Placing morbid bets on military strikes during wartime no longer seems to be enough for Polymarket bettors; now they’re threatening journalists to demand that they rewrite the news to their advantage. The case involves an Iranian strike on Israeli soil reported by The Times of Israel, with bets totaling $20 million.
Betting on War: Predictive Markets Run Amok
The freedom offered by the cryptocurrency sector often clashes with the obvious lack of ethics among some of its users, who are clearly determined to take advantage of this lack of regulation to enrich themselves in every possible way—even if that means betting on acts of war.
This reality is linked to the surging popularity of prediction markets over the past year, a trend recently brought back into the spotlight following the launch of U.S. and Israeli strikes in Iran—though the first detected instances involved the conflict in Ukraine.
In fact, bets regularly appear on Polymarket regarding strikes on Iran, as well as military repercussions in Turkey or a spread to the rest of the Middle East, with a specific date at stake each time. This even went so far as to include bets on the prospect of a nuclear strike, before the platform finally stepped in to remove this bet that had gone too far.
In this particular case, the bet specifically concerned an Iranian strike on Israel, with the date to be determined by bettors; the total volume exceeded $20 million when The Times of Israel officially reported that an Iranian missile had struck near the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh on March 10.
Polymarket bet regarding an Iranian strike on Israel
Polymarket bettors are trying to rewrite the news to their advantage
A seemingly closed chapter of the war that will nevertheless prove problematic for some Polymarket bettors, who are clearly on the losing side regarding this news. And instead of admitting their failure in a context that is already highly questionable, they will not hesitate to directly threaten the journalist who first reported the strike—Emanuel Fabian—by sending him numerous messages.
The goal? To reclassify this ballistic missile strike as a mere operation intercepted by Israeli security services—and thus considered a failure. What began as friendly requests quickly turned into outright threats, backed by forged documents.
At the same time, a colleague of this journalist was also approached and offered a share of his source’s winnings if he could convince him to change his statements, while another bettor announced a loss of $900,000—the amount he would be willing to invest to “finish him off.”
When contacted by The Times of Israel, the Polymarket platform stated that it “condemns the harassment and threats directed at Emanuel Fabian, or any other person,” without, however, announcing any concrete measures to address the proliferation of this type of betting.
