Manipuhator

Self-appointed prediction markets regulator

[Gravia @graviahq]

https://t.co/wUIUI24bkJ

[Variance Lover @variance_lover]

I wasn't planning on sharing this publicly, but after seeing the recent coverage, it feels worth documenting.

Thanks to a recent Stanford study, @Bloomberg and other mainstream media outlets are finally paying attention to the widespread manipulation happening on Polymarket.

To many of us on Polymarket, this has been obvious for months.

I've been in close communication with the Polymarket team, and I know they're actively working on ways to reduce manipulation such as introducing TWAP settlement.

A big challenge is that there's only so much the team can do when exchanges like @Bitget and @Binance allow traders to execute these strategies with little apparent friction.

Here's one case study that shows how blatant these manipulators have become. Onchain transactions included.

On July 16 at 01:18 UTC a trader withdraws 20000 USDC from Binance

https://t.co/2gLoVkfLww

At 01:20 UTC those funds are deposited into this Polymarket address

https://t.co/ffooddCDPi

Over the next 32 hours, the trader makes 7 suspicious bets, netting over $50k in profits.

Let's take a look at how this trader made over $20k on a single market

Bitcoin Up or Down - July 17, 3:50AM-3:55AM ET

The trader buys 26850.7 Down shares at an average price of 19.9c. And with 10s until the end of the market, he looks set to lose around $5k on his bet.

But with 5 seconds to go until the end of the market, a huge trade of 60 BTC comes in on Binance which causes the price to collapse, netting this trader a $20k profit.

After repeating the same trade a few more times, on July 17 at 08:46 UTC the trader withdraws all of his funds from Polymarket

https://t.co/BoIeqcgRek

And 2 minutes later he withdraws 70867.19 USDC to @Bitget, ready to rotate to a new wallet and repeat the same scheme.

https://t.co/dW0fonrnbc

@Polymarket has acknowledged the manipulation issue and is working on countering it on their side

But I am yet to hear anything from @GracyBitget, @cz_binance on the issue.

So @cz_binance, will market manipulators face any consequences from trading on your platform?

@GracyBitget, what mechanisms do you have in place to prevent illicit funds from flowing onto your exchange?

Happy to work with both teams to put a stop to this practice.

Taking a lazy stance on manipulation only reinforces the public's already skeptical attitude towards crypto. It hurts us all.

Now is the time to work together to build trust in this industry.

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

@GracyBitget are you aware that multiple market manipulators of the polymarket btc 5min up/down markets are moving money through your platform?

if so, are you going to do something about it?

happy to share wallets with you

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

as a matter of fact, you will

[Mustafa Aljadery @mustafap0ly]

@xendcs @ParibuCom won't let you down

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

@0xDinoCrypto market integrity hero

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

Hey @Polymarket and @devjoshstevens here are a bunch of known market manipulators on your platform that have recently made over $250k in profits from manipulating the BTC price.

If you'd like any help to detect and ban these manipulators please reach out.

In the meantime, I hope you haven't forgotten about TWAP settlement which is the strongest tool you have to combat manipulation in the short term.

https://t.co/P2V8ZuPqw5

https://t.co/ceJuGTAa4o

https://t.co/TYryQOqR0I

https://t.co/W5W6a8cUlQ

https://t.co/aii9ZQ0P1f

https://t.co/zhqZbznOxR

[poop scientist @ohiobug981]

Thursday, May 28, 2026

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

@mustafap0ly @HarryDCrane @HarryDCrane be careful, you're dealing with an ML expert over here

https://t.co/a8R7BS8NE2

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

@ohiobug981 what is this?

[Variance Lover @variance_lover]

Open letter to @Polymarket and especially @shayne_coplan:

I've been trading on Polymarket for a long time. I am one of the biggest traders on the entire platform and I interact with it on a daily basis.

And at this point I'm seriously questioning whether the team has simply given up.

I'm not even trying to be dramatic. Wtf is actually going on?

Has everyone made enough money that nobody cares anymore? Is the team completely overwhelmed? Are priorities completely broken? Is there no leadership? Is it incompetence?
Because the current state of the platform is honestly embarrassing.

Every maintenance seems to follow the exact same script:

announce 10 minutes of downtime
start 20 minutes late
stay down for an hour
deploy changes that break multiple existing systems
leave the bugs in production for weeks

And somehow nobody seems concerned.

Example:

~1.5 weeks ago an update broke tick sizes. The matching engine started rejecting orders that matched the correct tick size after a tick size change was published.

This was immediately visible after deployment.

It's still broken.

Nobody seems to care.

Then for the last two days Polymarket's own RTDS feed, the feed used for all crypto markets, has been broken.

The issue was marked "resolved" 10 hours ago.

It still isn't resolved!

Did anyone spend literally 5 seconds checking whether data was actually being published before closing the incident?

Because it sure doesn't feel like it.

Communication is somehow even worse than the bugs.

Half the changes never get announced.

The other half are hidden in random Discord side conversations.

Major trading-impacting changes get silently rolled out with zero documentation.

You ask support.

They say they'll ask the team.

Then you never hear back.

Or you get the same canned response you've already received three times.

The team keeps saying communication will improve.

It never does.

Then there's the rebate and fee situation.

Taker tiers were supposed to launch on May 28.

A week later they still weren't live.

Nobody acknowledged the delay.

The docs still said May 28.

To this day there still hasn't been a single taker rebate payment.

And the official position is apparently that missed rebates won't be back-paid.

How is that acceptable?

How are traders supposed to adjust strategies, thresholds, and risk when nobody knows what fees they are actually paying, what rebates they are actually earning, or how much of the promised rewards the platform simply decides not to distribute?

That isn't transparency and it is clearly destroying trust.

The craziest part is that every update creates fresh opportunities for exploiters.

Just in the last couple weeks we've had:

queue position jump exploits
taker delay bypass exploits
ghost fill exploits
various matching and infrastructure bugs
order spam exploits

Millions of dollars have been extracted from legitimate users through platform failures.

The response?

Increase rate limits.

Seriously.

A huge amount of latency issues today are caused by order spam that is directly incentivized by broken infrastructure and exploitable mechanics.

Fixing the root causes would help.

Instead we get band-aids.

Which raises another question:

Does Polymarket have a testing environment?

Does it have staging?

Can updates be rolled back?

Because from the outside it honestly looks like production is the testing environment.

Every maintenance introduces new failures.

Every maintenance gets partially reverted.

Every maintenance creates more issues than it solves.

This shouldn't be happening at a company valued in the billions.

Meanwhile manipulation that has been repeatedly reported for months continues largely unchecked while manipulators keep extracting money from normal users.

And surprise:

Volume is declining.

Prediction markets as a whole are growing.

Yet Polymarket just posted its second consecutive month of declining volume.

Meanwhile Kalshi has become the clear market leader in many categories and is now outperforming Polymarket by large multiples in areas where Polymarket used to dominate.

Honestly?

It's not hard to see why.

Every serious trader I've spoken to says the same thing:

Kalshi feels stable.

Polymarket feels like you're one deployment away from disaster.

I know multiple people who would happily trade Polymarket full-time if they trusted the platform.

They don't.

Not because of competition.

Because they don't trust Polymarket itself.

My trust in this platform is at an all-time low.

And I genuinely don't understand what is happening internally.

Maybe the response will be that the team is busy with the World Cup or other initiatives.

Fine.

Then stop shipping half-finished features.

Stop deploying untested fixes.

Stop breaking live trading.

Slow down.

Focus on fewer things.

Do them properly.

The most concerning part is that so many decisions feel like they were made by people with no actual trading experience.

The product decisions show it.

The infrastructure decisions show it.

The market structure decisions show it.

Building the future of prediction markets requires understanding how markets actually function.

Right now it often feels like nobody is steering the ship.

I want Polymarket to succeed.

But from the perspective of someone who uses the platform every day, this is bordering on unusable.

@Polymarket
@shayne_coplan

What is going on?

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

@variance_lover @Polymarket @shayne_coplan @ohiobug981 why does this guy not shoutout https://t.co/bYRHkrtTGA ?

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

@ohiobug981 @mustafap0ly @SuhailKakar can you confirm or deny this story?

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

@ohiobug981 Ok but even if you believe in ��pulling mustafas limbs off” look at it as random noise in whatever strategy you're doing. The limbs will end 50/50 on or off so ripping them will be in your favor or not 50% of the time

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

@ohiobug981 only ohio bugs will understand, cc: @mustafap0ly

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

@grok @grok give the cat a hat!

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

@grok give this cat a policeman hat

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

Eye opening research from @mustafap0ly, what a talent!

@devjoshstevens you've got a real gem on your team!

https://t.co/a8R7BS8NE2

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

Polymarket's CLOB feels like a lemonade market that's being run into the ground by poor management.

The customers keep pointing out the same problems: fake-looking lemonade orders, kids gaming the rules, and obvious exploiters running around grabbing free lemonade while nobody stops them.

Every few weeks the manager's solution is another temporary rule instead of fixing the stand.

@mustafap0ly is like the owner of the lemonade stand who customers keep trying to talk to, but from the outside it feels like he's never around to answer questions or explain what's going on.

Danzu (@BrahmaFi) feels like the one employee who actually understands how the lemonade stand works and could probably improve things, but somehow never seems to have the authority to make the big decisions.

Meanwhile, the kids abusing the system have mapped out every blind spot in the stand and are having the time of their lives.

The honest customers are stuck staring at broken signs, wondering why the same issues keep happening.

At some point you stop asking why the lemonade stand is struggling and start asking why the people running it seem unable or unwilling to fix the obvious problems.

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

I got RUGGED $120 by @Polymarket

I was YES on "MicroStrategy sells any Bitcoin by May 31, 2026?"

MicroStrategy sold 32 BTC. Market resolved NO.

#StopPolyScam

[Manipuhator @manipuhator]

@willo2_Poly Doubt the team will do anything about this. Whales are manipulating the crypto markets daily and there has been no action.