<\/p>\n
Gamblers appear to have made large profits after successfully betting on the capture of Venezuela\u2019s president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ahead of Donald Trump\u2019s shock announcement on Saturday morning, traders seemed to have anticipated Maduro\u2019s political demise by placing timely wagers on so-called \u201cprediction markets\u201d.<\/p>\n Prediction markets are online gambling platforms that allow individuals to bet against each other on a range of markets<\/a> that have been created by the host website.<\/p>\n They are typically binary bets \u2013 for example, punting on yes\/no or higher\/lower outcomes \u2013 with the markets ranging from the identity of the next Republican US presidential nominee (JD Vance\/Marco Rubio) to wagers on whether the S&P 500 index will rise or fall on a particular trading day on Wall Street.<\/p>\n Last Friday, an apparent new trader on Polymarket.com seemed to invest $30,000 on the market: Maduro out by January 31, 2026?<\/a>. After Maduro\u2019s capture was announced on Saturday morning, that same investor seemed to have made profits of $436,759.61.<\/p>\n That windfall \u2013 as well as corresponding losses to punters on the other side of the bet \u2013 was realised in a matter of hours.<\/p>\n Data on the same market published on the Polymarket site suggests that, at 3pm (GMT) on 2 January, there was a 5.5% implied chance of Maduro no longer being the president of Venezuela by the end of the month. The chance had risen to 11% by 6am on 3 January, 28.5% at 6.30am and 56.5% by 7.30am. By 9.30am the market was trading at almost 99%.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a related Polymarket wager \u2013 Maduro in US custody by January 31?<\/a> \u2013 also seems to have had attracted two prescient trades, matched at prices of 0.22 and 0.11 (implying a 22% and 11% chance) early on Saturday before jumping to above 0.99.<\/p>\n Prediction markets have started to gain popularity in the US, with the volume of bets growing from under $100m in early 2024 to over $13bn, according to a report from the crypto firms Dune and Keyrock<\/a>. The US president\u2019s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, has taken advisory roles at the two best-known companies, Kalshi and Polymarket.<\/p>\n However, they are not a new development. Almost 26 years ago, a website called Flutter.com was launched in the UK<\/a> by a trio of American entrepreneurs. It allowed low-stakes bets between individual punters, although the concept did not take off in the UK and the company was swiftly taken over by the betting exchange Betfair<\/a>.<\/p>\n Polymarket has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #traders #big #profits #betting #Maduros #capture #January #Gambling<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gamblers appear to have made l… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9564"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}