In October 2025, a new crypto wallet on Polymarket is betting $40,000 that OpenAI will launch an AI web browser before the end of the month. The bet came true shortly after and that account made $7,000.
As you can guess, that’s a shockingly large bet with suspiciously fast turnover.
Insider Finder, a monitoring tool that is part of Polymarket analytics software called Polysights, caught this transaction, and sent it to the company’s X account, flagging the user as a potential insider with direct knowledge of the web browser launch. But unlike any other market where insider trading will be reported to the authorities for punishment, the post was used as a trading signal that helped account followers to follow trades and make money themselves.
That’s because in prediction markets like Polymarket, insider trading is considered not only morally unacceptable but pretty much the whole point. Proponents of this exchange say that gambling is not the only use of prediction markets, but any inside action can be used as a signal of certain news before it actually goes down. Opponents of that argument say that using non-public information to make money from betting would be unfair or even fraudulent, and that allowing it would only make rich and powerful insiders richer and more powerful.
“Insider trading accelerates the reality quickly at the end of the day,” Polysights’ creator, Tre Upshaw, told Bloomberg. Upshaw is a 29-year-old former memecoin trader from Canada, and his creation has already amassed 24,000 users and entered the final stages of a $2 million funding round, per Bloomberg. Even Polymarket gave him a $25,000 grant to keep it going.
About 85% of the trades Upshaw flagged and sent to X were winning, the report said, and Upshaw himself bets hundreds of dollars of his own money on trades he feels confident about.
Polymarket was banned in the United States in 2022 under the Biden administration for failing to obtain approval from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission before allowing customers to buy event-based contracts—in other words: bet on yes-or-no questions based on real power. President Trump first ended the investigation into the Peter Thiel-backed company in July 2025. Soon after, Polymarket announced its successful return to the US (although not fully operational yet), and that Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. was joining the company as a consultant.
Insider trading is strictly prohibited in traditional currencies. But in the wild west of unregulated prediction markets, it is desirable. And OpenAI isn’t the only company being considered for having potential insiders using Polymarket to make quick money. A would-be Google insider made more than a million dollars last year betting on Google’s 2025 Year in Search rankings hours before they were revealed.
The CFTC, which regulates the same prediction market platform Kalshi and has greenlit Polymarket re-filing, currently has no guidance on insider trading in prediction markets. Meanwhile, Trump is notorious for predicting markets. Trump Media even launched a prediction market like its Polymarket on Trump’s social media platform Truth Social.
But regardless of Trump’s support, prediction markets and insider trading especially on these platforms are getting more scrutiny than ever. It all started earlier this month, when a brand new Polymarket account bet $30,000 and reportedly won $436,759 on the fall of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in just a few hours.
After that incident, New York Democratic Representative Ritchie Torres introduced a bill that would make it legal for government officials to bet on policy outcomes in prediction markets. It’s uncertain whether that bill will pass, but it has 30 co-sponsors as of Monday, all Democrats.
