With Polymarket set to open up shop in the United States at literally any moment, a story bubbling up about market manipulation is probably not the first thing CEO Shayne Coplan and company were hoping to read about.
But when you combine a YouTuber, a fasting challenge, Saudi Arabian authorities, prison, and a surmised death, well, sometimes things don’t work out exactly as planned.
According to Cryptopolitan.com, British YouTuber Lord Miles set out on a 40-day water fast in the middle of a Saudi Arabian desert. It wasn’t long before Polymarket — as well as Kalshi — had markets up on this challenge, simply asking if “Lord Miles completes 40-day water fast in the desert.”
From there, things were decidedly not simple.
Vanishing act
For the better part of two weeks, Lord Miles, 26, was doing what he set out to do: streaming from his desert tent, posting updates to YouTube, presumably racking up views and ad revenue while slowly starving himself for our entertainment. Then, in late September, he just … stopped.
No more streams. No more updates. His X account went dark. Wagers on the challenge had already surpassed $14 million in total volume on Polymarket alone by this point, according to the report, and suddenly nobody knew if the guy they’d bet on was alive or dead.
Much of the internet assumed the worst: Lord Miles was dead. Probably. Maybe. The odds on Polymarket certainly seemed to think so, plummeting from 68% to 18% that he’d complete the challenge.
Alive but arrested
Turns out, Miles wasn’t dead; he was just in a Saudi Arabian jail on terrorism charges.
The story, as pieced together by crypto scams investigator Coffeezilla and statements from Miles’ account handlers, goes something like this: Miles collapsed around day 34 of his fast and was taken to a Saudi hospital. Doctors administered glucose intravenously. His body, not having seen actual nutrition in over a month, went into shock.
Then the terrorism charges happened. Miles’ representatives insist the whole thing was “fabricated,” that someone sent false reports to Saudi intelligence about his past activities in Afghanistan and the United Kingdom. “Someone has f***ed Miles over at great expense,” his account managers wrote, maintaining that Miles has no criminal record in the U.K.
They even invited prominent YouTubers to visit him in jail, with one condition: “bring him some English language books to read, as he is losing his mind.”
Betting against yourself?
Here’s where things get spicy for Polymarket.
Coffeezilla claims Miles didn’t just bet on himself to complete the challenge — he bet against himself. According to the investigator, Miles secretly funneled funds to a Polymarket account and wagered “no” on his own fast, allegedly pocketing more than $60,000 when the market resolved against him.
There’s more.
Miles’ representatives claim other people also bet against him and then actively worked to ensure he’d fail by submitting those false terrorism reports that got him arrested. These mystery bettors allegedly made “high six figures” on their “no” positions.
So to recap: A YouTuber may have bet against his own fasting challenge, while other bettors may have gotten him arrested in Saudi Arabia to cash out their positions.
Meanwhile, Kalshi — apparently sensing the bad juju — quietly buried the market, making itunsearchable on its own exchange, drawing the ire of traders on its platforms holding active positions. They eventually settled the market as a “no.”
Bad timing
All of this would be merely internet drama if not for one inconvenient fact: Polymarket is making its grand return to the United States. The New York-based prediction platform that spent years battling regulators finally got its ticket back.
And now it has users screaming about manipulation, insider trading, and fraud in one of its most active markets.
Some traders accused Polymarket of changing the rules after the fact. Others claimed the platform had become “complicit” in Miles’ alleged fraudulent acts. One user replied directly to CEO Coplan: “You allowed market manipulation, insider trading, and fraud in the Lord Miles 40-day fast challenge market. Polymarket has knowingly defrauded customers and has not done a single thing to remedy it. Polymarket has no place in the USA.”
Polymarket, for its part, deleted an earlier post where it had shared Miles’ statement.
Miles reportedly apologized to his supporters for failing to complete the challenge and promised to attempt another 40-day fast.
