This Old Goat has been documenting pre-announcement volume spikes for seventy-nine days. Six instances. Five instruments. Zero investigations.
The New York Times just confirmed the broader picture. It took them longer to get there, but they got there. More than 80 Polymarket users. Nearly 30 topics. Twelve of them directly tied to the US-Israeli war with Iran. The data is public. The transactions are timestamped to the second. The profits are documented.
The word "casino" belongs to Trump himself. He said, in April, that he was "never much in favor" of prediction markets and lamented that "the whole world unfortunately has become somewhat of a casino." Within days, he reversed himself. His eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is an adviser to both Kalshi and Polymarket. The family's social media company has announced plans to offer its own prediction market. Orbit →²
The man who called it a casino is running the house.
accounts (NYT)
flagged
US-Iran war
market volume
individuals
Polymarket profits
I. What the Times Found
The New York Times examination identified more than 11,000 Polymarket accounts exhibiting suspicious characteristics. The methodology is sound: long-shot bets that pay off, well-timed wagers from recently opened accounts, users who bet on only a few related topics and never lose. The Times manually reviewed the most striking cases, comparing trading histories against overall prediction market activity with second-by-second accuracy.
The findings, documented without caveat:
The Anti-Corruption Data Collective found that heavy Polymarket bettors on underdog outcomes — events with at most 35 percent likelihood — won more than half the time on military topics. On all other topics, those same long-shot bets were profitable 14 percent of the time.
The gap between 14 percent and 50 percent is not luck. It is information.
II. What This Goat Documented First
The Times found the pattern. This Old Goat documented the specific instruments and timings months ago, before the broader pattern was publicly named. For the record, the series archive: Iran War Intel →³
oil short positions
volume spikes
opened
Total documented: $3.2 billion in suspicious oil short positions across four instances. Six pre-announcement volume spikes across five instruments. All documented at theyknewfirst.com before the Times investigation confirmed the broader pattern.
The Kobeissi Letter documented the oil shorts. This series connected them to the announcement timeline. The Times found the Polymarket layer. These are not three separate stories. They are three surfaces of the same architecture.
III. The Family in the Casino
Eric Trump's name disappeared from Alt5's leadership page between March and May 2026. His response: he has "never" been on the board. The Nasdaq video exists. The SEC filing exists. The Witkoff introduction exists. The timeline exists. Orbit →²
"So, Eric Trump says he has never been on the board of Alt5, not now, not ever. Company that publicly introduced him as a board member at the Nasdaq. A company that in SEC filings has described him as a board observer. A company that bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency. A company that World Liberty Financial is a major stakeholder in. And a company that the Financial Times reported was chasing a deal with a Chinese firm that members of Congress say is connected to the Chinese Communist Party. I'll let you be the judge." — Jen Psaki, MS NOW, May 16, 2026
Eric Trump's response: he intends to sue. His lawyers have not yet filed. The Nasdaq video has not been retracted.
IV. The Regulator
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is responsible for overseeing prediction markets. Its chairman is Michael Selig, an "outspoken prediction market enthusiast" who has traveled the country giving speeches about the technology's potential to rival traditional media as an information source.
Polymarket's CEO, Shayne Coplan, told CBS 60 Minutes that insider trading is "an inevitability" that comes with "a lot of benefits." He said the platform creates a "financial incentive for people to go and divulge the information to the market." When the Maduro betting pattern was raised publicly, Coplan called it "a very funny story" and "more of a fluke." When federal charges were filed against Sergeant Van Dyke, Coplan said Polymarket had "flagged this, referred it, and cooperated throughout the process."
The Senate passed a resolution barring senators and their staff from using prediction markets. It is a resolution. It is not a law. It has no enforcement mechanism.
Trump said he was "never much in favor" of prediction markets. Within days he reversed himself. His son advises both major platforms. His company is building its own.
The house always wins. In this case, the house is the presidency.
V. The Verdict
This Old Goat will be precise about what is documented and what is not.
What this Old Goat will say, as documented fact: the people who knew called the war a diplomatic triumph. The people who bet called it a profit opportunity. The gap between those two groups — and the question of whether they overlap — is the story the Times just confirmed is worth telling.
This series has been telling it for seventy-nine days.
The noise is the point. The scaffolding is the story.