisers have liked what they’ve seen recently, posting and reposting the Polymarket results that are favorable to the former president.
Tesla and X leader Elon Musk, who is now fully a MAGA Trump supporter, has also sung the website’s praises.
‘Trump now leading Kamala by 3 percent in betting markets. More accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line,’ the world’s richest man, Musk, wrote on X this week.
But there are major questions as to the reliability of the platform as an indicator of who will win.
It can only be accessed outside the U.S., requires crypto to place a wager, and only boasts roughly 100,000 users this month – a fraction of the 244 million Americans eligible to vote.
The rapid increase in the former president’s lead may be due, at least in part, to four accounts on Polymarket that have reportedly laid down up to $25 million on the outcome of the presidential election.
Polymarket users Fredi9999, PrincessCaro, Michie and Theo4 have all wagered, at minimum, hundreds of thousands of dollars in favor of Trump in recent hours.
Fredi9999 is the oldest account of the four, joining the platform in June 2024.
So far, that account has traded an incredible total volume of $74 million.
It holds over $14 million worth of wagers in favor of the Republican winning the White House.
As of Thursday afternoon, ex-President Trump held at 62 to 38 lead, showing that he is powerfully surging ahead of Harris. A month ago Harris had a 52 percent chance of winning
Fredi9999 has wagered over $14 million on Donald Trump winning the U.S. presidential election on Polymarket. The account has made a staggering $74 million in total trade volume since opening months ago
Caro’s account was opened in September and has so far wagered a total volume of $23 million and holds $5 million worth of bets on Trump winning.
Michie and Theo’s accounts were started this month and have traded over $3.5 million and $5 million on the ex-president winning respectively.
Just these four accounts in total have wagered north of $25 million on Trump winning, with a massive amount coming in recent days.
The enormous transactions have caught attention online with many pointing to the transactions as unusual.
One self-proclaimed ‘full-time political bettor since 2007’ who goes under the name ‘Domer’ wrote on X that Fredi ‘is singlehandedly rocketing up the price of Trump on prediction markets around the world.’
Domer estimated that Fredi’s investments have moved the Polymarket presidential prediction market at least 5 points towards Trump, and that number could be as high as 8 points.
The alleged long-time political bettor then floated the idea that Fredi, Michie, PricessCaro and Theo are all actually the same ‘person or entity.’
Polymarket showed at one time Thursday that Donald Trump had a 62 percent chance of winning the election
The Theo4 account was created this month and so far has wagered a total volume of $15 million, with at least $5 million of that being bet on a Republican winning the presidency
PrincessCaro has made $23 million worth of predictions on Polymarket and has a minimum of $5 million bet on Trump
Domer also claimed to have briefly interacted with whoever is behind Fredi’s account.
The bettor said the mysterious personality behind the multi-million dollar bets was rude and arrogant.
He believed it could be a European individual with cash to blow.
Since Polymarket is not accessible in the U.S., whoever is placing these bets must be doing them from outside the country, or using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to evade the legal restrictions.
Still, it remains unclear who is behind the massive Polymarket wagers sending the Trump v. Harris market into a frenzy.
Backed by conservative libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, the site has had over $2 billion in total volume wagered just on its Trump-Harris Election Day forecast, according to site data.
Over $615 million is pledged to Trump while nearly $410 million is wagered on Harris.
The Polymarket is also growing, according to data analytics site Dune, which shows a massive jump in web traffic this month, topping well over 100,000 users.
