Several mystery millionaires have placed huge bets on online prediction markets in the past two days, all of them in favor of a Donald Trump victory, triggering wild speculation about who is behind the huge rise in bets.
Political prediction platforms have become all the rage in the 2024 campaign cycle and are closely watched by campaigns as a way to monitor support for candidates similar to more traditional polls.
Throughout the campaign cycle, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have gained popularity as options, and many have decided to check their odds as a sort of poll.
Polymarket, one of the most popular election prediction sites, allows users to bet whether they believe Trump or Harris will win the 2024 US presidential election.
But in the past 48 hours, the cryptocurrency-powered network has had some unidentifiable high rollers throw millions behind Trump, potentially influencing the results and raising questions about who is behind it.
Polymarket, which bills itself as the world’s largest prediction market, is a decentralized crypto platform where users can bet on things like elections and other political events. As the popularity of the platform has increased, it is increasingly referred to as a survey.
As of Thursday afternoon, the former president had a staggering 62 percent to 38 percent lead on the platform in terms of chances of winning, overtaking Harris.
However, just five days ago, on October 12, Polymarket showed that Trump had a 54 percent chance to Harris’ 46 percent.
Harris had a 52 percent chance of winning a month ago.
Trump campaign advisers have liked what they’ve seen recently, posting and reposting Polymarket results that are favorable to the former president.
Tesla and X leader Elon Musk, who is now a full-on MAGA Trump supporter, has also praised the website.
‘Trump now leads Kamala by 3 percent in betting markets. More accurate than surveys as real money is at stake,” wrote the world’s richest man, Musk, on X this week.
But there are significant questions about the platform’s reliability as an indicator of who will win.
It can only be accessed outside the US, requires cryptocurrency to place a bet, and only has about 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 deposited up to $25 million depending on the outcome of the presidential election.
Polymarket users fredi9999PrincessCaro, Michie and Theo4 have bet at least hundreds of thousands of dollars on Trump in the last few hours.
Fredi9999 is the oldest account of the four and joined the platform in June 2024.
So far, that account has traded an incredible total volume of $74 million.
He has bets worth more than $14 million on the Republican winning the White House.
As of Thursday afternoon, former President Trump held a 62-38 lead, showing that he is powerfully outperforming Harris. A month ago Harris had a 52 percent chance of winning.
Fredi9999 has bet more than $14 million on Donald Trump winning the US presidential election on Polymarket. The account has generated a staggering $74 million in total trading volume since opening months ago.
Caro’s account was opened in September and has so far bet a total volume of $23 million and has bets worth $5 million on Trump’s victory.
Michie and Theo’s accounts were opened this month and have traded more than $3.5 million and $5 million with the former president’s victory, respectively.
These four accounts alone in total have bet more than $25 million on Trump winning, and a huge amount has come in in recent days.
The huge transactions have attracted attention online and are considered unusual by many.
A self-proclaimed “full-time political gambler since 2007” who goes by the name “Domer.” wrote in X that Fredi ‘is single-handedly skyrocketing Trump’s price in prediction markets around the world.’
Domer estimated that Fredi’s investments have moved Polymarket’s presidential prediction market at least 5 points toward Trump, and that number could go as high as 8 points.
The alleged long-time political punter then floated the idea that Fredi, Michie, PricessCaro and Theo are actually the same “person or entity.”
Polymarket showed on Thursday that Donald Trump had a 62 percent chance of winning the election.
The Theo4 account was created this month and has so far bet a total volume of $15 million, of which at least $5 million has been bet on a Republican winning the presidency.
PrincessCaro has made $23 million worth of predictions on Polymarket and has bet a minimum of $5 million on Trump
Domer also claimed to have briefly interacted with whoever is behind Fredi’s account.
The gambler said the mysterious personality behind the multimillion-dollar bets was rude and arrogant.
I thought I might be a European guy with money to spend.
Since Polymarket is not accessible in the US, anyone placing these bets must do so from outside the country or use a virtual private network (VPN) to bypass legal restrictions.
Still, it’s unclear who is behind the massive Polymarket bets that are frantically in the Trump v. market. Harris.
Backed by conservative libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, the site has bet more than $2 billion in total volume on its Trump-Harris Election Day forecast alone, according to the site. data.
More than $615 million has been pledged to Trump, while nearly $410 million is bet on Harris.
The Polimercado is also growing, according to data analysis site Duneshowing a massive increase in web traffic this month, far exceeding 100,000 users.