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Big Polymarket Senate bets placed before Times/Siena polls draw insider questions, but onchain data points to a crypto whale
Summary
Vanderbilt University researchers flagged large, profitable Polymarket bets on the Nebraska and Michigan Senate races placed shortly before New York Times/Siena polls were released, according to a Friday New York Times report cited by Cointelegraph and The Block.
The user bet almost $200,000 on Oct. 31 that Sen. Pete Ricketts would win re-election about an hour before a poll showing him ahead, winning more than $77,000, and also made large bets on Kalshi, Cointelegraph reported; the Times said it was unclear whether the trader had inside information.
The Block's own review of onchain and trading data matched the bets to a Polymarket account called dubdubdub2 and found a long history of large bets held to settlement and heavy DeFi activity, plus possible Kalshi bets placed about 10 minutes after the Nebraska poll was published.
Two experts who reviewed The Block's findings said foul play can't be ruled out but that a crypto whale making large directional bets fits the evidence better. Polymarket said it spotted the trades and is investigating; Kalshi declined to comment to the Times.
Key facts
- Cointelegraph, citing the NYT: Vanderbilt researchers said a Polymarket user bet almost $200,000 on Oct. 31 that Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts would be re-elected; an hour later a Times/Siena poll showed Ricketts leading, and the user won more than $77,000.
- Cointelegraph: Brett Goldstein of the Vanderbilt Institute of National Security said, “There’s a series of circumstances here that it’s hard to write it off as a random occurrence,” and that it “requires further investigation.”
- The Block, citing the NYT: the same user bet $622,608 on a Democratic win in Michigan's Senate race, where a Times poll published Nov. 1 showed Abdul El-Sayed ahead by 11 points, and made more than $180,000 when he won.
- The Block: its analysis matched the bets to Polymarket account dubdubdub2, whose Michigan purchases were the largest daily total by one account in any of the 16 Senate races it analyzed back to mid-September; the trader held all positions through Election Day.
- The Block: Kalshi records show about $153,000 in purchases backing Ricketts about 10 minutes after the Oct. 31 poll was published, which The Block tentatively ties to the trader via deposits through Zero Hash, though it says those trades are harder to attribute.
- The Block: the account earlier bet about $1.05 million on Zohran Mamdani winning the 2025 NYC mayoral race and held it to resolution; linked wallets lost about $783,000 on Hyperliquid in the 26 hours before the election bets.
- The Block: Barnard professor Rajiv Sethi said, “I think these were just directional bets,” and HEC Montréal professor Vincent Grégoire said, “To me, the simplest explanation is that there's no foul play.”
- Outlets differ on one detail: the Times said the wallet's WLFI purchase was nearly one-third of tokens sold in October 2024, while The Block's onchain review put it at about 6% of that month's sales (about 9% of first-day sales).
- Both outlets: Polymarket said it spotted the trades and is investigating; Kalshi declined to comment to the Times.