Nobel Peace Prize Organizers Probing Potential Polymarket Insider Trades

The organizers of the Nobel Peace Prize are investigating whether insiders used privileged information about this year’s winner to profit on crypto prediction market Polymarket, according to local reports.

Roughly 11 hours before the closely watched award was given to Venezuelan resistance leader Maria Corina Machado this morning, the odds of her victory surged from near-zero to over 70% on Polymarket. 

The market on this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner has accumulated over $21.4 million in trading volume since opening in July. For nearly all of that time, the odds of Machado receiving the coveted prize have hovered around a 1% or 2% likelihood. 

Then, Thursday night, shortly before 1:00 am Norway time, the Venezualan’s odds of winning surged to over 43%. By 2:00 am, they hit 73%.

The identity of the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize—one of the most coveted awards in the world—is typically kept tightly under wraps. Even Machado herself did not find out she had won the award until minutes before the news was announced publicly in Oslo at 11:00 am this morning. 

The five-member committee tasked with selecting the award’s winner did not even come to a decision until this week, according to local reports.

But somehow, Polymarket traders appeared clued-in to their decision ahead of today’s flashy announcement.

The action appears to have kicked off at roughly 12:45 am Norway time this morning, when a trader on the site began betting thousands of dollars on the likelihood of Machado’s victory. Over the next several hours, they continued to buy and sell thousands of dollars worth of Machado positions, until they eventually redeemed $80,000 when the market resolved. 

Their account was created within the last 10 days, according to the Polymarket site. 

A spokesperson for the Nobel Institute did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment regarding what would happen if someone within or connected to the prize committee is found to have used insider information about the award to make a profit.

But while such activity may be looked down upon within such secretive organizations, it is widely considered a good thing in the world of prediction markets. The ultimate goal of prediction markets tends to be accurate information, not fairness, and Polymarket users were ultimately clued into this morning’s breaking news the night before. 

Polymarket’s terms of service, meanwhile, do not appear to restrict users’ use of insider or privileged information while making wagers. A representative for the company did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment on this story.