So… can you insider-trade on an investigation about insider trading?

Sounds like a meme. Turns out, it’s real life.

Something big happened this week on Polymarket, a prediction market. A guy named ZachXBT, who's really good at digging up information on the blockchain, made a shocking discovery. He found out that some employees of a crypto platform called Axiom were allegedly trading with secret information that wasn't available to the public. But here's the interesting part: a few wallets somehow knew that Axiom was going to be named in the report before it was even released. It's like they had inside information or something. This whole thing is pretty wild and has people talking.

Yeah. Let that sink in.

The $1M “Lucky Guess”

People were really interested in a bet on Polymarket about which company ZachXBT would criticise next. In just a few days, the amount of money bet on this reached around $40 million, which is a huge amount of money.

Then things got weird.

A bunch of investors, at least 12, jumped into "Yes" on Axiom just before it was made public. And it paid off big time - their combined profit was over $1 million. One investor in particular made a killing, buying up almost half a million shares at an average price of $0.14. Now, they're sitting on a gain of around $411,000. That's a return of about 7 times their initial investment, which is pretty impressive considering it seemed like a last-minute gamble.

It might just be a coincidence, but the way they were grouped suggests otherwise. The crowd was big, but this was a small, tight knot of people - they looked like they were working together, somehow.

Reading the Room… or Reading the Leak?

Here’s the timeline.

For most of the week, Meteora was the one that people thought would win. The chances of Axiom winning were not as high, but that changed on Wednesday. All of a sudden, people started thinking Axiom could actually win, and its chances of winning went up a lot. Then, on Thursday morning, ZachXBT released his report, and that's when things really started to happen.

He eventually came clean about reaching out to Axiom beforehand. Interviews took place and people were aware that the story was on its way. To be honest, when several insiders are privy to sensitive information, it's almost a given that leaks will happen.

It's tough to figure out who made those bets on Polymarket because it's an offshore platform that doesn't ask for identification. This means that tracing the people behind the bets is a real challenge. To get to the bottom of it, you would need the exchange to cooperate, but let's be honest, that's not going to be easy.

Axiom has expressed shock and disappointment, and they're now looking into what happened. So far, there's no information on whether any of their employees were involved with the Polymarket market.

The Irony Hits Hard

Here’s the part that stings.

Prediction markets are built to aggregate information. They’re supposed to reflect truth before headlines confirm it. And strangely, the system worked. The odds shifted toward Axiom before the report went public.

But who moved the market?

That’s the real question.

If insiders placed those bets - directly or through friends - then the market didn’t reward sharp analysts. It rewarded the subjects of the investigation. That’s some next-level meta irony.

Bigger Picture: What This Means for Crypto

Zoom out for a second.

Crypto runs on transparency. Everything’s on-chain. Yet identity can stay hidden. That tension - open data, anonymous actors - creates situations like this. We can see the wallets. We can see the profits. We can’t see the people.

And that’s where it gets messy.

For young traders and crypto natives, this is a reminder: markets don’t just price information - they price access to information. If someone knows more, earlier, they win. Simple as that.

The question isn’t whether prediction markets work.

It all comes down to whether they can make it when they don't have the upper hand - it's all about having access to the things they need.

This story is like a perfect example of the crypto world - it's open, it makes money, it's a bit wild, and it always seems to stay one step ahead of the rules.

Stay sharp.

Polymarket bettors appear to have insider-traded

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