Crypto Trader Profits from Trump Pardon Bet on Polymarket

The anonymous crypto trader, whose identity remains concealed behind blockchain addresses, successfully wagered on prediction market platform Polymarket that Donald Trump would grant clemency to Binance founder Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao sometime in 2025. According to the Etherscan data examined by on-chain sleuth Euan, the trader’s crypto wallet generated $56,522 in profits from this single position. The bet represents a sophisticated understanding of political developments and their potential impact on cryptocurrency markets, particularly given Zhao’s central role in the industry and his ongoing legal challenges with U.S. authorities.

Polymarket, a decentralized prediction market platform, has become increasingly popular among crypto traders seeking to profit from their insights into political and world events. The platform allows users to bet on the outcomes of various events using cryptocurrency, creating a transparent, blockchain-based record of all transactions. The trader’s successful wager on the Trump pardon demonstrates how prediction markets are becoming integrated with traditional crypto trading strategies, blurring the lines between financial speculation and political forecasting.

This latest profitable trade follows previous suspicions within crypto circles that the same trader possesses access to privileged information. According to the analysis, the anonymous actor had previously executed perfectly timed short positions on both Bitcoin and Ethereum just hours before President Trump’s tariff announcement sent cryptocurrency prices falling. The precision of these trades, occurring immediately before market-moving news, raised questions about potential insider knowledge and the trader’s ability to anticipate significant political developments that would impact digital asset valuations.

The pattern of profitable, well-timed transactions has drawn attention from market observers and regulators alike. The trader’s ability to profit from both traditional market movements (through short positions) and political developments (through prediction markets) suggests a sophisticated operation with broad information-gathering capabilities. This dual approach to generating returns—combining conventional crypto trading with political speculation—highlights the evolving nature of profit opportunities in the digital asset space.

On-chain investigator Euan utilized Etherscan data to establish the connection between the trader’s wallet and the profitable Polymarket account, demonstrating how blockchain transparency enables third-party analysis of trading activity. The public nature of blockchain transactions means that while traders can remain anonymous, their financial movements are visible to anyone with the technical expertise to analyze the data. This transparency has given rise to a new class of blockchain investigators who specialize in tracing and interpreting complex transaction patterns across multiple platforms and protocols.

The case raises broader questions about information advantages in cryptocurrency markets, where regulatory boundaries remain unclear and enforcement mechanisms are still developing. The intersection of political intelligence and crypto trading presents novel challenges for market integrity, particularly as prediction markets like Polymarket gain mainstream adoption. While the trader’s activities may not constitute illegal insider trading in the traditional sense—given the uncertain regulatory status of both cryptocurrency markets and prediction platforms—the pattern of profitable, precisely timed trades continues to fuel speculation about potential information asymmetries in the rapidly evolving digital asset ecosystem.