More than 150 wallets on Polymarket International may have placed trades based on non-public United States military information, according to fresh research published Thursday by the nonprofit Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC), which was first reported by Reuters.
The findings arrive at a moment when the prediction market industry is already under a policy microscope, and they add fresh weight to concerns that the blockchain-based venue could be leaking operational signals that hostile foreign intelligence services can passively monitor in real time.
What the ACDC Study Looked At
The Washington-based research group examined every settled market on the Polymarket international platform through May 5, 2026. Since the platform settles trades on-chain, every wager is publicly visible even though wallet owners remain pseudonymous.
Researchers filtered the data for what they termed “long-shot” bets, which the group defines as cumulative wagers of at least $2,500 placed within an hour or less on an outcome carrying odds of 35 percent or lower.
Within that filtered universe, ACDC identified 556 wallets it labelled as “Orcas,” a nickname borrowed from the killer whale’s highly selective and precise hunting pattern. According to the report, these wallets typically opened an account, quickly executed a highly successful long-shot bet inside a niche market where insiders were likely to hold an informational edge, and then cashed out and disappeared, often never to be seen again.
Of those 556 accounts, 152 stood out as exceptionally successful bettors on military and defence-linked contracts. Collectively, this cohort raked in around $8 million in profits, and their average win rate came in at a striking 97.2 percent.
ACDC acknowledged that Orca-like behaviour can have other explanations, including sheer luck, and cautioned that not every likely insider fits the Orca profile. The group noted, for instance, that Army soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who prosecutors allege pocketed roughly $400,000 wagering on the January ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, built his position at a slower pace and therefore did not fall inside the 152-wallet military cohort. Van Dyke has pleaded not guilty.
The Crypto Times had earlier reported the details of the US soldier’s $400K Polymarket insider trading indictment.
While some of the flagged wallets had already surfaced in earlier research or media reports, ACDC said its analysis surfaced dozens of previously unreported addresses.
Copycats and Bots Are Amplifying the Signal
Beyond the direct profits captured by suspected insiders, the report highlights a second-order problem that researchers say is arguably more consequential from a national-security standpoint. ACDC found that Orca trades on military markets tend to attract copycat wagers from deep-pocketed accounts it calls “Whales,” as well as from automated trading bots.
Copycat trading is itself legal and has been documented across prediction markets in the past. However, according to the ACDC, the piggyback activity effectively amplifies whatever informational signal the original Orca bet carried, broadcasting it far more widely across the public ledger.
The report cites the June 2025 US strikes on Iran as one case study. Hours before the strikes, an Orca placed a wager on US military action. Shortly afterwards, a Bot and a Whale followed with copycat bets of roughly $200,000 and $100,000 respectively. A comparable pattern showed up around the February US and Israeli air strikes on Tehran, when Orca wagers appeared to trigger a flurry of first-time long-shot bets from Bots and Whales targeting the same outcome.
ACDC co-founder David Szakonyi warned that observers routinely underestimate how visible unusual Polymarket flow really is, saying it would be naive to think foreign-intelligence agencies aren’t monitoring these markets.
Polymarket, CFTC and Pentagon Responses
Polymarket, founded in 2020, did not respond to requests for comment on the ACDC findings. The company has previously said it maintains strict market-integrity controls, actively monitors for suspicious behaviour, and has referred dozens of trader wallets to the authorities, including in the Maduro-linked matter.
The platform recently strengthened its surveillance posture, tightening oversight through a partnership with Chainalysis to bolster anomaly detection and blockchain forensics.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which is angling for regulatory jurisdiction over the prediction market vertical, declined to comment on the specifics of the ACDC report. The agency has previously said it will police misconduct on such venues aggressively and has already filed charges in at least three separate cases.
A Department of Defense spokesperson said the agency does not comment on intelligence-related matters or on third-party research findings.
What ACDC Wants Regulators to Do
ACDC, which is made up of academics and investigators focused on illicit finance, laid out a fairly aggressive set of policy recommendations off the back of the findings.
The group is pushing for mandatory identity verification for all prediction-market traders, and it wants payouts on flagged suspicious trades to be withheld until an investigation is completed. Notably, Polymarket recently denied plans for mandatory KYC on its main platform, pushing back on speculation about tighter user-verification rules.
More radically, ACDC argues that markets where the use of non-public information is most likely to be profitable and actionable, including military and defence outcomes, should be prohibited outright. The organisation contended that merely restricting who can bet, or leaning on after-the-fact law enforcement inquiries, will not be sufficient to close off the abuse vector.
A Widening Regulatory Squeeze
The ACDC study lands on top of an already thickening pile of Washington scrutiny. Earlier this year, the US House Oversight Committee formally launched an investigation into insider trading risks on Kalshi and Polymarket, demanding documents from both firms on their user verification systems, geo-blocking mechanisms and suspicious-activity monitoring frameworks.
More recently, lawmakers have moved to close what they view as a related loophole on Capitol Hill itself, with Congress targeting lawmakers who trade on government secrets via prediction markets.
For further background on how the platform grew into its current position at the centre of the crypto prediction market debate, The Crypto Times has previously covered how Polymarket became the biggest crypto prediction market.
Whether the latest ACDC data pushes regulators from investigation into concrete rule-making, particularly around defence-linked event contracts, may prove to be the more decisive question in the months ahead.
Also Read: South Korea Blocks Polymarket After Regulator’s Illegal Gambling Ruling
