Saturday, November 2, 2024

The French ‘whale’ who made massive pro-Trump bets is only doing it for the money and could win $80 million, report says

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A French trader who wagered $30 million on betting website Polymarket that Donald Trump will win the presidential election said he has no political motivation for doing so.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the so-called whale referred to himself as “Théo” and said he made his bets on Trump for one reason only.

“My intent is just making money,” he said.

After questions arose about large pro-Trump trades on the platform, Polymarket reached out to the French whale behind the accounts but didn’t disclose his identity, saying only that he had “extensive trading experience and a financial services background.”

The trader’s handful of big bets were skewing the election odds in Trump’s favor, the Journal reported last month, raising fears of market manipulation to alter voters’ perceptions of the race.

But Théo denied any such motives, telling the Journal in an email, “I have absolutely no political agenda.”

He also said that he’s placing the Polymarket bets with his own money, which he said was the majority of his liquid assets. The outlet could not verify whether this was true or not. A spokesperson for Polymarket did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Using several different accounts on Polymarket, Théo racked up his massive Trump wager through a series of small transactions which he said was to help prevent the price of his bets from rising so he could get a better deal.

For example, during a 10-hour period last week, the trader’s Theo4 account made over 450 bets on Vice President Kamala Harris not winning the presidential election in amounts ranging from $5 to tens of thousands of dollars.

Polymarket has been cited over the past several months by mainstream media outlets as an alternative to traditional polls, with some election watchers arguing that prediction markets are more likely to reflect an accurate picture of the race because people are putting real money behind their bets.

Yet Polymarket is not available to American users and was fined by the CFTC in 2022 for “offering off-exchange event-based binary options contracts.” Two separate investigations by blockchain firms also found that a large chunk of the trading volume on Polymarket could potentially be chalked up to “wash trading,” a form of market manipulation where traders buy and sell shares repeatedly to falsely inflate market volume and activity, Fortune reported.

“Polymarket’s Terms of Use expressly prohibit market manipulation,” a Polymarket spokesperson previously said in a statement to Fortune. “We strive to provide users with the fairest analysis possible and our transparency allows the market to decide.”

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