Original|Odaily Planet Daily(@OdailyChina)
Author|Wenser(@wenser 2010)
As a hot sector that has continued to rise since the beginning of the year, the prediction market is no stranger to wealth creation miracles.
But behind the miracles, is it a true spectacle achieved through careful timing and nimble maneuvering, or a false hype of artificial fraud and obfuscation? This requires onlookers to have a discerning eye. Recently, a Polymarket trader on X claimed to have achieved an "8300x miracle," betting from a $12 principal to over $100,000, but was quickly exposed for multi-account fraud and traffic炒作; another trader, through price manipulation of XRP, netted $230,000 in the "15-minute price prediction" section, executing a one-sided harvest against Polymarket's betting bots.
On the stage of betting for and against, some want to dance with lies, while others exploit rule loopholes for clever plunder. In the bet of right and wrong, there is no unbeatable strategy, only flexible tactics.
The 8300x Miracle from $12 to $100,000: Polymarket's Living Billboard VS Trader's Fraud Scheme
The story begins with a post "self-reporting a journey from a $12 principal to $100,000 in profit, achieving an 8300x return".
On January 16th, trader ascetic posted saying that through "all-in bets on short-term Bitcoin volatility", they doubled their principal 16 times consecutively, ultimately achieving the milestone of going from $12 to $100,000 in profit. Simultaneously, they emphasized that they "also specifically shared their betting strategy and the reasoning behind it" during the betting process.
Subsequently, they posted a link to their Polymarket account in the comments,直言 such wealth creation miracles can only happen on Polymarket (Odaily Planet Daily Note: Does it feel familiar? Platforms where traders previously used similar expressions include but are not limited to OpenSea, Blur, Pump.fun, Hyperliquid, Aster, etc.).
The comments section then上演 a "Polymarket community member's adrenaline-fueled狂欢", with countless people congratulating them,甚至 Polymarket Global Growth Lead LeGate commented: "Congrats bro! I think you deserve it! Congrats on the @PolymarketTrade badge!" (Odaily Planet Daily Note: This account is for the Polymarket active trader community.)
If you thought this would be a常规 "overnight wealth炫耀 post", then you might have underestimated the drama level of the situation.
Soon, the wind direction of this "Polymarket 8300x return miracle" event took a sharp turn for the worse.
From Betting Miracle to Fraud Scheme: 8300x Return Data Questioned
On January 16th itself, a trader named Moses, who自称 "ranked 515th in Polymarket trading for 2025", posted质疑 trader ascetic's account data, saying: "Did you ever wonder why his account balance was $3000 in the first post? The answer is simple: he operates a massive 'sybil farm'. He didn't start with $12, but with hundreds of accounts, each funded with $10 to $20. Once one account reached $2900, he started posting. Since then, he has made seven trades, all wins.
But note, he bets his entire stack every time. Real traders don't do this. He's just chasing clout, doing whatever it takes to get there.
Failing to get enough volume, he also seems to use other accounts to fake trade to get the price he wants.
Before blindly believing 'influencers', please do your own research. The attached image shows some of his failed sybil accounts that only made it to $1000 max."
Subsequently, Moses added in the comments that all accounts were created 7 months ago and consistently participated in random markets, all starting the same challenge on the same day 2 months ago. The entire "$10 to $100k" story is fake!
Not only that, he also posted screenshots and links to the corresponding sybil account homepages:
- Account one: https://polymarket.com/@brockmatthew;
- Account two: https://polymarket.com/@wellscandice;
- Account three: https://polymarket.com/@jbryan.
Although ascetic later responded in the comments that the wallets and accounts mentioned by Moses were unrelated to them, and some ZSC DAO (a Polymarket trader community) members also voiced support, calling Moses's actions a cyber attack, the association between the bot-like reply content on ascetic's previous tweet and their Polymarket account and numerous accounts with similar behavioral traces still greatly reduced the credibility of this "8300x return miracle".
Someone in the comments also mentioned it was hard to understand the reason for doing this, as "7 consecutive winning bets" itself is already impressive; but随后 someone pointed out this was still a game of "bot-style wide net".
Somewhat ironically, Moses's own bio also reads "The Road from $1 to $1M", whether it's a real record or a personal goal, we don't know.
Compared to the hard-to-judge ascetic, the following case of a trader who made $230,000 in profit through price manipulation in the XRP "15-minute price prediction market" might be more worthy of study by whale players.
Trader Uses Binance Spot to Counter-Harvest Prediction Market: $1M Principal Nets $230K Profit
On January 18th, Polymarket trader PredictTrader posted exposing a trader's操作 worthy of a "Wolf of Wall Street" drama—by harvesting liquidity from trading bots, he made $233,000 in just a few hours, and it hadn't even attracted大规模 market attention yet.
The timing chosen by this trader, a4385, was also extremely clever—it was Saturday evening, market liquidity was low, and Binance spot order book liquidity was also relatively thin.
In the "XRP Up/Down — Jan 17, 12:45-1:00 PM ET" market, he heavily bought "Yes" shares.
His counterparties were the more common "individual market makers" on Polymarket—various trading bots. (Odaily Planet Daily Note: Market making on Polymarket is relatively simple, with low entry barriers for individual developers, trading bots are very popular now). By 10 minutes into the event, XRP was down about 0.3% from the opening price, but he had pushed the "Yes" shares up to 70%. The trading bots saw a profit opportunity, unaware they were falling into the price trap set by this trader, and proceeded to sell him more "Yes" shares.
Ultimately, the trader bought $77,000 worth of "Yes" shares at an average price of 48%.
Then, just 2 minutes before the event settled, a wallet on Binance bought about $1 million worth of XRP spot, pushing its price up about 0.5%; seconds after the event settled, this $1 million spot was quickly sold off.
In other words, the cost of this price manipulation event was—approximately 0.25% one-way trade slippage + fees.
Using a Binance VIP Level 4 account (0.06%) (easy to obtain) and 0.25% two-way slippage, the total cost is approximately $6,200, the actual operating cost could be even lower. By repeating the same operation multiple times, exploiting the weekend liquidity loophole, this trader借此 emptied multiple bot wallets.
Some bots were shut down in time, while others weren't quick enough to react and lost all their funds—including @aleksandmoney, who lost their entire year's profit (about $160,000).
a4385 Polymarket account link: https://polymarket.com/profile/0x506bce138df20695c03cd5a59a937499fb00b0fe
At the end of the article, we hope that traders betting for and against, passionately battling on the prediction market, can distinguish fact from appearance. Sometimes, the truth is not always objective, while the standards and rules判定 by the platform are man-made.
