TLDR
- Onchain data links a Polymarket trader flagged by the New York Times to large matching bets on Kalshi.
- The trader’s wallet received about $1.98 million from Kalshi-linked wallets after the election.
- Some Kalshi bets on Nebraska may have been placed 10 minutes after a key poll was published.
- The trader held every Senate bet through Election Day and has a long record of large wagers.
- Two experts said the evidence fits a wealthy, risk-taking trader better than insider access.
A Polymarket trader flagged for well-timed Senate bets also appears to have placed matching wagers on Kalshi, according to an analysis of onchain data by The Block. The records suggest the trader may have earned more on Kalshi than on Polymarket.
The New York Times reported Friday that Vanderbilt University researchers flagged large bets placed before Times/Siena polls on the Nebraska and Michigan Senate races. The polls favored the candidates the trader backed.
The Block’s review found a wider trading history that two experts said fits other explanations better than insider access. Both said foul play cannot be fully ruled out.
Following the Money to Kalshi
The Block matched the bets to a Polymarket account named dubdubdub2. A linked wallet sent it $850,000 on Oct. 30 and 31, matching the account’s deposit records to the dollar.
At 5:29 p.m. ET on Oct. 30, the same wallet withdrew $2.2 million from Hyperliquid. About a minute later, it began sending funds to an address that forwards money to Zero Hash, a crypto deposit provider used by Kalshi. It sent about $1.39 million through Oct. 31.
Several deposits were followed within about a minute by large Kalshi purchases backing Nebraska Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts. One $175,000 deposit was followed 31 seconds later by about $159,000 in Ricketts bets at 66 cents.
At about 5:15 a.m. on Oct. 31, 10 minutes after the Times/Siena poll showed Ricketts up six points, Kalshi recorded about $153,000 in similar purchases. These trades are harder to tie to the trader, since they came about 50 minutes after a $250,000 deposit.
On Nov. 4 and 5, the wallet received about $1.98 million from Zero Hash-labeled wallets. That is roughly $590,000 more than it sent, compared with about $258,000 earned from its Polymarket Senate positions. The transfers alone do not show exact Kalshi profits.
A Trader With a History of Big Bets
On Polymarket, the account bet $191,277 on Ricketts, mostly about an hour before the Nebraska poll. It made more than $77,000. It also bet $622,608 on a Democratic win in Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed won, making more than $180,000.
The Michigan purchases were the largest daily total by one account across 16 Senate races The Block reviewed. Yet the trader held every position through Election Day instead of cashing out after the polls moved prices.
The account previously bet about $1.05 million on Zohran Mamdani in the 2025 New York City mayoral race and $131,000 against the San Francisco 49ers winning the 2026 Super Bowl. It held those positions until they settled.
Wallets tied to the trader were most active at 3 a.m. ET over two years. They also moved tens of millions of dollars through lending protocols like Aave and Pendle and withdrew more than $13 million in stablecoins from Kraken since October 2025.
Not every trade worked. Just before the election bets, the wallet lost about $783,000 in 26 hours on Hyperliquid, including losses on HYPE and leveraged Intel futures.
Vincent Grégoire, a finance professor at HEC Montréal, said the simplest explanation is “there’s no foul play.” Barnard College professor Rajiv Sethi said the trades looked like “directional bets” and noted that Kalshi verifies traders’ identities.
Polymarket told the Times it spotted the trades right away and is investigating. The Times and the Siena Research Institute said they take the allegations seriously and plan to review the matter, while Kalshi declined to comment.
