Google's annual roundup of most-searched topics has become tradition. In 2025, searches included Gemini, Charlie Kirk, Iran, Zohran Mamdani, and Superman. In hindsight, this seems obvious, but could anyone have predicted the list before its release? Someone managed to turn that prediction into a fortune.
Hours before Google published results, a user named AlphaRacoon entered the Polymarket prediction market. Within a short time, he bet on winners across 23 different search categories, including culture, personalities, and sports. Twenty-two predictions proved correct, and Alpha Raccoon collected no less than $1 million. This incident didn't result from exceptional luck. AlphaRacoon's betting history shows that the overwhelming majority of his 92 bets involved Google products or announcements, with unusually high accuracy. He successfully predicted, for instance, the exact day Gemini 3 launched.
This is far from the only case. Close to AlphaRacoon's big day, another defining event occurred – the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by US special forces. Reports stunned the world, though President Trump had repeatedly threatened invasion in the preceding weeks.
User Burdensome-Mix was far less surprised. He joined Polymarket for the first time just days before the raid, betting on a single question – "Will Nicolas Maduro be removed from power before January 31, 2026?" The platform assigned a 6.5% probability to a positive answer when he placed his bet. Burdensome-Mix remained unfazed, placing an initial $7,000 wager and gradually increasing the amount every few hours until reaching $32,537 on the night of January 2.
The next morning, Trump announced Maduro's dramatic capture after hours of reports and rumors about an attack in the capital Caracas. Burdensome-Mix pocketed more than $436,000 for his remarkable ability to predict an imminent covert operation. The story quickly made its way into news broadcasts and US political discourse. Many began to wonder whether Burdensome-Mix was involved in the operation or at least privy to its planning. Online speculation took the wager a step further with bets on the bet itself – could Burdensome-Mix be none other than Barron Trump, the president's youngest son?
While that question fascinates in itself, the platform behind it and its implications may be the next major revolution in our lives – not necessarily for the better.
More than lucky polls
The logic underlying Polymarket (and competing prediction markets) is the gap between opinion and action. Take an election poll as an example – when a pollster asks whom you'll vote for, beliefs, worldviews, belonging issues, values, and often hope enter the equation. All these change the moment the question becomes a bet. When money is on the table, the almost sole relevant criterion is who's most likely to win. People are known risk-avoiders, and our brains are wired to be far more rational when loss is possible. In other words, the answer to that same question may differ if presented as a bet.
Polls on leading outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Nate Silver's index indicated a tight race in swing states, with Harris ahead. Polymarket pointed to a Trump victory, and its predictions matched results in all seven swing states.
This theory proved correct in the 2024 US presidential election. A comprehensive study conducted by Vanderbilt University compared Polymarket data with polls published on leading sites such as The Washington Post and Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight, as well as prestigious research institutions such as Siena College and Emerson College. While all these bodies presented a picture of a tight race in swing states with a slight lean toward Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, Polymarket data showed Trump winning with high certainty in states like Georgia about two weeks before the election. Polymarket's predictions matched actual results in all seven swing states because people bet on what they knew, while polls suffered from classic problems such as sampling errors, misdiagnosed demographics, and low response rates.
Shayne Coplan, Polymarket's founder, built on precisely this gap when he established the company. The year was 2020, the world entered the first COVID lockdown and uncertainty peaked. Rumors, conspiracy theories, assessments and data flew in every direction. Coplan, then a 21-year-old fan of capital markets and technology, began working on a crypto-based platform to end "rampant disinformation," as he termed it, that was dominating the world. He had dropped out of computer science studies at New York University three years earlier to focus on realizing his vision. In 2025, he became the youngest billionaire in history.
The law stays behind
First bets on Polymarket addressed burning COVID-era issues, such as "When will New York City reopen?" But popularity brought rapid expansion into additional domains – sports, pop culture, politics, and more. The mechanism behind binary betting is seemingly simple – each question has two possible answers worth $1 combined. Their ratio shifts with users' betting patterns, much like the stock market, where the market determines how much it will pay per share. Take the question "Will Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce marry by June 30?" If 85% of respondents think the answer is "yes," one "yes" share will cost $0.85, while one "no" share will cost only $0.15.
When the question resolves, the incorrect answer "evaporates," and the money invested in it merges with the correct answer's pool, from which prizes are distributed to those who guessed correctly. But here comes the significant difference between Polymarket and regular betting platforms. While there, the bet is absolute and final (you guessed by the deadline and, upon the event's conclusion, discovered if you won or lost), Polymarket is a stock exchange in every sense. Ratios change in real time according to developments, rumors, and data. You bought "no" at $0.15 per share, and the ratio improved to $0.25? You can take profits and sell your shares to other investors in the question. No need to wait for the final answer to profit.
This simplicity is exactly what attracted D., an active Israeli investor on the platform, to prefer it over traditional channels. "Why not the stock market?" he explains. "Say I know Trump is going to attack Venezuela, so I need to start thinking which sectors will profit from this and which companies could be positively affected, then I need to catch them in time because their stocks may have already started running. Here, by contrast, I bet in real time on what I know, without getting tangled in calculations of who profits and who loses – either yes or no."
D. testifies that his entry into this world was almost accidental. "I heard about the site and read articles and decided to enter and check what's happening. The first thing you understand is that there are tons of bets on almost everything. Some are bizarre, but some are political, and I love politics very much. I have lots of useless information, but here it can make me money. So I decided to try and saw it was working for me. I make between 10% to 15% monthly, which is really nice." According to him, "I don't bet large amounts, a few thousand. Nothing that will break the bank."
This logic attracted large investors and hedge funds to Polymarket, which raised $70 million in initial capital. Another major advantage was its establishment on a crypto platform. This feature ensured that transactions would be conducted anonymously, in a decentralized manner, and transparently, without intermediaries. This structure also allows Israelis to bet freely on the platform, even though Israeli law prohibits marketing binary options trading and unregulated betting. In practice, because this is a decentralized and anonymous platform, there's no effective way to enforce these prohibitions – and blocking the site for Israelis won't stop those who know how to use a VPN.
D., an Israeli Polymarket user, describes the dissonance: "Three days before the hostages' release, I bet whether they'd be released by Monday at eight in the morning. I bet no, and in the end, they were released at nine. The delay played in my favor."
Every Polymarket bet is a contract that is recorded and documented to prevent the possibility of fraud. The platform also ensures the bettor has enough money in their account to cover the bet if it loses. Finally, it includes a "dispute resolution" mechanism that allows investors to vote on the final outcome in case of disagreement. And so what began as a secret of crypto investors and major traders became a hit also among small investors who see potential for quick enrichment.
"On one hand, I see more and more awareness in Israel about the site and what's happening there," says D. "On the other hand, it's still an early stage where most people are afraid to convert money to crypto and it sounds dubious to them, but it's a one-time five-minute process – and from there everything just works." Technical concern is only one side of the coin. The other side is the potential for exploitation of security knowledge, a phenomenon D. knows firsthand. "Obviously, I'm aware that there are people with inside information exploiting it to profit on the app. I have friends in intelligence who make money from it – and that's okay."
Then Trump arrived
One of the most significant deterrents in stock market investment is the prohibition on insider trading. Such trading makes competition unfair and carries heavy penalties for those who used information unavailable to others to gain advantage. As the examples at the beginning of the article show, this reality is completely reversed on Polymarket. Not only is there no sanction for advance information – it's an advantage the platform encourages. The result is stronger belief in its results over other information sources – if people with lots of money are willing to risk it on a certain question, they very likely know something.
"I don't have inside information, but I'm very involved in details," D. explains. "I follow WhatsApp and Telegram channels like Abu Ali Express or Amit Segal, read lots of news, and I paint myself a picture from all the information. For example, in the Iran attack story, I asked myself – what do I know? That Trump doesn't like risks. What happened last time in Iran? He waited for us to do all the work and then he came, bombed the reactor and said he won. This time it's a different situation – clearly the Iranians will attack back and this could continue a long time and get complicated – and he doesn't like complicated things – so my bet was he wouldn't attack."
The Biden administration was not enthusiastic about the new arena and went to war against prediction markets – Polymarket especially. In 2022, the platform was banned for US use (which of course didn't prevent many from using it via VPN) and it was required to pay a $1.4 million fine for operating without a license in the financial derivatives market. In 2024, the FBI raided Coplan's home and confiscated computers and phones, suspecting Polymarket's activity violated regulation rules. Coplan responded by claiming the administration was targeting him because his platform accurately predicted the Democrats' approaching loss. But then came the election, and with it a complete attitude shift.
The investigation against Polymarket closed within the first days of Trump's administration. The US trading restriction was lifted this July after Polymarket completed the acquisition of a derivatives exchange serving as its licensed base for conducting business. The cherry came about a month later when none other than Donald Trump Jr. became a company partner with a $10 million investment. The president's son had previously served as an unofficial advisor to the company while also serving as a paid consultant to its competitor, Kelshi. There were days when this would have sounded strange – not in the current administration. One can only imagine what access to the US president's information sources allows his associates to profit in betting markets.
The Trumps' interest in Polymarket is sharpened by examining its business model. The platform doesn't charge users commission for bets, offsetting a marginal percentage of winning profits. As in any case where service is free – the users are the product. Last October, Intercontinental Exchange, parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, announced a $2 billion investment in Polymarket. All in exchange for integration into its financial system.
The rationale is clear – investors desperately seek information to help them manage their money more effectively. If, until now, they were forced to rely mainly on quarterly reports summarizing what already happened, Polymarket's information allows identifying what's happening right now – which company is in trouble, which product is in demand, which stocks generate buzz and what public sentiment is toward various issues affecting different domains. CNN and NBC announced they would integrate Polymarket data into their election coverage, trading platform Robinhood announced it would open Polymarket-based "prediction centers" to help clients trade on more accurate information. At the recent Golden Globes ceremony, Polymarket data appeared repeatedly on screens throughout the prestigious broadcast, with accuracy in each category nearly perfect.
Knowledge is power
The information Polymarket trades is unprecedentedly valuable – crowd wisdom that predicts the future better than any other tool. Data flows in real time and hides commercial, military, economic, and political advantages. In a world with so much uncertainty, who needs to charge betting commissions when you can sell your results?
Implications of this powerful new hit are still crystallizing, but alongside the potential, it's hard not to panic about the consequences. Last summer, a Polymarket bet ran on the expected scope of Los Angeles fires. The very attempt to profit from an event where dozens died and tens of thousands lost their homes is horrifying in itself. But participating in an open bet while the event occurs opens up far worse scenarios – what if, for example, an insurance company or private contractor betting on the fire does so to cover insurance payments they'll be required to make to clients?
Polymarket's usage nature turns everything into a game – whether it's Elon Musk's tweet count on a given day or the likelihood of war breaking out. Data no longer just reflects reality, it creates it. Consider a scenario in which Polymarket bets show a party's significant lead in elections. Belief in the data could lead voters of competing parties to forgo voting (since they'll lose anyway), or, alternatively, cause complacency among the leading party's voters, who convince themselves it will win even without them. In both cases, actual results will be influenced by betting on them.
Here's another scenario that Polymarket betting constantly changes – the probability of war breaking out between Iran and Israel. Many intelligence agencies already view Polymarket data as a tool for everything, recognizing that people with secret information exploit it to bet. If the Iranian regime peeks at Polymarket data and sees growing probability of war opening, and believes it, what will prevent them from launching a preemptive attack on an event that wasn't even clear if it would actually occur? The same information that serves to exploit correct answers can also be used by various actors to spread disinformation and deception.
One of the disturbing stories recently exposed on Polymarket in this context relates to us here in Israel. In the second week of June 2025, a user named ricosuave666 bet for the first time on the site on four questions – Will Israel attack Iran on Friday? Will Israel attack Iran by end of June 2025? Will Israel announce the end of the Iran operation by end of July? Will Israel attack Iran before July?
He bet on each question with thousands of dollars, and was accurate on all of them. Since that blitz, he disappeared. He didn't bet on any other question until returning last month and started betting that Israel would attack Iran by end of January 2026. There is suspicion that this involves a security official who exploited secret information he had access to in his role to make tens of thousands of dollars, while exposing sensitive intelligence. The IDF opened an investigation of the incident on suspicion of information leak. It should be noted that the likelihood of locating him is low because activity on the site is completely anonymous and transactions are encrypted. The anonymous user was deleted from the platform about two weeks ago.
Knowledge is power
Above everything else, Polymarket reflects another frightening peak in humanity's disconnection from traditional and responsible information sources operating out of public interest. Distrust of institutions, media and politicians, alongside growing cost of living and dreams sold repeatedly on social networks about the possibility of quick and effortless enrichment – turn prediction markets into a real danger. In the good scenario, they increase familiar risks of gambling addiction, in the far worse scenario, they open a door to exposing secrets and intelligence sources, encouraging conflicts and increasing a feeling of nihilistic emptiness where consequences' severity doesn't matter as long as there's profit potential.
Polymarket can be described as a betting site or an information market, but the prevailing feeling is that of an unprecedented social and economic experiment. A future where decisions like who to fire, what to buy, or with whom to start a war are made based on binary answers from anonymous people. Even before we discussed the ability to negatively influence these questions, their very existence and usage nature lead to a future where everything is tradable and nothing is sacred. It doesn't matter that Russia will conquer Ukraine, that Maduro resigned or that Israel will win the World Cup – except whether we were on the right or wrong side of the bet.
Since the platform provides enormous advantage to the wealthy, powerful and connected, the main victims will be minors (who benefit from inability to verify their age), youth, pensioners, or those who will lose their money chasing manipulations far larger than themselves. After all, Polymarket's foundation isn't what's correct or logical, but what's profitable for the immediate majority that bet on a specific question. While Polymarket moves faster and far more sophisticatedly than constitutional and regulatory infrastructures, the world becomes more cynical. After all, why put out a fire if you can watch the world burn and make money?
