Original Author: Lin Wanwan's Cat (X: @linwanwan823)
On the night of the 2024 U.S. election, a French trader netted $85 million on Polymarket.
This figure surpassed the annual performance of the vast majority of hedge funds.
Polymarket, a decentralized prediction market that has processed over $9 billion in trading volume and attracted 314,000 active traders, is redefining the boundaries of "voting with money."
But first, we must be honest: prediction markets are a zero-sum game.
Only 0.51% of Polymarket wallets have achieved profits exceeding $1,000.
So, what did the winners do right?
I recently wrote a series of strategies and attempted to systematically analyze over 86 million on-chain transactions,
(Data is based on academic research from IMDEA Networks Institute, covering complete on-chain records of over 86 million transactions and 17,218 market conditions from April 1, 2024, to April 1, 2025.
According to Dune Analytics data, Polymarket processed over 95 million transactions in 2025, with a nominal trading volume exceeding $21.5 billion, though there is some double-counting.)
dissecting the position logic and entry/exit timing of top traders,
and summarizing six proven profitable strategies: from the French whale's "neighbor poll" information arbitrage to a high-probability bond strategy with 1800% annualized returns; from cross-platform spread capture to a niche specialization approach with a 96% win rate.
Our retrospective analysis reveals that the common trait of top traders is not "predictive ability,"
but three things:
systematically capturing market mispricing,近乎偏执的严格风险管理, and the patience to build a碾压级 information advantage in a single领域.
If you've read this far, I suspect that sooner or later in 2026, you will try it yourself.
Of course, this is not a guide on "how to gamble,"
but rather aims to provide a systematic strategic framework and replicable methodological reference for prediction market participants, especially beginners.
Keywords: Prediction Markets; Polymarket; Trading Strategies; Arbitrage; Risk Management; Blockchain
I will cover this in five parts. If you only want to see the strategies, jump directly to Part Three.
I. Research Background
II. Evaluation Dimensions and Criteria
III. Six Core Strategies for 2025
IV. Position Management and Strategy
V. Conclusion
I. Research Background
In October 2025, ICE, the parent company of the NYSE, wrote a $2 billion check to Polymarket, valuing it at $9 billion.
A month later, Polymarket acquired a CFTC-licensed exchange, officially returning to the U.S. The "gray area project" expelled by regulators three years prior had become a darling of traditional finance.
The turning point was the 2024 election.
When all mainstream polls were saying "too close to call," Polymarket's odds steadily pointed to Trump. $3.7 billion in bets ultimately predicted the result earlier and more accurately than professional polling agencies. Academia began re-examining an old question: Does forcing people to "put their money where their mouth is" truly elicit more honest judgments?
The first thirty years of the internet created three types of infrastructure: search engines tell you "what happened," social media tells you "what others think," and algorithmic recommendations tell you "what you might want to see." But one piece was always missing: a place that could reliably answer "what will happen next."
Polymarket is filling this gap and has become crypto's first truly breakout application, targeting the rigid demand for "information pricing."
When media outlets start checking odds before writing news, when investors start consulting the market for decisions, when political teams start monitoring Polymarket instead of polls.
It is evolving from gambling toward a form of "pricing consensus."
A market that makes Wall Street pay, regulators relent, and polls sweat is worth serious study.
II. Research Methods and Evaluation Criteria
2.1 Data Sources
This study uses multiple data sources for cross-validation:
(1) Polymarket official leaderboard data;
(2) Polymarket Analytics third-party analysis platform (updated every 5 minutes);
(3) PolyTrack trader tracking tool;
(4) Dune Analytics on-chain data dashboard;
(5) Chainalysis blockchain analysis reports.
Data covers the complete on-chain records of over 86 million transactions and 17,218 market conditions from April 2024 to December 2025.
2.2 Evaluation Dimensions and Weights
Strategy evaluation uses a multi-dimensional comprehensive assessment system, including:
Absolute Profitability (Weight 30%):
Core metric is cumulative profit and loss (PnL),统计策略产生的总利润金额. Data shows that wallets with PnL exceeding $1,000 account for only 0.51% of the total, and whale accounts with trading volume over $50,000 account for only 1.74%.
Risk-Adjusted Returns (Weight 25%):
Calculating metrics like Return on Investment (ROI) and Sharpe Ratio. Excellent traders typically maintain a 60-70% win rate while controlling single-position risk exposure to 20-40% of total capital.
Strategy Replicability (Weight 20%):
Assessing the systematic and rule-based nature of the strategy. Profits purely reliant on insider information or luck are excluded.
Sustainability and Stability (Weight 15%):
Examining the strategy's consistency across different market cycles, excluding "one-hit wonder" gambling-style gains.
Scalability (Weight 10%):
Analyzing the strategy's applicability at larger capital scales, considering liquidity constraints and market impact costs.
2.3 Exclusion Criteria
The following situations are excluded from the best strategy评选:
(1) Suspected market manipulation, such as the UMA token governance attack in March 2025, where a whale holding 5 million UMA tokens (25% voting power) manipulated the settlement of a market worth $7 million;
(2) Gambling-style trades with single positions exceeding 40-50% of capital;
(3) Unverifiable or non-replicable "black box" strategies;
(4) Insider trading relying on non-public information.
III. Review of the Six Core Profit Strategies for 2025
1. Information Arbitrage Strategy: When a Frenchman Understood the Election Better Than All U.S. Polling Agencies
In the early hours of November 5, 2024, when CNN and Fox News anchors were still cautiously saying "the race is tight,"
an anonymous account, Fredi9999, was already showing an unrealized gain of over $50 million.
A few hours later, Trump declared victory. This account, along with its 10 associated wallets, ultimately harvested $85 million in profits.
The person behind the account was Théo, a French trader who had previously worked on Wall Street.
When all mainstream polls showed Harris and Trump neck and neck,
he did something seemingly crazy: sold almost all his liquid assets, raised $80 million, and went all-in on Trump winning.
Théo didn't ask voters "who are you voting for," but commissioned YouGov to conduct a special poll in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, asking: "Who do you think your neighbor will vote for?"
The logic of this "neighbor effect" poll was simple: some people are ashamed to admit they support Trump, but they don't mind saying their neighbor does.
The results were "stunningly in favor of Trump." The moment he got the data, Théo went from a 30% position to All-in.
This case reveals the essence of information arbitrage: not knowing more than others, but asking the right questions. Théo spent less than $100,000 on the poll for an $85 million return.
This might be the highest ROI market research in human history. He currently ranks first in total profits on Polymarket.
2. Cross-Platform Arbitrage Strategy: The Art of "Picking Up Money" Between Two Markets
If information arbitrage is an "intellectual game," cross-platform arbitrage is "manual labor": tedious, mechanical, but almost risk-free.
Its principle is simple enough for a child to understand: the same event sells for $45 in Store A and $48 in Store B. You buy both sides to hedge, profiting from the差价 regardless of the outcome.
From April 2024 to April 2025, academic research recorded a number: arbitrageurs extracted over $40 million in "risk-free profits" from Polymarket. The top three wallets alone made $4.2 million.
A real案例: On a certain day in 2025, for the question "Will Bitcoin break $95,000 within one hour?", the YES price was $0.45 on Polymarket, while the NO price for the same event on competitor Kalshi was $0.48.
A smart trader bought both sides simultaneously for a total cost of $0.93. Whether Bitcoin rose or not, he would get back $1, a 7.5% risk-free return, realized in one hour.
But there is a "critical detail": the definition of the "same event" may differ between platforms.
During the 2024 U.S. government shutdown event, a group of arbitrageurs found that Polymarket resolved "shutdown occurred" (YES), while Kalshi resolved "shutdown did not occur" (NO).
Their supposedly guaranteed hedged positions lost money on both sides.
Reason? Polymarket's settlement standard was "OPM announces shutdown," while Kalshi required "actual shutdown lasting over 24 hours."
Arbitrage isn't just picking up money blindly. Behind every cent of price difference lies the detail of settlement rules.
Replicability Assessment: This is the lowest barrier to entry among the six strategies. All you need is accounts on multiple platforms, some starting capital, and the patience to compare spreads. There are even open-source arbitrage bot codes on GitHub. However, as institutional capital floods in, the arbitrage window is visibly narrowing.
3. High-Probability Bond Strategy: Turning "Almost Certain" into a Business with 1800% Annualized Returns
Most people come to Polymarket for the thrill: betting on dark horses, predicting upsets.
But the real "smart money" does the exact opposite: they专门 buy things that are "already in the bag."
Data shows that over 90% of large orders exceeding $10,000 on Polymarket occur at prices above $0.95. What are these "whales" doing? They are "Bonding," buying almost certain events like bonds.
An example: Three days before the December 2025 Fed meeting, the YES contract for "a 25 basis point rate cut" was at $0.95. Economic data was clear, Fed officials' speeches heavily hinted—no room for surprise. You spend $0.95 to buy, get back $1 upon settlement three days later, a 5.2% return in 72 hours.
5% doesn't sound like much? Do the math: if you can find two such opportunities per week, that's 52 weeks × 2 times × 5% = 520% simple return per year. Considering compounding, annualized returns easily exceed 1800%. And the risk you take is接近 zero.
Some traders, using this strategy, make only a few trades per week and earn over $150,000 annually.
Of course, "almost certain" is not "absolutely certain."
The biggest enemy of the bond strategy is the black swan, those 0.01% probability surprises. One mistake can wipe out the profits of dozens of successes. So the core skill of top bond players is not finding opportunities, but identifying "false certainty": things that look like sure bets but hide risks.
Replicability Assessment: This is the most suitable strategy for beginners. It requires no deep research, no speed advantage, just patience and discipline. But its profit ceiling is also the lowest. When your capital reaches a certain size, there simply aren't enough 95%+ opportunities in the market for you to "harvest."
4. Liquidity Provider (LP) Strategy: Just Earning "Toll Fees"? Not That Simple
Why does the casino always win? Because it doesn't bet against you; it just takes a cut.
On Polymarket, some people choose to "be the casino" rather than "be the gambler"—they are Liquidity Providers (LPs).
The LP's job: place both buy and sell orders on the order book, earning the spread in between. For example, you place a buy order at $0.49 and a sell order at $0.51. No matter who trades, you earn the $0.02 difference. You don't care about the event outcome, only if someone trades.
Polymarket sees new markets every day. New markets are characterized by: poor liquidity, wide spreads, many retail traders. For LPs, this is heaven. Data shows that providing liquidity in new markets can yield annualized equivalent returns of 80%-200%.
A trader named @defiance_cr was interviewed by Polymarket官方, detailing how he built an automated market-making system. At its peak, this system generated $700-800 in profit daily.
He started with $10,000 capital, initially earning about $200 per day. As the system optimized and capital grew, profits increased to $700-800 daily. The core was utilizing Polymarket's liquidity reward program, where placing orders on both sides of the market could yield nearly 3x the rewards.
His system consisted of two core modules: a data collection module pulling historical prices from the Polymarket API, calculating volatility indicators, estimating expected returns per $100 invested, and sorting by risk-adjusted returns; a trade execution module automatically placing orders based on preset parameters—narrow spreads for liquid markets, wide spreads for volatile markets.
But after the election, Polymarket's liquidity rewards significantly decreased.
The LP strategy remained viable in late 2025, but with lower returns and increased competition. The cost of high-frequency trading infrastructure is higher than an average employee's salary. High-end VPS infrastructure needs to be hosted near Polymarket's servers. Quant algorithms are optimized for fast execution.
So don't envy "those traders making $200,000 a month确实存在. They are the top 0.5%."
This combination of "market making + prediction" is the standard for high-level players.
Replicability Assessment: The LP strategy requires a deep understanding of market microstructure, including order book dynamics, spread management, inventory risk control, etc. It's not as mechanical as arbitrage, nor does it require unique insight like information arbitrage, but sits between, requiring skill, but skill that can be learned.
5. Niche Specialization Strategy: The 10,000-Hour Rule in Prediction Markets
An interesting phenomenon on the Polymarket leaderboard: the most profitable people are almost all "specialists." They are not generalists who know a little about everything, but experts with a碾压级 advantage in a narrow field.
Look at some real cases:
Sports Market Dominator HyperLiquid0xb: Total profits over $1.4 million, single largest gain of $755,000 from predicting a baseball game. His familiarity with MLB data rivals that of professional analysts, allowing him to quickly adjust judgments mid-game based on pitcher rotations, weather changes.
Mention Market Wizard Axios: Maintains a terrifying 96% win rate in markets like "Will Trump say 'crypto' in his speech?". His method is simple but extremely time-consuming: analyze all past public speeches of the target person,统计 the frequency and context of specific words, build a prediction model. While others are "gambling," he is "calculating."
These cases share a common point: expert traders may only engage in 10-30 trades per year, but each has extremely high confidence and profit potential.
So specialization is more profitable than breadth.
Of course, I also saw a sports expert, SeriouslySirius, lose $440,000 on a single World Series bet, followed by losses in a series of events.
Replicability Assessment: This is the strategy requiring the most time investment, but also the one with the highest barriers. Once you build an information advantage in a field, it's hard to replicate.建议 choosing an area where you already have knowledge or professional experience.
6. Speed Trading Strategy: Beating the World to the Punch
One Wednesday afternoon in 2024 at 2 PM, Fed Chair Powell began speaking. Within 8 seconds of him saying "we will adjust policy at the appropriate time," the price of the "Fed December rate cut" contract on Polymarket jumped from $0.65 to $0.78.
What happened in those 8 seconds? A small group of "speed traders," monitoring the live feed with preset triggers, placed their orders before the average person could even "understand" what Powell said.
Trading legend GCR once said the core of speed trading is "reaction." It exploits the time window between information generation and its digestion by the market, usually only a few seconds to minutes.
This strategy is particularly effective in "Mention markets." For example, "Will Biden mention China in his speech today?" If you can know the answer 30 seconds faster than others (by monitoring the White House live stream instead of waiting for news alerts), you can build a position before the price moves.
Some quant teams have industrialized this strategy. According to on-chain data analysis, between 2024-2025, top algorithmic traders executed over 10,200 speed trades, generating累计 $4.2 million in profits. Their tools include: low-latency API access, real-time news monitoring systems, preset decision rule scripts, and capital distributed across multiple platforms.
But speed trading is becoming increasingly difficult. As more institutional capital enters, the arbitrage window has compressed from "minutes" to "seconds," making it almost impossible for retail to participate. It's an arms race, and散户 tools are far inferior to institutions.
Replicability Assessment: Unless you have a technical background and time to invest in developing a trading system, it's not recommended. The alpha in speed trading is disappearing fast, leaving little room for retail. If you must try, start practicing in low-competition niche markets (like local elections, niche sports).
IV. Risk Management and Strategy Portfolio
4.1 Position Management Principles
Successful traders generally follow these position management principles:
Hold 5-12 uncorrelated positions simultaneously; Mix short-term (days) and long-term (weeks/months) holdings;
Keep 20-40% of capital as reserve for new opportunities;
Single trade risk exposure not exceeding 5-10% of total capital.
Over-diversification (30+ positions) dilutes returns, while over-concentration (1-2 positions) is too risky.
The optimal number of positions is usually between 6-10.
4.2 Strategy Portfolio Suggestions
Strategy allocation suggestions based on risk appetite are as follows.
- Conservative Investors: 70% Bond Strategy + 20% Liquidity Providing + 10% Copy Trading.
- Balanced Investors: 40% Niche Specialization + 30% Arbitrage + 20% Bonds + 10% Event-Driven.
- Aggressive Investors: 50% Information Arbitrage + 30% Niche Specialization + 20% Speed Trading.
Regardless of the combination, avoid allocating over 40% of capital to a single event or a group of highly correlated events.
V. Conclusion
2025 was a pivotal year for Polymarket's transition from fringe experiment to mainstream finance.
The six盈利 strategies reviewed here—information arbitrage, cross-platform arbitrage, high-probability bonds, liquidity providing, niche specialization, and speed trading—represent proven sources of alpha in prediction markets.
In 2026, prediction markets will face fiercer competition and higher专业化门槛.
It is recommended that newcomers focus on: (1) Choosing a vertical field where they can build an information advantage; (2) Starting with small-scale bond strategies to accumulate experience; (3) Using tools like PolyTrack to跟踪和学习头部交易者的模式; (4) Maintaining close attention to regulatory changes and platform rule updates.
The essence of prediction markets is a "truth discovery mechanism powered by monetary votes."
In this market, the true edge comes not from luck, but from better information, more rigorous analysis, and more rational risk management. May this review provide you with a systematic map for navigating this new world.
References
[1] Chainalysis. "Polymarket Whale Analysis Report." November 2024.
[2] The Free Press. "How a French Whale Made $85 Million off Trump's Win." November 2024.
[3] Polymarket Analytics. "Trader Leaderboard and Performance Metrics." December 2025.
[4] PolyTrack. "Best Polymarket Traders to Follow 2025." November 2025.
[5] Dune Analytics. "Prediction Market Volume and Open Interest Data." September 2025.
[6] Wall Street Journal. "The French Trader Who Bet Big on Trump." November 2024.
[7] Bloomberg. "Trump Whale's Polymarket Haul Boosted to $85 Million." November 2024.
[8] CBS News 60 Minutes. "How a French 'whale' made over $80 million on Polymarket." December 2025.
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