At 2 a.m. local time on Saturday in Venezuela, while President Nicolás Maduro was still asleep during the New Year holiday, U.S. special forces completed a raid within an hour, apprehending Maduro and transporting him to the United States via aircraft.
This world-shocking "blitzkrieg" seemed to come without warning, but on the leading prediction market platform Polymarket, it appeared to have become a profit-making tool for several insiders well before the operation.
3 Pentagon Employees "Placing Bets While Working Overtime"
Hours before the operation began, three new wallets with no prior history on Polymarket suddenly started heavily betting "Yes" on the highly improbable market "Maduro loses power before January 31, 2026".
At that time, the mainstream market view was still that Trump would adopt a温和的围城策略 (mild siege strategy) to force Maduro to compromise, and the probability for "Yes" on this market was only 5%. However, as Maduro was loaded onto the plane, these three mysterious accounts instantly reaped profits exceeding $500,000.
It was only after the fact that people began to redefine the trio's purchases hours before the airstrike: only those with reliable intelligence could execute such a "dimensionality reduction strike" with such precise timing using new accounts.
These three insiders were:
0xa72db1749e9ac2379d49a3c12708325ed17febd4, profit $74,982.34;
0x6baf05d193692bb208d616709e27442c910a94c5, profit $145,619.92;
0x31a56e9e690c621ed21de08cb559e9524cdb8ed9, profit $409,882.03.
But the news from Polymarket goes far beyond this.
Maduro's "Flight Delay": The U.S. Operation Was Originally Scheduled for 4 Days Earlier
There are two very representative addresses; although they profited from this event, they actually lost significant potential earnings because they received the information too early.
Like the three insiders mentioned above, Chiwawas also placed a precise bet of $10,000 three hours before the airstrike, profiting over $70,000.
But in fact, Chiwawas had already heavily bet nearly $40,000 on the market "Maduro loses power within 2025" on the evening of December 26th.
Assuming he was an insider, he must have received accurate information to make such a heavy bet. Unfortunately, the arrest operation, originally scheduled for December 29th, was canceled due to weather. Thunderstorm clouds over the Caribbean Sea forced the U.S. military to abort for tactical safety reasons.
This was confirmed in Trump's recent speech regarding the operation: "The airstrike against Maduro was originally scheduled for 4 days ago (i.e., the night of December 29 to the early morning of December 30, 2025)."
Therefore, since the market settled as "No" on the last day of 2025, this trade resulted in his account facing huge losses as 2026 arrived.
If everything had gone according to the script Chiwawas possessed, his account should have settled with a whopping $750,000 return on December 30th.
Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate. The thunderstorm clouds over the sea not only disrupted the U.S. military's original airstrike plans but also shattered Chiwawas's dream of using military intelligence to make a fortune during the Christmas holiday.
Fortunately, upon learning that the U.S. military would restart the operation on the night of January 3rd, he rallied, depositing funds and placing bets again. This final gamble, while unable to make up for the missed $750,000, ultimately brought his total account profit back into positive territory, reaching $34,000.
Besides Chiwawas, another account also missed massive profits due to the weather. Since late last month, he had bet approximately $20,000 across multiple related markets like "Military conflict between US and Venezuela occurs within the year" and "Nothing happens: National leader loses power," convinced that a US-Venezuela conflict would occur in the remaining days of 2025 and that Maduro would fall because of it.
If not for the weather impact, he should have received a huge profit of $1.04 million on the 30th.
Like Chiwawas, after suffering significant losses, he bet on "US-Venezuela conflict occurs before 2026.1.15" three hours before the airstrike and profited over $40,000.
Conclusion
Only three days into 2026, we have already seen that Polymarket is not just a prediction platform but also an automatic teller machine for individuals across various industries with information advantages to疯狂套现 (cash out疯狂ly) using "knowledge gaps" and "time gaps."
As Polymarket's popularity continues to grow, one wonders what other surreal insider stories will play out here this year?
