Polymarket’s $285 Million Ethiopia Election Market Raises Questions About Trading Manipulation

Prediction market booster Platforms are often touted as barometers of public opinion—or “truth machines”—that offer a clearer picture of upcoming events than polls or other data. In 2024, Mr. Kalsi beat many pollsters in predicting the outcome of the US presidential election. But trading activity in prediction markets can also reveal a more complicated story.

Polymarket election markets attract hundreds of millions in volume

Two global election markets on Polymarket’s offshore platform generated more than $600 million in trading volume. That figure is far higher than the amount typically attracted by most political markets. Much of the activity involved buying and selling contracts tied to leading candidates who ultimately did not win.

Unusual trading surrounded Ethiopia’s 2025 election

This summer, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party won a federal election, securing 438 seats and paving the way for him to serve another five-year term. The party’s closest competitors won 13 seats.

In prediction markets, trading volume—the total value of contracts bought and sold—is usually approximately proportional to the odds of a particular outcome. Front-runners generally attract much more volume than long-shot candidates. In this case, however, the trading pattern deviated significantly from that norm.

Just $173,000 was bet on Mr. Ahmed’s victory, while more than $41 million was traded on whether his chief of staff, Simelis Abdisa, would become the next leader. Total transaction volume exceeded $285 million, almost all of it involving defeated candidates.

Experts suspect prediction market volume manipulation

Even stranger, “nearly all of that money—about $284 million—came from the accounts of pairs that bought and sold with each other,” said Chris Park, a former Polymarket trader who now runs the prediction market forensic analysis firm MSR Decode.

The unusually high level of seemingly meaningless trading has raised concerns among experts. “This is clearly some kind of volume manipulation,” said Rajiv Sethi, an economics professor at Barnard College who studies prediction markets.

Polymarket says it investigated and blocked an account

When asked about the markets, Shana Bautista, Polymarket’s head of global intelligence and research, told WIRED that her team “immediately flagged this activity, investigated it, and blocked the account from trading.” Polymarket did not respond to follow-up questions about why the account was able to complete so many transactions before action was taken.

Trading continued after Ethiopia’s election result

The timing of the trades made the activity even more unusual. Polymarket’s rules stipulated that the Ethiopian market would be resolved in October, after the prime minister was formally appointed and sworn in. That meant the market would remain open for months after Mr. Ahmed’s victory was almost a foregone conclusion.

In the 123 days following the election, spikes in seemingly irrational transactions continued. The activity prompted Polymarket users to leave comments such as “Isn’t this fixed?” and “Fuck.”