On February 27, more than 150 accounts placed bets on Polymarket accurately predicting that the US would strike Iran by the following day. Of these accounts, at least 16 made a profit of over $100,000, and at least 109 made over $10,000. The New York Times found one anonymous account that had spent $60,000 in the days before the strikes and made nearly half a million dollars.

Given the timing of these bets, this has raised concerns about insider trading. Bubblemaps, an analytics platform that turns blockchain data into interactive visuals, found a cluster of linked accounts that made $1.2 million by making very specific bets with near-perfect accuracy. This includes betting that the US and Israel would attack Iran on February 28.

What’s more, their analysis found that this was not an isolated incident. For instance, in June 2025, two of these accounts bet $10,000 and $100,000 that Israel would launch military strikes against Iran just days before they did. Those strikes were part of a surprise attack that Israel had been covertly planning for months.

This is a serious issue, but let’s be clear: The idea that this kind of insider trading is not happening under the most overtly corrupt presidential administration in US history is quite frankly laughable. Indeed, the Trump administration is actively supporting Polymarket and Kalshi against ongoing efforts by states to ban them. Coincidentally, Donald Trump Jr. has invested in Polymarket through his venture capital firm and is a strategic advisor for Kalshi. Any decision that benefits those companies would likewise benefit Trump’s family.

An outright ban won’t change the fact that we are a nation where millions of people believe it is completely fine to gamble on death.

But the problem here is larger than the Trump fraud network. Prediction markets represent a further commodification of war, violence, and death—one that distracts from the injustices of war and the suffering of its victims. It is a commodification that risks manufacturing consent for more violence by providing people with a financial incentive for it. While it stopped amid public backlash, Polymarket was allowing people to place bets on whether a nuclear bomb would be detonated by the end of 2026 or 2027. Over $800,000 worth of bets had been placed before the market was taken down.

Betting on such grotesque violence is not only morally repugnant in itself, it risks desensitizing us to the true human cost of that destruction. What’s happening in Iran is not a just war being waged against a legitimate threat. America is not freeing the Iranian people—it is murdering children and destroying a nation without any regard for who will pick up the pieces. This is senseless carnage carried out by two morally bankrupt countries against a nation that, regardless of one’s feeling toward it, did everything it could to prevent this war.

None of these deaths had to happen. And yet,........

© Common Dreams