A pseudonymous Polymarket account that the New York Times singled out on 6 November for large, well-timed bets before two Times/Siena Senate polls looks more like a crypto whale with a record of big speculative bets than a trader with an early copy of the polls, according to an onchain analysis published by The Block on 8 November at 23:07 UTC. The Times story, which raised the Polymarket insider trading question without answering it, says the account staked $191,277 on Nebraska and $622,608 on Michigan; Startup Fortune puts its combined profit at roughly $257,000.
Nobody has shown who is behind the account, and no source accuses a named person. What exists is a disagreement. On one side sit the Vanderbilt University researchers who flagged the trades and the Times, which reported them. On the other sit The Block’s trace of the wallets, which links the trader to a long record of large bets, and two economists who think the simplest explanation is no foul play. The Block itself says its data does not completely rule out advance knowledge.
Polymarket said it had spotted the trades and is investigating, Cointelegraph reported on 7 November. Kalshi, where the same trader may also have bet, declined to comment to the Times and did not answer The Block. Late in October Polymarket had already said it looked into dozens of suspicious midterm bets and sent at least two cases to the CFTC. This time there is an account, a wallet trail and dollar figures.
What the Times and the Vanderbilt researchers flagged
The Times article, as reported by The Block, Cointelegraph and Startup Fortune, rests on two Senate polls the paper ran with Siena. In Nebraska, a Polymarket user put $191,277 on the re-election of Pete Ricketts, the state’s Republican senator, mostly in the early hours of 31 October. The poll came out at 5:05 a.m. Eastern (09:05 UTC) that day, about an hour later, and showed Ricketts ahead by 6 points. Profit: more than $77,000.
In Michigan, the same user bet $622,608 on a Democratic win, placing the bets while the Times/Siena polling was still underway, a point the Times itself acknowledged. The poll, published at about 7:53 p.m. Eastern on 1 November (00:53 UTC on 2 November), showed Democrat Abdul El-Sayed ahead by 11 points. That position made more than $180,000. Cointelegraph rounded the Nebraska stake to almost $200,000.
The researchers found similar large, profitable trades on Kalshi. 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.” Cointelegraph and The Block both carry the line; Goldstein told The Block he would not be able to comment. The Times itself said it was unclear whether the trader had inside information.
Spokespeople for the Times and the Siena Research Institute told the paper they took the allegations seriously, according to The Block. The Times bars employees from using unpublished coverage to invest, and ReconMR, the polling firm, said its staff sign non-disclosure agreements that forbid any use of unpublished data.
One account, two days, $813,885 in Senate bets
The Block matched the account to the Polymarket name dubdubdub2, a public pseudonym. Its timestamps change the Michigan picture. On 31 October the account bought $349,135 of “Yes” on a Democratic win at 3:27 a.m. Eastern and $273,473 of “No” on the Republican side at 5:20 a.m. Together they make exactly the $622,608 the Times reported. Both trades came on 31 October, about 40 hours before the Michigan poll was published, not in the hour before it.
The size still stands out. Across the 16 Senate races The Block has tracked since mid-September, that 31 October total was the largest any single account put down in one day, nearly three times the next one.
Then there is the market the polls moved most. On 1 November, Kansas odds jumped from about 52.5% to 60.5% within half an hour of the Times/Siena release. The trader did not bet on Kansas at all, although an early look at the polls would have paid most there.
| Trade or flow (Eastern time) | Amount | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Polymarket, Nebraska, Ricketts, early 31 Oct | $191,277 | Times, via The Block |
| Polymarket, Michigan Democratic “Yes”, 3:27 a.m. 31 Oct | $349,135 | The Block |
| Polymarket, Michigan Republican “No”, 5:20 a.m. 31 Oct | $273,473 | The Block |
| Kalshi, Nebraska, Ricketts at 66 cents, 30 Oct | about $159,000 | The Block |
| Kalshi, Nebraska, against Osborn at 67 cents, 30 Oct | about $169,000 | The Block |
| Kalshi, Nebraska, about 5:15 a.m. 31 Oct | about $153,000 | The Block (attribution unclear) |
| Withdrawal from Hyperliquid, 5:29 p.m. 30 Oct | $2.2 million | The Block |
| Sent to Zero Hash-labelled wallets through 31 Oct | about $1.39 million | The Block |
Kalshi buys followed deposits within a minute
Kalshi does not publish who trades, so The Block worked from the deposit side. Kalshi lists Zero Hash as one of its deposit providers. On 30 October, deposits from wallets labelled as Zero Hash were followed by large Nebraska buys on Kalshi: about $159,000 on Ricketts at 66 cents, 31 seconds after one deposit, and about $169,000 against the independent candidate Dan Osborn at 67 cents, about 91 seconds after another.
A third trade is harder to pin on the same person. At about 5:15 a.m. on 31 October, roughly ten minutes after the poll, Kalshi recorded about $153,000 of buys backing Ricketts and against Osborn, some 50 minutes after a $250,000 deposit. The Block says the trader may have made more on Kalshi than the roughly $258,000 earned on Polymarket Senate positions; Kalshi did not answer its questions.
According to The Block, the betting wallet is 0x54b2055e71eb986a9c66d57a3d7d124d1bd8af8a; the outlet links it on Etherscan along with the Zero Hash-labelled deposit wallets.
Where the money came from: Hyperliquid, Zero Hash and a long betting record
The funding trail starts on Hyperliquid. At 5:29 p.m. Eastern on 30 October (21:29 UTC), the betting wallet withdrew its remaining $2.2 million from the derivatives exchange, then sent about $1.39 million to Zero Hash through 31 October. The Block found no earlier Zero Hash transfers from the trader’s known wallets. In the 26 hours before the election bets, the same wallet had lost about $783,000 trading on Hyperliquid.
The history goes back about two years. The account bet about $1.05 million on Zohran Mamdani in the 2025 New York City mayoral race and about $102,000 against Andrew Cuomo. It put about $131,000 against the San Francisco 49ers winning the 2026 Super Bowl. It held all three positions until the markets resolved. The Block found no bets placed just before mayoral polls.
Other habits fit a heavy, round-the-clock trader. The account’s busiest hour over those two years was 3 a.m. Eastern, the same hour as the first Michigan buy. Linked wallets farmed yield on Aave and Pendle and have withdrawn more than $13 million in stablecoins from Kraken since October 2025. A linked Solana wallet traded memecoins, including the official TRUMP token on its launch weekend. In the Senate markets the trader kept the positions until Election Day instead of selling once the polls had moved prices.
One claim in the Times story does not match the chain, according to The Block. The Times said a wallet tied to the trader bought nearly one-third of the tokens sold in World Liberty Financial’s October 2024 sale. The Block puts that wallet’s share at about 6% of the roughly 970 million tokens sold that month, or about 9% of first-day sales, and says it asked the Times about the gap. World Liberty Financial declined to comment.
Two economists read the trades as directional bets
Rajiv Sethi, an economist at Barnard College, told The Block: “I think these were just directional bets.” He allowed that the trader may have had non-public information, such as privately commissioned surveys, but said: “I don’t think the Times/Siena polls were the information source.” Kalshi checks its users’ identities, and Sethi read the use of Kalshi as a sign the trader was “not too concerned with concealing their identity”.
Vincent Grégoire of HEC Montréal said the record was “consistent with a wealthy individual (or small trading firm) who likes to take large bets on various platforms”. “To me, the simplest explanation is that there’s no foul play,” he told The Block. He also said: “It’s almost impossible to tell from the data; you have to know who was trading and on what information.” In his view it is reasonable for the Times, Siena and the platforms to check whether their processes were compromised.
Why the Polymarket insider trading question stays open
The onchain analysis is explicit about its limit. The Block writes that the late Nebraska buys do not completely rule out advance knowledge of the poll, and onchain records say nothing about who held the wallet or what they knew. Polymarket trades leave a public trail, which is what allowed the reconstruction. Kalshi trades do not, which is why the Kalshi part rests on timing between deposits and buys.
Several facts are still missing as of 9 November. The trader’s identity is unknown, and so is whether it is one person or a firm. Nobody has said whether anyone outside the Times saw the results early, though the poll data also passes through Siena and ReconMR staff. Polymarket has not said what its investigation found. Kalshi has said nothing. Startup Fortune reported on 7 November that neither the CFTC nor the Times had said whether it was reviewing the trades, and no statement from the CFTC or the Justice Department had been published by the morning of 9 November.
There are precedents for cases reaching the authorities, The Block notes: in April the Justice Department charged Army soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke over Polymarket trades tied to the operation that captured Nicolás Maduro, and in August a former White House teleprompter operator agreed to pay $172,000 to settle CFTC charges over Kalshi “mention markets”. Kalshi has flagged more than 400 suspicious trades since the start of 2026, more than twice the number it investigated in all of 2025, Startup Fortune reported. The case also lands after Senators Elizabeth Warren and John Curtis gave both platforms until election day, 3 November, to count their insider-trading cases, and no answer has been published.
For readers new to these markets, a contract pays $1 if an event happens and nothing if it does not, so a price of 66 cents reads as a 66% chance. Our guide to how prediction markets work, from Polymarket to Kalshi, explains how they are regulated, and our page on Kalshi and its fights with the states covers the CFTC-regulated side.
What comes next: Polymarket’s findings and the regulators
The next fact to watch is the outcome of Polymarket’s own review, and whether it passes this account to the CFTC as it did with the two cases it reported in October. The Block has also asked the Times to explain its World Liberty Financial figure, and had no answer when it published. No regulator has said it is looking at the Nebraska and Michigan trades.