They missed out on $2 million because Maduro wouldn't normally spend the New Year at home.

Title: They Missed $2 Million Because Maduro Was Not Supposed to Spend the New Year at Home

Author: Liu Kaiwen

Source:

Repost: Mars Finance

At 2 a.m. local time in Venezuela on Saturday, while President Nicolás Maduro was still immersed in his New Year holiday dreams, a U.S. special forces raid ended within an hour, fighting and then transporting Maduro onto a plane to the United States.

This shocking “lightning war” seemed to have no warning, but on the leading prediction market platform Polymarket, it appeared as if it had long been a cash-out tool for several insiders before the operation even began.

3 Pentagon Employees “Bet While Working Overtime”

A few hours before the operation started, three new wallets with no prior history suddenly began wildly betting on the low-probability market “Maduro will lose power before January 31, 2026,” with the odds “Yes.”

At this time, mainstream market opinion still believed that Trump would adopt a moderate siege strategy to force Maduro to compromise, with only a 5% probability that “Yes” would win. However, as Maduro was boarded onto the plane, these three mysterious accounts instantly netted over $500,000 in profits.

It was only afterward that everyone began to redefine the operations these three had made hours before the airstrike: only those with reliable intelligence could, within such a precise time window, use new accounts to execute a “dimensionality reduction strike.”

The three insiders are:

0xa72db1749e9ac2379d49a3c12708325ed17febd4, profit $74,982.34;

0x6baf05d193692bb208d616709e27442c910a94c5, profit $145,619.92;

0x31a56e9e690c621ed21de08cb559e9524cdb8ed9, profit $409,882.03.

But the messages Polymarket has given us go far beyond that.

Maduro “Flight Delay”: The U.S. operation was supposed to happen 4 days ago

There are two very representative addresses. Although they profited from this operation, because they knew the news too early, they actually lost a lot of money.

Like the three insiders above, Chiwawas also precisely bet $10,000 three hours before the airstrike and thus gained over $70,000.

But in fact, Chiwawas had already heavily bet nearly $40,000 on the market “Maduro will lose power within 2025” on the evening of December 26.

Based on the premise that he was an insider, he must have received accurate information before placing such a heavy bet. Unfortunately, the arrest operation, originally scheduled for December 29, was canceled due to weather conditions. Thunderstorms in the Caribbean forced the U.S. military to act out of tactical safety considerations.

This was also confirmed in Trump’s latest speech on the operation: “The airstrike against Maduro was originally scheduled for 4 days ago (from the evening of December 29, 2025, to the early morning of December 30, 2025).”

Therefore, because the market settled as “No” on December 30, 2025, this trade also caused his account to face huge losses when 2026 arrived.

If everything had gone according to the script Chiwawas held, his account should have yielded a staggering $750,000 by December 30.

Unfortunately, bad weather not only disrupted the U.S. military’s original airstrike plan but also shattered Chiwawas’ dream of making a big profit using military intelligence during the Christmas holiday.

Fortunately, when he learned that the U.S. military would restart the operation at midnight on January 3, he regained his spirits, recharged, and placed bets again. Although this final effort couldn’t make up for the regret of missing out on $750,000, it ultimately brought his total profit back to positive, reaching $34,000.

Apart from Chiwawas, another account also missed huge profits due to weather. Since late last month, he had bet about $20,000 on multiple related markets, such as “U.S.-Venezuela military conflict occurs within the year” and “Nothing happens: national leaders lose power,” confident that the conflict would occur within the remaining days of 2025 and Maduro would fall.

Had the weather not intervened, he should have earned $1.04 million on December 30.

Like Chiwawas, after suffering huge losses, he also bet three hours before the airstrike on “U.S.-Venezuela conflict occurs before 2026.1.15,” profiting over $40,000.

Conclusion

Just three days into 2026, we have already seen that Polymarket is not just a prediction platform but also an automatic cash machine for people across various industries who leverage “information advantage” through “knowledge gaps” and “time gaps” to cash out wildly.

As Polymarket’s popularity continues to grow, who knows what magical insider stories will unfold here this year?