kotijam

Polymarket whale trades, decoded. Data, terminals, no hype

[kotijam @kotijam]

Most Polymarket traders pick the right side.

They still lose.

I read three studies covering 2.5M wallets. The crowd was right more often than the bots. The bots took the money anyway.

Here's why: https://t.co/02hBsxLwgB

[kotijam @kotijam]

@CryptoMavka best 10 minutes of the night. did you catch where the draw traded during 1-1? curious how high it went

[kotijam @kotijam]

spurs were 78% at 1-0 with worse xG. coventry equalised on 49 and for 10 minutes that 16% draw looked like free money

then 59', then 90'. 3-1

78% ended up right. the ride there was anything but 78%

[Crypto Mavka @CryptoMavka]

SPURS LEAD 1-0.
COVENTRY HAD THE BETTER CHANCES.

Tottenham vs Coventry on @bagel_win right now:
Spurs 78%.
Draw 16%.
Coventry 7%.
$1.6M traded.

Maddison scored in the 14th minute from a Kudus pass. The price jumped on the goal and has barely moved since.

In the first 30 minutes Spurs had 70% of the ball.
Shots were 3 and 3.
xG was 0.18 for Spurs, 0.40 for Coventry.

Spurs needed a late goal with 10 men just to draw at Old Trafford last time out. Coventry arrive after beating Newcastle. One goal is a thin cushion for a team priced at 78%.

I am watching the draw.

Is Spurs at 78% a fair price, or is 16% on the draw the cheap side?

[kotijam @kotijam]

@imnotmiller_eth makes sense. id love to know how often one leg never fills, bet thats where the -247 day came from. might break this wallet down this week

[kotijam @kotijam]

@CryptoMavka exactly that. tonight's spurs game was the opposite, right call at a price that made you sweat for 10 minutes

[kotijam @kotijam]

84.1% of Polymarket wallets are in the red.

Only 2% have ever made more than $1,000.

The losers aren't dumb. Most of them pay too much for being right.

[kotijam @kotijam]

Most Polymarket traders pick the right side.

They still lose.

I read three studies covering 2.5M wallets. The crowd was right more often than the bots. The bots took the money anyway.

Here's why: https://t.co/02hBsxLwgB

[kotijam @kotijam]

@nofadsec ha fair enough. was the draw still around 14 at 1-1 or did it move a lot

[kotijam @kotijam]

@CryptoMavka @bagel_win same, just watching. 1.6M on a monday league game is wild tho. might do a breakdown of how the price moved after full time

[kotijam @kotijam]

@CryptoMavka @bagel_win exactly. and the market's still pricing it like the game's over. you holding anything or just watching?

[kotijam @kotijam]

@ericmaskfr before you freak out, turn off private wifi address on your phone. half my "unknown" devices were literally just my iphone lol

[kotijam @kotijam]

@imnotmiller_eth Only works as a maker: taker fees near 50¢ would eat the few-cent edge. The −63% row is what happens when one leg fills without the other

[kotijam @kotijam]

How one trader turned a Polymarket bet into roughly $85M

In October 2024, an anonymous French trader known only as "Théo" started buying "Yes" on Donald Trump winning the US presidential election on Polymarket. He described himself as a former bank trader who had lived in the US, and said he had no political agenda: "my intent is just making money."

The position
In early October his accounts held about $6.4M. By the first days of November he had around $30M on pro-Trump outcomes: the presidency, the popular vote, and swing states like Pennsylvania.

The execution
He never placed one big order. The bets were split across several accounts: Fredi9999, Theo4, PrincessCaro and Michie. Theo4 alone made more than 450 bets in about 10 hours, ranging from $5 to tens of thousands of dollars. The goal was simple: keep the price from running away while he kept buying.

The edge
Théo believed the polls were missing Trump voters, as they had in 2016 and 2020. So he commissioned his own surveys from YouGov in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Besides the usual "who will you vote for", he asked a second question: "who are your neighbors voting for?" The idea was to get around voters who would not admit their choice. He called the results "mind-blowing" in Trump's favor.

The market vs. his model
Polymarket had Trump at about 58% on October 15 and about 63% on October 28. Théo put his chances at around 90%, and the popular vote at around 65%.

The result
Trump won the presidency, flipped Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and won the popular vote, the first Republican to do so since 2004. Early estimates put Théo's profit near $48M. Later analysis revised it to roughly $85M, and Bloomberg linked as many as 8 accounts to him.

The takeaway
Prediction markets pay for information nobody else has. Théo did not have a better gut feeling. He paid for better data, then hid his size while he built the position.

His main account: https://t.co/rqzmyMGM9A

The video is a reconstruction based on public reporting (WSJ, Bloomberg, CBS). Figures are from those reports, the price chart is illustrative.

[kotijam @kotijam]

@polyfees I think it will be preserved with this person

[kotijam @kotijam]

$835.7K traded. $17.0K made. That's 2¢ per dollar.

I looked at one Polymarket account: 6,531 markets, and the biggest win is just $4,373 (about a quarter of all P/L).

What's inside:
• 14 of the top 20 open positions were bought at 97¢+
• Earnings-call words, daily stock closes, Trump and MrBeast mentions
• A typical entry at 98.8¢ pays +1.2¢ if right and −98.8¢ if wrong

The math: 82 wins to cancel 1 loss. Break-even win rate at that price is 98.8%.

Win rate isn't the story. Payoff shape is.

30s simulated replay of exactly that math (not this account's real trades) 👇

[kotijam @kotijam]

@sanekbob the clip is ancient workers hauling a giant hammer and sickle and i'm 9 seconds in and not scrolling. ok i get the retention thing😁

[kotijam @kotijam]

@EagleVisions Tiebreak or 7:5 is the right framing. With two big serves, one break usually decides the set, so set 1 matters more than the match line