On April 5, a Polymarket user with the name “xX25Xx” bet $119 that the temperature in Paris would exceed 18ºC that day. Shortly afterwards the temperature recorded by the Metéo-France network sensor at Charles de Gaulle airport unexpectedly rose several degrees. That caused xX25Xx to cash out $21,398 for profits. Then something even more striking happened: no other sensor in Paris recorded that rise, and the user had already deleted his account. French police are investigating whether someone physically manipulated the sensor to win the bet. As? Easy.
The “crime” weapon according to the forums. In Polymarket’s Discord channels, the “traders” themselves began to share theories of all kinds after hearing the news. AI-generated images were also shared on Twitter showing how someone with a hair dryer could have modified the sensor located near Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Multiple users They aimed for the “cordless hair dryer trick”, although it would have also been possible to achieve the same thing with a lighter.
There’s the bet: from $119 to more than $21,000. Source:Polymarket
The temperature did not rise. The analysis of the French company Bubblemaps revealed that no other meteorological sensor in Paris recorded the temperature rise that the Charles de Gaulle sensor recorded. The anomaly was therefore perfectly located, and the French national meteorological service, Metéo-France, announced that had filed a lawsuit due to manipulation of its data processing sensors. Both the sensor analysis and the data led to a clear conclusion and the French police are now investigating the matter.
The Bubblemaps analysis revealed that this temperature peak experienced in a specific sensor was not experienced in the rest of the weather sensors in Paris. Source: Bubblemaps.
It was not an isolated incidenteither. What happened on that occasion had actually happened other times. On April 6, the Charles de Gaulle sensor recorded a rise of four degrees Celsius in 12 minutes despite other sensors showing lower figures. A Polymarket user who had bet on higher than normal temperatures on that specific day won almost 30,000 euros. The pattern repeated itself on April 19. Three different Polymarket wallets won more than $280,000 in total by betting that the temperature in Paris would reach 19ºC on April 15.
The real problem. The most striking thing about this event is not being able to use a hairdryer to win $20,000, but the fact that Polymarket has a single physical sensor in Paris as a data source for those temperatures. This means that anyone with physical access to said sensor – knowing it is the right one – can manipulate it without problems. There is no verification or redundancy in data sources, and here Polymarket has a notable underlying problem with bets that can be manipulated really easily.
A more worrying pattern. The dryer case is a clear example of a new category of crime that these “prediction” markets have created. In recent months we have discovered how there have been investors in Polymarket who have managed to win large sums of money by betting on events in which there was a clear suspicion of insider information. It happened with the pardons that Biden granted before leaving the presidency, with the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and with the moment in which would announce ceasefire in Iran. In all of those moments, someone knew something before the market and took advantage of it.
Polymarket as oracle of the financial world. The disturbing thing is that Polymarket is becoming a tool that is being used by financial and investment companies like the prestigious Goldman Sachs. She and several investors use Polymarket data for their own operations, but if the platform’s data is as manipulable as it seems, that information is contaminated from start to finish.
Image | Sunny River generated by AI
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