Frenchman wins $85 million betting on Donald Trump’s victory

According to several US media outlets, the New York home of the CEO and founder of betting platform Polymarket, Shayne Coplan, was raided on Wednesday by agents of the FBI, the US federal police.

A user of the Polymarket platform made $85 million in profits from a series of bets on Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election on November 5, Chainalysis told AFP on Wednesday. According to Wall Street Journal it is a French national called Théo, a former trader who has refused to reveal his surname publicly.

Last month, Polymarket had confirmed that a French punter had placed considerable sums on the Republican candidate’s election. Specializing in the analysis of cryptocurrency transactions, Chainalysis carried out cross-checks and identified 11 accounts with similar characteristics. They were funded at the same time, placed bets at the same time and emptied simultaneously, according to the data collected and cross-referenced by Chainalysis.

The player wagered a total of some $70 million on the Republican candidate’s victory, ultimately recovering this sum, as well as a further $85 million. Contacted by Wall Street Journalconfirmed that it had indeed made a profit of this amount. When contacted by AFP, Polymarket did not immediately respond.

“Political reprisals

Polymarket is an offshore betting platform launched in 2020, on which you can only bet in cryptocurrency. It is theoretically off-limits to US residents. Like other betting sites, Polymarket gave a marked advantage to Donald Trump before the election, contradicting polls that gave him neck-and-neck with Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. All the accounts identified by Chainalysis as belonging to the same person appear in Polymarket’s top 20 biggest payouts.

According to several US media reports, the New York home of the platform’s CEO and founder, Shayne Coplan, was raided on Wednesday by agents of the FBI, the US federal police. According to the New York Post, the FBI seized the Polymarket CEO’s phone and other electronic devices. The origin and purpose of the investigation remain undetermined. A Polymarket spokesman told the Axios news website that the investigation was “political retaliation by the government (…) for predicting the outcome of the presidential election”..

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