A Newly Created Polymarket Account Made $436,759.61 on Nicolás Maduro’s Capture

In the best of circumstances, betting on world events on markets like Kalshi and Polymarket for fun and profit is an innocent way to make reading the news a little more interesting. Unfortunately, some suspect that there are evil people out there who want to ruin it for everyone else by making unfair, insider bets that have the potential to corrupt the intentions of powerful figures and their advisors. So with that in mind, I don’t want you to be in doubt when I say this next thing:

On Friday, what appears to be a brand new account on Polymarket bet $30,000 to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. By the next morning, when Maduro was suddenly no longer able to act as Venezuela’s president after being dragged out of bed and thrown out of the country by the U.S. military, that account had apparently been credited with $436,759.61, according to Herb Scribner of Axios. It’s not been revealed where that number is coming from, but an Archive.ph snapshot circulating on social media puts the amount at $407,920.12, so either way, this lucky guy made a lot of money from his completely absurd guess.

And hey, it’s not inconceivable that this could be an absurd assumption. As The Wall Street Journal reported in an article outlining the timeline of Maduro-related bets on Polymarket, there were six contracts linked to the Maduro-leaves-power issue, and people had bet $56.6 million on them. $40 million of that action was about him leaving by November 30 or December 31, which he did not do. Nonetheless, the piece paints a shocking picture of speculators on Friday night and Saturday morning who suddenly gathered around fears that Maduro was about to leave power.

The stakes on how long Maduro will remain in US custody are not looking very favorable for the ousted leader. The probability of a release by January 9 was 1%, and the probability of a release by the end of 2026 was only 15% at the time of this writing.