历时4 tháng, Polymarket đã giúp Trump bắt được kẻ rò rỉ thông tin về chiến dịch quân sự, nhưng cái giá phải trả là…

Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Golem (@web3_golem)

Soon afterward, facing the jury, Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke would surely recall the moment he stood on the deck of the USS Iwo Jima, waiting for the sunrise.

On the evening of January 2, 2026, President Trump ordered U.S. forces to raid Venezuela and capture President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. The mission concluded in the early hours of January 3, and the Maduros were brought aboard the USS Iwo Jima to be transported to the United States. Hours later, 38-year-old Master Sergeant Van Dyke, holding a rifle, posed for a photo on the deck with three other soldiers and shared it on social media. The atmosphere was relaxed, but the joy he felt inside couldn't be shared with anyone.

Because he was a leaker—an insider who used confidential information to reap massive profits on Polymarket. In the days leading up to the U.S. military operation, Van Dyke placed a series of bets on Polymarket, including whether Maduro would step down before January 31, 2026, and whether the U.S. military would attack Venezuela before that date. Van Dyke placed a total of $33,933 in bets, ultimately making over $409,000 in profit—a return exceeding 1,200%.

Gannon Ken Van Dyke

Van Dyke wasn't the only one who profited from insider information in this capture operation. According to monitoring by Odaily Seer Channel, three addresses on Polymarket had placed early bets on the Venezuelan president's removal before his arrest, accumulating total profits of $630,400. Among them, address 0x31a5 (0x31a5...8eD9) invested $34,000 and profited $409,000; address 0xa72D (0xa72D...eBd4) invested $5,800 and profited $75,000; and address SBet365 invested $25,000 and profited $145,600.

At the time, there was much speculation in the market about the identities of these insider addresses, but no one knew that the most profitable address specifically belonged to Van Dyke.

To be safe, after seeing reports of insider trading related to the mission, Van Dyke deleted his Polymarket account and changed the email address registered with his crypto exchange account in an attempt to conceal evidence of his trades.

Despite this, after a joint investigation by Polymarket and the U.S. Department of Justice lasting nearly four months, Van Dyke was ultimately caught.

On April 23, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the arrest of Van Dyke, charging him with illegally using classified government information for personal gain, theft of non-public government information, commodity fraud, wire fraud, and conducting illegal monetary transactions. The DOJ stated that Van Dyke is expected to appear in court in North Carolina at a later date, and information about his defense attorney has not yet been disclosed.

This marks the first time U.S. authorities have arrested an insider for using classified information to place bets on a prediction market, and the final verdict could have far-reaching implications for the prevalence of insider trading in prediction markets going forward.

But before that, Polymarket's newly enhanced market integrity rules had already made insiders uneasy.

Polymarket's Enhanced Market Integrity Rules

On March 23, Polymarket released enhanced market integrity rules and incorporated them into its terms of service. The new rules explicitly state that insider trading and any trading by individuals who may influence the outcome are strictly prohibited on Polymarket. Specifically, the following three behaviors are banned:

• Trading with stolen confidential information: Users may not engage in any contract trading if they possess confidential information regarding the outcome or possible outcome of an underlying event, and using that information would violate an existing trust or confidentiality obligation they owe to another person or entity;
• No trading using illegal inside information: Users may not trade using confidential information obtained from a person who owes an existing trust or confidentiality obligation if the user knows or has reason to know that the person providing the information would themselves be prohibited from trading on it;
• No trading when able to influence the outcome: Users may not engage in any contract trading if they have the power or influence to affect the outcome of the underlying event; users also may not trade according to instructions from individuals with such power or influence.

To help users better understand what constitutes insider trading, Polymarket also provides specific examples in the market integrity rules on both the main Polymarket site and the U.S. site. Examples include: soldiers cannot bet on upcoming military operations; political election candidates cannot personally bet on their own election results or encourage others to do so; and company CEOs cannot personally bet on "mention markets" involving themselves or encourage others to do so.

To effectively combat such insider trading, Polymarket has also established a multi-tiered monitoring system. When Polymarket or the community (Odaily's note: any user can now report suspicious trading activity) detects suspicious activity, Polymarket initiates a review and, when necessary, takes disciplinary action, bans wallet addresses, initiates legal proceedings, or refers the matter to law enforcement.

Before Van Dyke's arrest, insiders might have thought Polymarket's market integrity rules were just a bluff. On a platform without KYC and settled in cryptocurrency, penetrating on-chain addresses to identify the insiders hiding behind screens would be extremely difficult, and Polymarket wouldn't be willing to do such a thing.

But this idea is very naive. First, current regulatory and on-chain tracking technologies are already quite advanced and powerful. Users may not undergo KYC on Polymarket, but they certainly undergo KYC on exchanges and other on-ramp/off-ramp channels. Except for top-tier hackers, average users have virtually nowhere to hide from such investigations. Second, to secure support from U.S. regulators, Polymarket will actively cooperate with law enforcement in investigating insider trading. For a typical insider case like Van Dyke's, they will spare no effort or expense.

Having analyzed this, if you are someone with inside information on a minor event, you might still harbor the illusion that you're unlike Van Dyke—you're not conducting insider trading on such a high-profile event, or you're not a U.S. citizen, so U.S. regulators or Polymarket can't touch you.

Of course, Polymarket and regulators cannot treat every instance of insider trading the way they treated Van Dyke. For insider trading with small profits and limited impact, digging out the real identity of the insider or pursuing legal proceedings might seem "overkill." However, Polymarket also has a killer move against such insider trading—address bans. And this is the rule that all insiders and all users truly need to fear, as it is even shaking the core narrative of Polymarket.

The Cost

On April 23, prediction market Kalshi disclosed that it had fined three congressional candidates who bet on their own election results and banned them from the platform for five years. How much profit do you think they made? In reality, the total fines for the three candidates amounted to less than $8,000. One of them had only placed a $100 bet.

The ability to handle insider trading so swiftly is thanks to Kalshi's KYC and compliance system built from its inception. However, if such small-scale, low-impact insider trading occurred on Polymarket, it might not even be noticed, let alone addressed.

This is not due to Polymarket deliberately tolerating insider trading, but rather the inherent difficulty of self-regulation on Polymarket itself. Features like no KYC, low account creation barriers, and on-chain anonymity make it hard for Polymarket to manage and vet users like Kalshi can. This creates a breeding ground for insiders, and when the economic incentives for insider trading are high enough and the risks low enough, human nature is put to the test.

When insiders used Polymarket to gain illegal profits from the Maduro capture operation, Odaily Planet Daily analyzed that insider trading is a double-edged sword for Polymarket (Related reading: When Wars Are Settled Before the News: How Prediction Markets 'Priced In' the Maduro Capture 6 Days Early).

On one hand, insider trading often means releasing information ahead of mainstream media, which brings Polymarket trading volume and information disclosure speed that surpasses traditional media. Pricing in events early and predicting outcomes has gradually become Polymarket's core narrative. On the other hand, insider trading also means information leakage. Stakeholders will naturally resist this, especially when regulators believe insider trading threatens traditional information security. Polymarket must then choose between its own safety and the advantages brought by insider trading.

Judging by the outcome, the introduction of enhanced market integrity rules has already signaled Polymarket's stance, but the cost may be a loss of user trust in the platform.

Banning user addresses is a sensitive issue for a decentralized platform in itself. If abused or misapplied, it can trigger user backlash and concerns about fund security. For a long time, allowing people from around the world to participate in the prediction market and ensuring freedom of deposit and withdrawal has been one of Polymarket's core competitive advantages. However, when Polymarket grants itself the power to ban accounts of suspicious users, not only will insiders hesitate to trade on Polymarket, but regular profitable users will also worry that the platform might use this as an excuse to block withdrawals. Once the door to account bans is opened, it may never be closed again.

In summary, while a stringent crackdown on insider trading can ensure Polymarket's safety from a regulatory standpoint, it will inevitably weaken Polymarket's foresight and accuracy in predicting event outcomes while also increasing user concerns about the security of their funds. Ultimately, a mature Polymarket will become a mundane adult.