Can someone be accused of insider trading if there are no insider trading rules they’re breaking?
That’s the question being bandied about on social media site X today after someone profited over $1 million in a single day on Polymarket by wagering on Google search markets.
All the markets revolved around questions concerning who would be the person most searched for in calendar year 2025 or who would be in the top five of searches.
According to X user @JeongHaeju, the user was a “Google insider” and Google “accidentally” pushed the results early before taking them down. The user then proceeded to win 22 out of 23 bets they made, including grabbing singer/songwriter d4vd as the most searched person on the platform at 5 cents. The user — AlphaRacoon, who has since changed their username — turned a $10,647 wager into nearly $200,000.
They also bet against numerous other names, wagering millions of dollars against their names being part of the list. One notable bet was putting $937,630 down on Bianca Censori, Kanye West’s wife, not being the no. 1 searched name. That paid out $1,103,021.
Polymarket’s terms of services agreement does not seem to cover this situation.
Predictably, as these prediction markets go, commenters were split as to whether this is highly illegal, insider trading, terrible, no-good, bad behavior or if this is exactly what prediction markets are supposed to be doing, bringing information to the forefront.
Russian advance
Interestingly, this is not the first Polymarket brouhaha to come to light this week.
As reported this week by 404 Media, on Nov. 15, a market was resolved on the site that revolved around the Russia-Ukraine war, specifically on the question of whether Russian forces would claim the town of Myrnohrad.
To settle the market, Polymarket depended on a map created and curated by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington, D.C. think tank.
On the night of Nov. 15, the ISW crew shaded the area red, indicating the Russian forces captured the town. At this point, Polymarket resolved the market, crediting the “yes” faction with the victory.
Hours later, however, the shading changed, and Myrnohrad was still the domain of Ukraine, according to ISW.
So what happened? Shenanigans.
“It has come to ISW’s attention that an unauthorized and unapproved edit to the interactive map of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was made on the night of November 15-16 EST,” read a release from ISW. “The unauthorized edit was removed before the day’s normal workflow began on November 16 and did not affect ISW mapping on that or any subsequent day.”
Polymarket has not publicly responded to either situation.
