At 2 a.m. local time in Venezuela on Saturday, when President Nicolas Maduro was still asleep during the New Year holiday, a U.S. military special forces raid ended the conflict within one hour and took Maduro onto a transport plane bound for the United States.

This world-shocking "blitzkrieg" appeared to come out of nowhere, but on the leading prediction market platform Polymarket, it seemed to have already become a cash-out tool for several insiders before the action even began.

3 Pentagon Employees "Gambling While Working Overtime"

Hours before this operation began, three new wallets with no historical records on Polymarket suddenly started aggressively betting "Yes" on the extremely low-probability market "Maduro loses power before January 31, 2026."

At that time, the mainstream market view still believed that Trump would adopt a moderate encirclement strategy to pressure Maduro into compromise, and the probability of this outcome ("Yes") was only 5%. However, as Maduro was taken onto the plane, these three mysterious accounts instantly earned over $500,000 in profits.

Only after the fact did people begin to redefine the actions of the three individuals who had purchased shares in the hours before the air raid: only those with reliable intelligence could have executed such a "dimension-reducing strike" within such a precise timeframe, using new accounts.

These three insiders are:

0xa72db1749e9ac2379d49a3c12708325ed17febd4, profit $74,982.34;

0x6baf05d193692bb208d616709e27442c910a94c5, profit $145,619.92;

0x31a56e9e690c621ed21de08cb559e9524cdb8ed9, profit of $409,882.03.

But the news from Polymarket is far more than that.

Maduro "Flight Delay": U.S. Action Was Supposed to Take Place 4 Days Ago

There are two very typical addresses that, although they profited from this activity, actually lost a significant amount of money because they knew the news too early.

Like the three insiders mentioned above, Chiwawas also accurately bet $10,000 three hours before this airstrike and thus earned more than $70,000 in profit.

But in fact, Chiwawas had heavily bet nearly $40,000 on the market that "Maduro will lose power by 2025" as early as the evening of December 26.

Assuming he was an insider, it's likely that he placed a heavy bet only after obtaining accurate information. However, unfortunately, the arrest operation originally scheduled for December 29 was canceled due to weather conditions. Thunderstorms over the Caribbean Sea forced the U.S. military to cancel the operation for tactical safety reasons.

This was also confirmed in Trump's latest statement: "An airstrike against Maduro was scheduled to take place four days ago (i.e., late December 29, 2025, to early December 30)."

Therefore, because the position was settled as "No" on the last day of 2025, this trade also led to significant losses in his account when 2026 arrived.

If everything had gone according to the script in Chiwawas' hands, his account should have settled for a huge return of $750,000 on December 30th.

Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate. The thunderstorm over the sea not only disrupted the U.S. military's planned air strike but also ruined the Chiwawas' dream of making a fortune during the Christmas holiday using military intelligence.

Fortunately, when he learned that the U.S. military would restart its operations at midnight on January 3rd, he once again gathered his strength and started recharging his account while placing bets. Although this final push couldn't make up for the regret of missing out on $750,000, it ultimately brought his total account profit back into the positive, reaching $34,000.

Chiwawas Address: 0x168b100d7a6620a2f49a455344c2c006eaf1714b

In addition to Chiwawas, another account also missed a huge profit due to the weather. Starting from late last month, this person wagered about $20,000 on multiple related betting markets, such as "military conflict between the U.S. and Venezuela within the year" and "nothing happens: national leaders lose power," firmly believing that a U.S.-Venezuela conflict would occur in the last few days of 2025 and that Maduro would fall as a result.

But for the weather, he would have earned a huge profit of $1.04 million on the 30th.

Like Chiwawas, he bet on "US-Venezuela conflict before January 15, 2026" three hours before the air strike, and made a profit of over $40,000 after suffering significant losses.

Conclusion

It's only been three days into 2026, and we've already seen that Polymarket is not just a prediction platform, but also an ATM where individuals with information advantages across various industries疯狂ly cash in on "knowledge gaps" and "time lags."

As Polymarket gains even more popularity, it's intriguing to wonder what other surreal insider stories will unfold here this year.

Click to learn about BlockBeats' job openings.

Welcome to join the official Lulin BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group:https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram discussion group:https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter account:https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia