On November 15, as Russian forces were advancing on the outskirts of the town of Myrnohrad in eastern Ukraine, retail investors placed risky bets in real time on the battle using Polymarket, a gambling platform that allows users to bet on predictive markets surrounding world events. If Russia took the city by nightfall — an event that seemed exceedingly unlikely to most observers — a handful of retail investors stood to earn a profit of as much as 33,000% on the battle from the comfort of their homes.

When nightfall came, these longshot gamblers miraculously won big, though not because Russia took the town (as of writing, Ukraine is still fighting for Myrnohrad). Instead, it was because of an apparent intervention by a staffer at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a D.C.-based think tank that produces daily interactive maps of the conflict in Ukraine that Polymarket often relies on to determine the outcome of bets placed on the war.

It’s unclear if there were other incidents in which the ISW staffer influenced maps for personal profit, but many in the notoriously skeptical Polymarket crowd have pointed to other instances to cry foul play. For instance, they point to an ISW map which showed that Russia had taken a railway in the Ukrainian city of Kupiansk on October 29 just ahead of a market resolution. Other maps by competitors like Deep State and Liveuamap did not show at that time that Russia had made such advances into Kupiansk. Currently, there is still intense fighting around the railway.

Oracles matter! Crazy we can bet on live war battles and people can still rig it.