A Polymarket trader who banked $200,000 by correctly calling the U.S.-Iran ceasefire has found a new market: whether Benjamin Netanyahu remains prime minister after Israel’s Oct. 27 election.
A Haaretz investigation suggests the bets may be designed to move the odds rather than beat them.
The ceasefire market was the account’s only previous wager.
The trader, known as 25xp, bought at slim odds shortly before the sides announced the deal, raising suspicions of advance information, according to the investigation.
It has since placed roughly $40,000 on Netanyahu becoming prime minister after the election, giving it control of about one-quarter of the positions backing him, according to Haaretz. A second account, OnlyBibi2026, has also placed large pro-Netanyahu bets.
The purchases frequently arrived as Netanyahu’s polling or Polymarket odds weakened, appearing to arrest the decline, the paper found.
Cheaper Than a Poll
Bloomberg Businessweek reported last week that an anonymous wallet spent $44,000 in January on San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan’s long-shot California governor bid, briefly pushing his implied odds from the low teens to 96% while polls had him near 4%.
The New York Post covered the surge before the odds fell back.
The problem extends beyond one spectacular spike.
Stanford researchers found that more than a third of the election markets recently cited by media were too thinly traded to report with confidence.
Mahan’s college roommate urged his LinkedIn followers to donate, post and “push up the Polymarket bids,” per the report.
One U.S. campaign strategist told the outlet that, given the choice between spending $70,000 on a favorable poll or $10,000 on Kalshi, she would choose the prediction market.
A wallet sharing a name with a pro-Russian TikTok account spent more than $1 million propping up a Kremlin-backed candidate in last year’s Romanian presidential race, per the Bloomberg report, and blockchain firm TRM Labs found two further wallets betting the same way were likely run by a single entity.
Reading the Board
Polymarket currently gives Netanyahu a 35% chance of remaining prime minister after the election, behind Gadi Eisenkot at 50%.
The broader market has generated $30.9 million in cumulative volume, but the question Haaretz raises is how much of Netanyahu’s individual price reflects the crowd and how much reflects a small number of motivated whales.
Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE), owner of the New York Stock Exchange, invested $1 billion in Polymarket last October and another $600 million in March. It also distributes Polymarket’s event data to institutional investors.
The CFTC, meanwhile, has opened a new investigation into the platform, per Bloomberg.
Polymarket told Bloomberg it monitors for manipulative trading and has referred almost 100 wallets to law enforcement.
Benzinga asked Polymarket for comment but they did not immediately respond.
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