The audit desk for prediction-market hype.
Social media is full of prediction-market success stories: viral strategy posts, screenshot millionaires, copytrade funnels. Almost none of them survive contact with the actual numbers. We run an independent, automated trading operation on these markets — and we publish the homework: every claim re-derived from resolution data (what actually settled, at prices you could actually have traded), never from a dashboard screenshot.
Claim checks
A viral strategy post goes in; a verdict comes out. We re-derive the math, run the luck test, and check who profits from your belief.
Whale files
Big wallets, audited from their full resolved on-chain record — graded against the exact prices they paid, not their leaderboard rank.
The lab
Every strategy we have tried ourselves — with real probes, real order books, and real money — including all the ones that failed. 29 experiments on file →
The ledger
Claim checks and whale files, newest first. 14 entries on file.
Claim check
Misleading
“Almost every entry is between 12 and 40 cents”: a quarter of the money was, and ten wins made most of the profit
A post on X says a Polymarket trader made $766,079 in a year by betting on NBA underdogs, football draws and UFC upsets
Claim check
Misleading
“The bigger money” is between related markets, says an arbitrage guide. The study it cites found 0.24% of the $40 million there
A widely read X article teaches Polymarket arbitrage from a 2025 study that counted about $40 million of it. We checked the article against the study, and checked every multi-outcome event on Polymarket for the trade it teaches.
Claim check
Unproven
“I analyzed 100 Chinese traders”: the two it names won about as often as their prices said
An article on X says a group of Chinese-speaking Polymarket traders keeps landing on the right side through discipline, steady sizing and better information
Claim check
Misleading
“It never picks a side”: the wallet ended 92% of its markets betting on one, and that is where the profit came from
A post on X says a Bitcoin bot makes money by minting Up and Down pairs for $1 and selling both sides to the crowd for more. We read all 267,126 of the wallet's public records.
Claim check
Debunked
The "$4,000 in 10 days" Grok arbitrage bot: the wallet never bought both sides once
A beginner's guide on X says a simple bot that buys Yes and No for under $1 made its author $4,000+ in ten days, and links the wallet as proof. We read all 14,168 of that wallet's public records. It never made the trade the guide teaches, and its trading lost money once the guide was out.
Claim check
Misleading
"The most profitable trading bots on Polymarket": two make money trading, two make it from rebates
A viral X article showed four crypto-candle bots with profits from $231K to $1.36M. Those figures leave out fees. After fees, the two biggest bots barely break even or lose money, and Polymarket's rebates are what keep them ahead.
Claim check
Misleading
"Buys Bitcoin at 13–32¢ and sells at $1": the profit came from 29 big bets, not thousands of small ones
A post on X says a trader made $61,948.52 in one month by buying the cheap side of Bitcoin's 15-minute markets, and links the profile. We read all 31,243 of the wallet's public records. The month's figure is before $11,127 of fees, cheap Bitcoin bets were 3.4% of what the wallet bought, and their profit came almost entirely from 29 bets of $400 or more.
Claim check
Advertisement
The $624K "two-sided" crypto-candle bot: real profit, mostly rebates, and a recipe that would not build it
An X article holds up one Polymarket bot as proof you can build your own with an AI backtesting tool. We pulled all 1.6 million of the bot's public transactions. It made about $402K in cash, and more than half of that was fee rebates paid by Polymarket.
Claim check
Advertisement
"$25 → $4,237 in one night" with a Claude agent: no wallet, and a proof video that contradicts itself
A viral X post says a Claude-built Polymarket agent turned $25 into $4,237 overnight, and offers it free to anyone who comments, reposts and follows. It names no wallet, and the dashboard in its video breaks its own arithmetic.
Whale file
Lucky, so far
Whale file: Threadbare-Skunk — $1,073,422 up across 42 large resolved bets
$4,853,975 staked at an average entry of 57¢. Win rate 61.9% against a price-implied 56.5%. The skill test says: lucky so far.
Whale file
Bleeding
Whale file: Dishonest-Bloom — $3,507,478 down across 87 large resolved bets
$6,393,161 staked at an average entry of 63¢. Win rate 44.8% against a price-implied 63.0%. The skill test says: bleeding.
Claim check
Unproven
The "steel nerves" weather trader: a real premium, a 2-sigma record, and a copytrade button
A viral Reddit post says one trader made $24,728 buying near-certain weather markets. The strategy class exists. This evidence for it doesn't survive arithmetic.
Claim check
Debunked
The "4-minute leader" crypto-candle strategy, tested at real prices: both lanes lose
A widely-shared article claims the leader of a 5-minute crypto candle wins 70% when order flow agrees — and should be faded when it doesn't. We ran both rules live against executable order books for weeks. The fade lost 25%.
Claim check
Debunked
We audited the "Top 5 weather market legends." The lottery-ticket story is false for every one of them
A viral Medium listicle says the weather-market winners got rich buying 0.2–0.6¢ lottery buckets. We pulled the actual trade feeds of the profiled wallets. The real records: +0.2% to +7.4% grinding — and one of the five is currently losing.