A pseudonymous trader, known only as AlphaRaccoon, on prediction market Polymarket has drawn sharp scrutiny after reportedly turning a $1.15 million profit in under 24 hours by betting on Google’s 2025 Year in Search rankings. The positions covered niche questions, such as whether the singer d4vd would top the list or if Pope Leo XIV would crack the top five. Blockchain records show the bets landed just before Google published the data related to these markets for the first time.
Notably, these were not the only Google-related bets in AlphaRacoon’s history. Months earlier, in November 2025, the user pocketed over $150,000 by nailing the exact launch day of Google’s Gemini 3.0 AI model; however, the bet regarding the specific release date of Gemini 3.0 was not nearly as asymmetric as some of the more recent bets associated with Google’s 2025 Year in Search. Across 23 Google-related markets this time, the account hit 22 correct outcomes, according to a report in Forbes. This included a nearly 20x gain on predicting d4vd would be the most searched person of the year.
A Google insider has officially been exposed on Polymarket.
This dude just profited $1,000,000 in a single day betting on the Google search markets.
Google accidentally pushed the results early, then removed them, but not before it revealed he went 22/23 on his bets and… pic.twitter.com/44raBXoD4x
— haeju.eth (@JeongHaeju) December 4, 2025
Polymarket trader Haeju Jeong, who is also a blockchain engineer, laid out the case bluntly on X. “This isn’t a lucky streak,” they wrote, sharing screenshots of the profile and markets. “He’s a Google insider milking Polymarket for quick money.”
Polymarket’s own Polymarket Money account amplified the situation without taking sides in the larger debate regarding potential insider trading. “$1.15M profit in 24 hours trading Google search markets,” it posted, tagging the profile with a simple question: “Who is AlphaRaccoon?”
To be clear, no hard proof ties AlphaRaccoon to Google as of yet, and the user hasn’t commented on the matter publicly. The evidence remains circumstantial for the time being, and it’s unclear if there is any ongoing investigation into these trades from either Google or Polymarket. While a real-world identity has yet to be tied to these trades publicly, the reality is that the money can be traced on the completely public and transparent, albeit pseudonymous, blockchain ledger upon which they were made.
Insider Trading is the Point of Prediction Markets
While critics of AlphaRaccoon’s recent trades decry the episode as cheating, the reality is that this is what people who love prediction markets want to see.
These types of markets were outlawed in an earlier age of the internet due to concerns around gambling addiction and potential manipulation of public events. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 clamped down on online platforms, treating many bets as unregulated futures and blocking payment processors from facilitating trades. However, Kalshi avoided the UIGEA issue by getting regulated by the CFTC as a platform for legitimate financial derivatives rather than gambling, while Polymarket initially came to prominence using crypto to get around payment restrictions. Polymarket was fined by the CFTC in 2022 and had to stop offering services to the U.S., but it is currently betting on the relaxed regulatory environment under Trump and is slowly bringing back services focused on sports gambling, for now.
Advocates say unrestricted prediction markets can offer better information verification by pooling bets on specific claims being true or false and effectively making cheap talk on social media more expensive. If insiders flood these sorts of markets with their own bets, the argument goes, sharpened prices should indirectly provide unknown information to market observers. However, many critics argue that these platforms are simply mechanisms for gambling where information insiders have an unfair advantage or even avenues for election or corporate manipulation.
“Why are you saying this as it was a bad thing? You want insider trading!” one user wrote on X.
Why are you saying this as it was a bad thing? You want insider trading!
People bet to learn when it’s released. Someone just told them. Prediction markets are information markets / crowdfunding of information. The market learned the information before it was public,…
— Juraj Bednar (@jurbed) December 4, 2025
While traditional finance bans insider trading on stocks, no explicit rules bind prediction market participants on platforms like Polymarket. When public companies are involved in these sorts of markets, it creates a potential loophole for trading on similar information without SEC oversight.
Accusations of insider trading on prediction markets also aren’t new. Traders have faced similar heat over other bets, such as the Nobel Peace Prize winner. In terms of insider trading in the crypto market more generally, there was also the recent case of suspicious trades made in the days prior to the announcement of an acquisition deal made by crypto exchange Coinbase.
These sorts of cases continue to bring up the question of whether crypto is being used for the often-touted use case of “democratized finance” or simply enabling insider profiteering for a new set of institutional overlords, including those around President Trump.
Read the full article here
