In case you were wondering, Polymarket had yet another spate of likely inside traders betting that the US would strike Iran by February 28. Per the due diligence investigation service Bubblemaps, the wallets used were created 24 hours earlier. The Pentagon Pizza Index has been replaced.
— Matthew Sheffield (@matthew.flux.community) February 28, 2026 at 5:26 PM
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“.. this is more or less offering a proxy market on assassination,” Amanda Fischer, a former chief of staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission, wrote on X .. @wsj.com www.wsj.com/world/middle...
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) March 1, 2026 at 10:15 AM
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It’s insane this is legal. People around Trump are profiting off war and death. I’m introducing legislation ASAP to ban this.
— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) February 28, 2026 at 6:09 PM
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Emily Nicolle writing for Bloomberg:
As US and Israeli bombs fell on Iran this weekend, bettors on Polymarket — where $529 million was traded on contracts tied to the timing of the strikes — were cashing in. Almost immediately, blockchain sleuths began hunting for unusual patterns in recent bets.
Six accounts on Polymarket made around $1 million in profit by betting on the US to strike Iran by Feb. 28, according to analytics firm Bubblemaps SA. The accounts were all freshly created in February and had only ever placed bets on when US strikes might occur. Some of their shares were purchased, in some cases at roughly a dime apiece, hours before the first explosions were reported in Tehran.
These are the hallmarks that blockchain analysts associate with insider trading in prediction markets, an industry without widespread oversight and no agreed-upon methodology for distinguishing luck from leaks — and they’re far from conclusive on their own. Similar patterns suggested that an insider made a big profit betting on the ouster of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January, and have also been used to identify several other cases of alleged insider trading.
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Kalshi Inc., a Commodity Futures Trading Commission-regulated rival, said Saturday it does not offer markets that settle on death. In the event of Khamenei’s death, it said it would resolve its contract based on the last price offered. Kalshi’s CEO Tarek Mansour later said on X that the platform would reimburse all trading fees from such bets.
Polymarket’s main trading platform is situated offshore and does not accept US-based customers, placing it outside the CFTC’s oversight. The company has argued that its contracts provide valuable data because they crowdsource information in volatile situations and help the public gauge risk, especially when conventional reporting lags.
Sidenote:
The Supreme Leader insisted on not taking special security measures even though he knew the attacks were about to start and was killed in his home. He wanted to die this way. The concept of martyrdom is an extremely potent, galvanizing force in Shia and Iranian culture.
— Ali Ahmadi (@aliahmadi.bsky.social) March 1, 2026 at 2:42 AM
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Ahmadi continues.
There were def people in Washington who advised Trump not to do this, basically saying, "hes 90, hes had cancer twice, hes going to die soon anyway. Dont make him a martyr for the cause". He didnt listen.
