“Horekunden” was quickly running out of patience. His frustration was directed at the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank that publishes a daily map of the front line in Ukraine. To Horekunden and other anonymous gamblers, the map was a “disjointed, incoherent mess… like a five-year-old’s painting.” As a result, it was useless for their purpose: settling a bet on the online prediction market Polymarket.
The map in question showed the city of Kostyantynivka, which Ukrainian forces have held for five months despite constant shelling and drone attacks. Thousands of civilians still reside there.
Currently, over $500,000 is wagered on whether Russia will capture Kostyantynivka this year. These bets will be settled if the ISW releases a map indicating that Russia controls the city’s train station.
In a booming online economy, thousands of people are discussing how to profit from war. They are betting on Ukraine. They bet on the U.S.-Iran ceasefire—with $280 million at stake. They are betting on whether the U.S. will invade Iran—with $7.5 million wagered.
In Discord groups, they debate potential outcomes. “Shit can go really wrong. WW3 may happen,” wrote one user this week who had money riding on whether the U.S. would strike Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal.
“As long as America gets Iran’s uranium I can see all of the above peacefulness materializing,” wrote another, who seemed to be gambling on this week’s ceasefire.
Sometimes, they even appear to collaborate to influence events, or at least how those events are documented. Critics have labeled this immoral, and U.S. senators have called for Polymarket to be regulated.
Polymarket, however, sees itself as a source of truth.
Several weeks ago, following reports that it might be hosting insider bets on U.S. strikes against Iran, the platform posted a “Note on Middle East Markets.”
“After discussing with those directly affected by the attacks, who had dozens of questions, we realized that prediction markets could give them the answers they needed in ways TV news and X could not,” it stated.
The Rise of Polymarket
In July 2024, just before Donald Trump was re-elected in the U.S., Polymarket reported about $400 million in total trades on its platforms for the year. Now, it can exceed that amount in a single day. It calls itself a “prediction market”—a way to gather data about the future by letting the public bet on it.
But long-time users say it increasingly resembles a casino, where everything from Trump’s anger to the second coming of Jesus Christ can be monetized. Where possible, players in this powerful “casino” have started trying to shape the world to secure a payout.
Polymarket gamblers recently threatened an Israeli journalist, demanding he change his reporting so they could win a bet about whether Iran had struck Israel on a specific day. Experts warn that Polymarket users might be able to manipulate broader markets, with effects that could ripple out to institutions and pension funds.
As for the Ukrainian front line, after complaining about the ISW’s map on Discord, Horekunden decided to take further action. He reached out to another user, @tsybka, whose X profile describes him as a “top 0.001% trader” on the platform.
“You managed to contact them once before with your outreach, so I’d appreciate it if you could try passing this along,” Horekunden wrote.
“This is nonsense, they won’t listen to anyone,” replied @tsybka, who did not respond to an inquiry from the Guardian.
“Either…””This map is so incredibly bad it’s unbelievable,” he wrote. Then he decided to call ISW himself. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do because all the other mapmakers are too easy to bribe.”
ISW stated that it does “not engage with the users or representatives of such platforms.”
“We strongly condemn and have never consented to the exploitation of our products for the abhorrent purpose of gambling on war,” said a spokesperson.
“No one wants to make money off war or people dying, but…”
“I love to gamble,” said Joseph Francia.
Now in his early 30s, Francia counted cards in casinos while studying economics at Berkeley and spent weekends in Reno, Nevada, playing blackjack. He said he’s not a thrill-seeking “YOLO” (you only live once) gambler; he likes to bet when he has an edge over the house.
In university, he and a friend decided to collect data from several offshore sportsbooks and start placing arbitrage bets—capitalizing on discrepancies in odds offered by different betting sites.
“If the odds on the Lakers are really good on one site, and the odds on the Pacers are really good on another site, you could bet on basically both teams on different sportsbooks and make a guaranteed profit,” he said.
That project was a student lark in 2017. But in 2025, he remembered it when he was suddenly laid off from his full-time job, just as prediction markets were taking off.
“I’m a spiritual, religious person,” he said. “More secular people would say this opportunity is a coincidence. But in my head, I thought, this is a sign to some extent. Let me lean into this.”
So Francia started Prediction Hunt, a Discord channel and online community where thousands of people gather to trade tips and ideas on how to make money—and bet smart—on Polymarket. The Guardian spent about three weeks in this Discord channel.
There are alerts to track “fade” bets, where you try to follow the smart money. For example, profitable wallets were betting “yes” on the Iranian regime falling by April 30, while unprofitable wallets were betting “no.”
There are alerts to track potential insiders so you can copy their bets—one of whom appears to have inside information on interest rate decisions by the U.S. Federal Reserve.
And there are arbitrage alerts, where you can guarantee a profit by playing odds across multiple markets. In early March, one such alert highlighted two different sets of odds—between Polymarket and another online prediction market, Kalshi—on whether Mojtaba Khamenei would become the next supreme leader of Iran.
Here’s how that would work: buy “yes” on Polymarket for 33.6 cents and “no” on Kalshi for 47 cents. You’d spend 80.6 cents on these two bets, but one is guaranteed to win—either Mojtaba Khamenei would or would not be named successor. The payout for a correct bet is $1, meaning the 19.4-cent difference is profit. Put down $1,000, and you’d make $194 in profit.
“Those are really tricky because I think there absolutely is a gruesome aspect to it,” said Francia when asked about betting on war.
“No one wants to make money off war or people dying. But at the same time, I’ve heard people say—like, if you’re in Ukraine, or in some country going through war and devastation, and you’re in the fog of war, right?
“You don’t know what’s propaganda, what’s true, what’s fake. Is your government saying everything’s safe because they actually believe so? Or because they want to instill confidence in their people? Those are legitimate questions, and a good place to turn to is Polymarket.”
War betting is…”Tough frame,” said Mike Kane, another user of the channel. “I don’t know if it was Kalshi or Polymarket—they had a bet on when troops would be on the ground in Iran. I mean, those are real-world events that are going to happen, and they do impact our lives.”
The Guardian also spoke with several other users on the Discord channel. One U.S. high school student said he mostly participates in “mentions markets,” where users bet on how many times a public figure might say a specific phrase in a speech—for example, whether Donald Trump would say the word “ballroom.” He found it easy to gain an edge by studying transcripts of past speeches on YouTube. So far, he’s made $200, though he’s lost money on sports bets elsewhere.
Another user, “Hacker666,” said he primarily bets on sports and declined to share more details: “I don’t give out personal information due to privacy concerns, as I’ve already received multiple threats because of my wealth.”
Anonymous Group That Rules on the Truth
In July 2024, U.S. pollster Nate Silver joined Polymarket’s advisory board. Silver, known for accurately predicting the 2012 election results, praised the platform for its “increasingly vital role in helping people understand and plan for the future.” That year, Polymarket succeeded where Silver’s polling averages fell short, correctly forecasting Trump’s win in the 2024 presidential election.
Silver suggested that Polymarket’s ability to monetize everything could be positive, allowing pollsters, statisticians, and the public to study events in greater depth. He described it as a “real-time data source” for questions that are otherwise “hard to quantify.”
Markets are taking notice. In October, the Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the New York Stock Exchange, announced it would invest up to $2 billion in Polymarket and would soon distribute its sentiment analysis to investors. Goldman Sachs has cited Polymarket’s odds on the U.S.-Iran conflict in newsletters, and Nasdaq has asked the SEC to approve listing binary options—similar to Polymarket’s yes-no bets—tied to its index.
Supporters argue this is for the best, as polls falter and mainstream media misses the narrative. A Forbes columnist called prediction markets a “truth signal” that moves faster than polls, pundits, or official reports. “It used to be that news channels were the final say in big events,” said Kane. “But thanks to Polymarket, there’s a new signal.”
However, if Polymarket can influence larger markets, it raises concerns. One risk is that gamblers on the platform could manipulate broader markets. Many pools on Polymarket have only a few bettors, meaning small, strategic bets could skew the odds for certain events. Yash Kanoria, a Columbia University professor specializing in market design, warned that data sharing “opens up an opportunity to manipulate financial markets by skewing the odds on Polymarket.” Larger markets might chase what they believe to be insider knowledge or a “truth signal,” such as whether the Federal Reserve will change interest rates.
Then there’s the question of who decides Polymarket’s “truth” when the outcome of an event is unclear.An event is in question. On Monday, an anonymous user named “Harshad” asked in a Discord channel if there was still “any chance” he could win his bet that U.S. forces would not enter Iran by the end of April. However, Polymarket appeared to be settling the market as “yes” after U.S. forces conducted an operation to rescue a crew member shot down over Isfahan over the weekend.
“Just sell bro,” one user advised.
“I still think ‘USA enter Iran’ means an official ground invasion like Venezuela,” Harshad responded.
“You have the invade market for that,” another user pointed out, referring to a separate bet on whether the U.S. would seize control of part of Iran’s territory.
“Read the rules,” said another.
For now, when disputes arise on Polymarket, they are settled by an anonymous group holding a cryptocurrency token called UMA. This unusual method for determining outcomes has raised concerns among some longtime users, who suggest it leaves the platform open to corruption. Different individuals hold varying amounts of UMA, giving them different levels of voting power. It is unknown who the largest UMA holders are or what might influence their votes. It is entirely possible that those who ultimately settle a bet have large sums of money riding on the outcome.
“It’s the protocol that you should vote the right way,” said Ben Yorke, a former researcher at Cointelegraph. “But [UMA] gets it wrong all the time. And there have been cases where votes are decided by, like, one or two very large UMA holders.”
UMA holders are making their own rulings on world events. Dozens of markets on Polymarket are disputed, with gamblers disagreeing over what actually happened—for instance, does an intercepted missile count as a strike? Does a social media post from Trump qualify as a formal ceasefire declaration?
Recently, these holders decided whether U.S. forces truly “entered Iran by 30 April,” whether the U.S. and Iran actually reached a ceasefire this week, and whether to pay out over $600,000 after Israel confirmed it killed Muhammad Dawad, an alleged Hamas explosives expert, on Monday—an action considered a “military action against Gaza” on April 6.
Currently, their votes mainly determine whether anonymous users like Harshad and “neverLose” cash out. But if Polymarket grows as a “truth signal,” the individuals deciding that truth will be anonymous holders of a cryptocurrency token—who may also have money on the line.
If this seems alarming and prone to corruption, some question whether it is any worse than the rules and opacities governing more traditional markets.
“It just feels like it’s the whole market, right? Look at, like, Nancy Pelosi and her stock portfolios outperforming everything; it’s really hard to say where the insider trading stops,” said Yorke. “That sort of makes prediction markets at least a little bit more clear, because at least you can track the wallets. With the S&P 500, no one knows, really, who’s buying stocks.”
The Intercontinental Exchange and Polymarket did not respond to requests for comment.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs Abhorrent Betting on War via Polymarket
Beginner Definition Questions
1 What is Polymarket
Polymarket is a decentralized prediction market platform where users can buy and sell shares on the outcome of realworld events using cryptocurrency
2 What does the article Abhorrent discuss
It investigates how traders on Polymarket are placing bets worth millions of dollars on geopolitical events specifically focusing on highstakes wagers related to ongoing wars and conflicts
3 What is a prediction market
Its a platform where people trade contracts whose final payout depends on the outcome of a specific future event Prices reflect the crowds aggregated probability of that outcome
4 Is this just gambling
While functionally similar proponents argue prediction markets are tools for information aggregation that reveal what people truly believe will happen not just games of chance Critics and regulators often view it as speculative gambling especially on sensitive topics
5 What does abhorrent refer to in this context
The term describes the ethical concern that profiting from bets on human suffering in warswhere real people are dyingis morally repugnant
Functional Practical Questions
6 How do people actually bet on war events
Users deposit cryptocurrency and buy Yes or No shares on specific questions If they are correct each share pays out 1 If wrong it pays 0
7 What kind of war events are people betting on
Markets have included questions on specific battle outcomes geopolitical escalations leadership changes in conflict zones and casualty figures
8 Who are these gamblers
The article suggests a mix of cryptonative speculators geopolitical analysts and possibly individuals with insider knowledge all looking to profit from their predictions
Ethical Regulatory Questions
9 Whats the main ethical problem here
Betting on war can be seen as commodifying human tragedy potentially creating perverse incentives where profit motives conflict with humanitarian concerns It may also be seen as insensitive to victims
10 Is this legal
The legality is murky Polymarket operates on blockchain often outside specific
