The United States has announced a substantial seizure of Iranian cryptocurrency assets, pegged at nearly $500 million, as part of a broad economic pressure campaign against Tehran. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent disclosed the figure during an appearance on Fox Business, framing the effort as a continuation of Operation Economic Fury, a sanctions program ordered in March 2025 to sever Iran’s financial lifelines through asset seizures, bank account freezes and secondary sanctions on jurisdictions that continue to purchase Iranian oil.

During the interview, Bessent said: “We are freezing bank accounts everywhere. More importantly, we are making people less willing to deal with the regime,” and he added that retirement funds and overseas real estate held by Iranian officials are also being targeted. The update on crypto seizures marks a sharp increase from earlier disclosures, which put the crypto asset total at about $344 million.

According to Cointelegraph, the latest figure surpasses the previously reported total. Last week, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned several crypto wallets tied to Iran, and stablecoin issuer Tether confirmed it had frozen more than $344 million in USDt (USDT) at the request of U.S. authorities. Cointelegraph reached out to the U.S. Treasury and Tether seeking comment on the discrepancy between the two figures, but did not receive a response by publication.

In the evolving narrative around Iran’s use of crypto and its broader financial ties, the United States has emphasized a holistic approach: sanctions on crypto rails, traditional financial assets, and the shadow banking network to disrupt illicit funding channels. This strategy, described as a multi-front pressure campaign, aligns with a broader regulatory posture that seeks to deter black-market finance and deter third-country facilitation of Iranian oil revenues.

Key takeaways

• Nearly $500 million in Iranian crypto assets are reportedly seized, representing a concrete extension of Operation Economic Fury aimed at cutting Tehran’s access to international finance.
• The latest disclosures surpass an earlier $344 million crypto-seizure figure; USDT freezes by Tether reportedly account for a substantial portion of the crypto-related enforcement actions.
• OFAC has sanctioned crypto wallets tied to Iran and expanded enforcement against Iran’s financial networks, including 35 entities and individuals linked to shadow banking and roughly 40 shipping firms tied to Iran’s oil trade; additional targets include a Chinese refinery and components tied to missiles and drones.
• Since February 2025, more than 1,000 Iran-related persons, vessels, and aircraft have been sanctioned under the Economic Fury initiative, signaling a sustained, expansive approach to enforcement across asset classes.
• Iran’s broader economic distress—bank collapses, a currency decline of 60–70% against the dollar—provides context for the intensifying use and monitoring of crypto channels in sanction evasion and revenue flows.

Operation Economic Fury: scope, tools, and implications for compliance

Operation Economic Fury, described by Treasury officials as a comprehensive pressure campaign against Tehran, was officially directed in March 2025 and centers on depriving Iran of financial support networks. The initiative uses a combination of asset seizures, bank account freezes and secondary sanctions to deter both domestic and foreign actors from engaging with Iran’s economy. In public remarks, Bessent framed the effort as not only a financial crackdown but a strategic effort to discourage international actors from facilitating Iran’s financial operations. The emphasis on crypto assets signals a recognition that blockchain rails can serve both sanctioned actors and third-country intermediaries in moving value, underscoring the need for rigorous AML/KYC controls and cross-border cooperation among regulators and financial institutions.

From a regulatory standpoint, the actions illustrate how cryptomarkets intersect with traditional sanctions enforcement. The Treasury’s OFAC has expanded its reach to crypto wallets connected to sanctioned entities, a move that places additional obligations on exchanges, wallet providers and other crypto infrastructure operators to screen for sanctioned parties and to execute asset freezes when identified. The case also highlights the role of stablecoins in sanctioned environments: Tether’s confirmation that USDt was frozen in response to official requests demonstrates how stablecoins can become de facto conduits for sanctioned flows or, conversely, for compliance-aligned enforcement actions. As observed by industry observers, this area remains under close scrutiny, particularly given questions about the adequacy of international coordination and the speed with which sanctions can be enforced on chain.

Regulatory filings and public statements show a layered approach: while crypto asset seizures are a component of the broader regime, OFAC’s actions extend into conventional financial networks and maritime supply chains. The Treasury has sanctioned 35 entities and individuals tied to Iran’s shadow banking network and, separately, targeted a Chinese oil refinery and approximately 40 shipping firms implicated in moving Iranian crude in violation of sanctions. Additionally, 14 entities and individuals were sanctioned for procuring components used in Shahed-series attack drones and ballistic missile propellants. Since February 2025, the department has sanctioned more than 1,000 Iran-related persons, vessels and aircraft as part of the Economic Fury program. These measures collectively illustrate a multi-dimensional enforcement strategy that seeks to constrain Iran’s ability to monetize and move value internationally.

Iran’s economy under pressure and the crypto policy backdrop

Beyond asset seizures, Iran’s economy has faced a destabilizing sequence of events. One of the country’s largest banks collapsed in December, amplifying a currency crisis that authorities say has driven the rial’s value down by roughly 60–70% against the U.S. dollar. In parallel, Treasury actions have intensified sanctions across multiple fronts, including a broader crackdown on Iran’s shadow banking networks and maritime corridors used to export oil to buyers in China and beyond. This constellation of measures compounds the economic strain and provides a backdrop for the government’s apparent interest in controlling cross-border value flows through innovative means, including discussions about tolls in crypto for maritime traffic through critical chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz.

Earlier in the month, reports emerged that Iran was weighing Bitcoin tolls for vessels crossing Hormuz, with empty tankers allowed free passage and loaded ships taxed at a nominal rate per barrel of oil. Forbes cited claims that Tehran had begun collecting tolls in practice, though the Iranian government has not publicly confirmed the policy. Separately, maritime risk firm Marasis warned of fraud schemes in which actors impersonate Iranian security services and solicit payments in Bitcoin or USDt to clear ships through Hormuz. These developments underscore the evolving intersection of geopolitics, sanctions enforcement and crypto-based value movement, and highlight the ongoing need for vigilant compliance and risk assessment by banks, exchanges and lenders operating in or with Iran-related traffic.

Regulatory and institutional implications for crypto markets

The unfolding events place heightened emphasis on how crypto assets are regulated and monitored across borders. The convergence of sanctions enforcement with blockchain analytics raises questions about licensing, registration and ongoing oversight of cross-border crypto activities. In the European Union, ongoing implementation of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) intersects with U.S. sanctions policy, reinforcing the expectation that crypto service providers maintain robust AML/KYC programs and cooperate with authorities to identify and freeze sanctioned assets. For U.S. and allied institutions, the episode reinforces the imperative to implement rigorous sanctions screening, enhanced due diligence for counterparties, and real-time monitoring of cross-border crypto flows connected to sanctioned states. It also highlights the potential role of stablecoins in sanctioned environments and whether such tokens will face heightened scrutiny, including limits on on-chain transfers to or from sanctioned wallets and counterparties.

From a policy history perspective, the operation sits at the intersection of traditional financial sanctions and emerging digital-asset enforcement. It signals a shift toward more proactive asset tracing and seizure capabilities across both fiat and crypto rails, with implications for exchanges, banks, and payment processors that must implement resilient compliance programs to withstand cross-border enforcement. The regulatory narrative is likely to evolve as authorities assess the efficacy of such measures, the availability of traceable on-chain data, and the readiness of market participants to align with expanded sanctions regimes.

Closing perspective

As authorities extend their enforcement horizon, the coming months will test whether sanctions-driven crypto seizures deter illicit flows and shift Tehran’s strategic calculus. While the exact methodology behind reconciling disparate asset tallies remains under discussion, the broader message is clear: cross-border enforcement, AML/KYC rigor and international regulatory coordination will continue to shape how crypto markets interface with traditional finance and geopolitics.

DeFi can’t stop bleeding, and Wasabi Protocol is the latest to find out why.

The protocol, a perpetuals trading platform built on Ethereum and Base, was drained of about $4.55 million on Thursday after attackers compromised its deployer key, security firm Blockaid said in an X post.

The hack is the latest in a month that has produced over $605 million in DeFi losses across at least 12 incidents. The attack closely mirrors the Drift Protocol exploit on April 1, when North Korea-linked attackers used a compromised admin key to drain $285 million from the Solana-based perpetuals exchange.

The mechanics operated through an externally owned account, or EOA, called wasabideployer.eth, which held the sole ADMIN_ROLE in Wasabi’s permission system.

An EOA is a wallet controlled by a private key, as opposed to a smart contract. Whoever holds the key controls the wallet. Once the attacker had access to the deployer key, they gave themselves admin privileges with zero delay by calling grantRole on the permission contract.

Their helper contract then upgraded Wasabi’s perp vaults and Long Pool to malicious implementations that drained the balances, Blockaid said.

The exploit relied on a standard known as Universal Upgradeable Proxy Standard (UUPS), which allows a smart contract to change its underlying code while keeping the same address.

UUPS is widely used because it lets developers fix bugs without migrating users. The downside is that if an attacker controls admin permissions, they can replace the contract’s logic with anything they want, including code designed to steal funds.

Wasabi had no timelock or multisig protecting the admin role, Blockaid said. A timelock forces a delay between when an admin action is announced and when it executes, giving users time to react. A multisig requires multiple signers to approve a change. Wasabi had neither, leaving a single key holding full control over the protocol.

Compromised contracts include Wasabi’s wWETH, sUSDC, wBITCOIN, wPEPE, and Long Pool vaults on Ethereum, plus its sUSDC, wWETH, sBTC, sVIRTUAL, sAERO, and sBRETT vaults on Base, according to Blockaid.

Users holding Wasabi LP tokens were urged to revoke any active approvals to the vault contracts because the underlying assets backing those tokens had either been drained or remained at risk.

A month of exploits

In the case of Drift, the attackers also exploited a single-key admin setup with no governance timelock, listing a fake token as collateral and raising withdrawal limits to drain real assets in roughly 12 minutes.

Three weeks later, on April 19, Kelp DAO lost $292 million when an attacker exploited a single-verifier configuration in the protocol’s LayerZero bridge, releasing 116,500 unbacked rsETH that was then used as collateral to borrow real ether (ETH) from Aave.

The cumulative DeFi loss total for 2026 has now passed $770 million across more than 30 reported incidents. April alone accounts for the majority of that figure.

Smaller breaches this month have hit CoW Swap ($1.2 million), Grinex ($13.74 million), Resolv Labs ($23 million), Volo Protocol ($3.5 million), among others.

What ties them together is not a new vulnerability. Each incident produces the same post-mortem language about lessons learned, but the next exploit usually arrives before the lessons get implemented.

Wasabi has not yet issued a public statement on the incident.

UPDATE (April 30, 11:34 UTC): General edits throughout. Moves Drift Protocol exploit to third paragraph.

Robinhood’s (HOOD) nearly 12% drop since its big earnings miss is being waived off by some big investors and Wall Street analysts.

The popular trading platform missed its first-quarter earnings and revenue estimates on April 28, mainly due to weaker crypto trading activities. The market punished the stock on the miss, but Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest saw that as an opportunity and bought roughly $39.7 million worth of shares the next day, signaling confidence in the trading platform’s future. Robinhood remains a meaningful position across Ark’s portfolios, accounting for roughly 3% and ranking among the top holdings in all three funds.

The contrarian move seems to have come at the same time as Wall Street analysts, who agreed that the miss was just a blip for the company, and early April data points to improving momentum. They added that equity and options trading volumes are trending toward some of the strongest levels this year, offering a potential counterbalance to continued softness in crypto.

Cantor Fitzgerald, which reiterated its ‘Overweight’ rating and $110 price target, said recent activity suggests stabilization. “Preliminary April equity/option trading volumes are tracking toward the highest monthly level this year,” the firm wrote, adding that the earnings miss was tied more to market conditions than core business issues.

Another firm, Compass Point, echoed that view, maintaining a ‘Buy’ rating while slightly lowering its price target to $107. The firm said the market reaction appears “backwards looking,” given expectations for a stronger second quarter.

While both brokers are bullish on Robinhood’s outlook, some analysts cautioned that there are still risks, particularly in crypto trading, which is likely to continue weighing on results in the near term amid lower volumes and pricing pressure across the sector.

Investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW), which already had the lowest price target on the stock, according to FactSet data, cut it further. The firm’s analysts, who rate the stock a ‘Hold,’ warned that declining transaction fees could persist and cut its target to $65 from $75.

“Capture rates [are] missing across the board,” the firm’s analysts said, noting that both crypto and options take rates have continued to fall into the second quarter. That trend has led to lower long-term forecasts, with KBW trimming earnings estimates through 2028.

That concern didn’t seem to deter one of the top bullish analysts. Bernstein’s analysts, who maintained their ‘Outperform’ rating and a $130 price target, pointed to signs that crypto activity may be stabilizing, as April hasn’t shown any further declines in prices while equities and options remain strong.

Moreover, beyond trading, bullish investors are now turning their attention to new revenue streams.

Prediction markets are emerging as a key area, with firms highlighting growth in event-based contracts and upcoming catalysts such as product launches and global events. Robinhood’s planned prediction markets platform, Rothera, is viewed as a potential driver of future revenue and margin expansion, Cantor said.

For now, the outlook hinges on whether recent gains in trading activity can continue. If they do, Robinhood may return to growth sooner than expected. If not, pressure on transaction revenue could persist into the second half of the year.

The stock was up about 3% on Thursday, but fell about 37% this year. One of its crypto peers that tends to partially trade in tandem, Coinbase (COIN), rose about 3% on the day and is down about 19% year-to-date.

Read more: Why Cantor Fitzgerald thinks Robinhood and Coinbase are the best ways to play the prediction market boom

Sentora announced on April 30, 2026 that Sentora Smart Yield is now publicly available, opening access to its DeFi vault discovery and monitoring platform to all users. The move broadens access to a research-led yield infrastructure that had been primarily deployed for institutional partners, signaling a maturation in how on-chain capital is evaluated and deployed.

Vaults have emerged as a central pillar of DeFi infrastructure, enabling capital to move across protocols and chains with defined risk controls. Sentora notes that risk-curated vault structures already account for nearly $7 billion in DeFi capital. At the same time, Sentora’s public vaults hold almost $2 billion in allocations, a scale that positions the firm as the largest public vault curator and aligns it with notable ecosystem partners such as Kraken, Upshift, and Morpho. The company frames its public rollout as a natural extension of its institutional framework, now accessible to a broader audience.

The launch rolls out a public, non-custodial interface built around strategy discovery, analytics, and risk visibility, moving beyond a plain APY dashboard. The platform is designed to help users understand the structure behind opportunities before committing capital, rather than merely presenting headline yields.

“Vaults are becoming one of the main ways capital is organized and deployed across DeFi, but most products still reduce that experience to a single number,” said Jesus Rodriguez, co-founder and CPO at Sentora.

“With Smart Yield, we’re bringing the same strategy framework we’ve built for institutional partners to the public, but in a format that gives users real transparency into how a vault works, where funds go and what risks they are taking before they deposit.”

At the core of Sentora Smart Yield is a bifurcated vault model that balances accessibility with sophistication. Direct Vaults provide simpler, single-strategy exposure—typically anchored in lending markets—offering a cleaner, lower-complexity path to on-chain yield. By contrast, Smart Vaults are more structured products that deploy capital through multi-step strategies to pursue greater capital efficiency or enhanced returns. Examples cited by Sentora include strategies like Supervised Loans and Leveraged Loops, which aim to optimize allocations while maintaining a clear view of exposure.

The public platform makes the strategy framework visible alongside each vault’s page. Users can compare vaults by asset, chain, strategy, APY, and risk metrics, while also examining how each vault is constructed—the allocation points, the flow of funds, and the exposures embedded in the strategy before engaging with the underlying contracts.

In addition to high-level strategy visibility, Sentora’s dashboards integrate analytics and monitoring tools designed to help users evaluate opportunities in depth. Available data points include historical yield behavior, total value locked (TVL) trends, liquidity conditions, withdrawal simulations, wallet concentration, and the composition of each strategy. For Smart Vaults, users can drill down further to see underlying deployments by protocol, blockchain, and asset, offering a granular view of how capital is distributed across the entire strategy stack.

The firm also signaled an intent to broaden protection for on-chain deployments. Sentora has outlined plans to bring DeFi Cover to its vault lineup, leveraging the Firelight protocol to add an additional layer of protection for assets deployed through its vaults. This move would complement the transparency and risk context already baked into the platform, providing an additional safety net for users deploying capital via public vaults.

The company positions Smart Yield as a product that reflects institutional requirements while remaining accessible to the broader market. The aim is to provide not just yield opportunities but the tools to assess them with discipline—an emphasis on structure, transparency, and contextual risk alongside potential return.

Sentora Smart Yield is live now at vaults.sentora.com.

Key takeaways

• The public rollout extends Sentora’s institutional-grade yield research framework to retail users, expanding access to strategy discovery and risk analytics for DeFi vaults.
• The platform emphasizes transparency, showing how vaults are constructed, where funds go, and the risks involved—beyond a single yield number.
• Two vault archetypes are offered: Direct Vaults (single-strategy exposure) and Smart Vaults (multi-step, potentially higher-efficiency or higher-variance strategies).
• Analytical tools include historical yields, TVL trends, liquidity, withdrawal simulations, wallet concentration, and strategy composition—plus underlying deployments for Smart Vaults.
• Sentora plans to integrate DeFi Cover via Firelight to add an additional protection layer for on-chain asset deployments across its vaults.

From institutional rails to public accessibility

The shift to a public-facing version of Sentora’s yield research and monitoring infrastructure marks a notable evolution in DeFi infrastructure design. Historically, sophisticated yield strategies and risk analysis have lived behind more restricted, institution-facing portals. By publicizing the same framework, Sentora intends to empower a broader set of users—investors, traders, and builders—to evaluate and participate in on-chain strategies with a clearer understanding of risk and capital allocation.

The two-vault model also helps differentiate the user experience. Direct Vaults provide a lower-friction route into yield generation, appealing to users who want straightforward exposure without layering multiple steps of capital deployment. Smart Vaults, meanwhile, align with more sophisticated users who seek enhanced returns through structured deployment patterns, albeit with a deeper layer of complexity and risk to assess. The underlying philosophy is to demystify “how” a vault earns yield, not just “how much.”

The analytics suite strengthens this approach. Investors can study past performance patterns, evaluate how liquidity and withdrawal dynamics might impact their positions, and gauge how concentrated ownership could affect a vault’s resilience to redemptions. For Smart Vaults, the ability to inspect protocol-level and asset-level breakdowns helps traders understand where capital is actually deployed across the stack. This granularity is a meaningful upgrade from surface-level appearance of yield, offering a more decision-ready picture of risk and reward.

Sentora’s planned DeFi Cover integration adds a forward-looking risk-management angle. If successfully rolled out, Cover protection would provide a protection layer for deployed capital, potentially reducing downside risk during extreme market conditions. The addition would complement the platform’s emphasis on transparency and risk context, aligning with broader industry moves toward insuring on-chain activities and expanding the set of guardrails available to yield-focused strategies.

Implications for the DeFi vault landscape

The public launch of Sentora Smart Yield arrives at a moment when DeFi vaults have matured into a common mechanism for capital allocation across chains. By publicly presenting strategy-level detail and risk context, Sentora is testing whether on-chain yield can be both approachable for non-institutional participants and disciplined enough for risk-aware investors. The emphasis on structure over simple APY aligns with a broader industry push to improve governance, transparency, and risk disclosure in yield-bearing products.

For investors and users, the development raises several key considerations. First, access to institutional-grade research tools could raise the quality of decision-making in retail DeFi participation, potentially improving risk awareness and capital efficiency. Second, the visibility into strategy design and deployment could spur more competition among vault builders to publish comparable disclosures, potentially raising standards industry-wide. Third, while DeFi Cover promises added protection, readers should watch how such protection interacts with liquidity, deployment strategies, and protocol risk, particularly in complex Smart Vaults with leveraged or multi-step structures.

In the broader market, Sentora’s public-facing approach may push other vault curators to offer similar levels of transparency, or to differentiate through risk analytics and coverage options. As vaults continue to serve as a primary interface for on-chain capital, the quality of information available to users about risk, exposures, and governance will likely influence participation levels, capital flows, and the pace of institutional-grade tools becoming mainstream.

Sentora’s public rollout also signals a continuing trend toward combining institutional rigor with user-friendly access. By presenting not just opportunities but the scaffolding behind them, the platform invites users to engage with DeFi yield in a more informed, deliberate manner. Whether this approach resonates with a broader audience remains to be seen, but it certainly adds a new layer to how DeFi yield opportunities are evaluated in real time.

Sentora Smart Yield is now accessible at vaults.sentora.com, and the company continues to position its platform as a bridge between institutional risk discipline and public market participation.

About Sentora

Sentora is a DeFi infrastructure and strategy partner serving institutional and sophisticated on-chain capital allocators. Through its research-led approach to vaults and private strategies, Sentora helps users access on-chain yield opportunities with greater transparency into strategy design, capital allocation, and risk.

April 30, 2026 – Sentora has announced that Sentora Smart Yield is now publicly available, opening access to its DeFi vault discovery and monitoring platform to all users.

As DeFi vaults become a core way capital moves onchain, Sentora is opening public access to the same research-led yield infrastructure it has used to support institutional deployments.

This comes as vaults have become a key part of DeFi infrastructure, and risk curators already account for nearly $7 billion in DeFi capital through curated vault structures.

The success of this model has been driven in large part by its ability to give users a simpler way to access onchain strategies while abstracting away much of the complexity of risk management.

With nearly $2 billion allocated across Sentora’s public vaults, the firm has become the largest public vault curator and works with key ecosystem partners such as Kraken, Upshift and Morpho.

Automated risk management, advanced strategy design and in-depth research have been central to Sentora’s rapid growth in this market segment.

The new platform means that the company is extending that same research-led framework to the public through a transparent, non-custodial interface built around strategy discovery, analytics and risk visibility.

Rather than functioning as another simple APY screen, Sentora Smart Yield is designed to help users understand the structure behind opportunities before they act.

Through the platform, users can compare vaults by asset, chain, strategy, APY, and risk metrics, while also reviewing how each vault is constructed. This is where capital is allocated and what exposures come with the strategy before interacting with the underlying vault contracts.

“Vaults are becoming one of the main ways capital is organized and deployed across DeFi, but most products still reduce that experience to a single number,” said Jesus Rodriguez, co-founder and CPO at Sentora.

“With Smart Yield, we’re bringing the same strategy framework we’ve built for institutional partners to the public, but in a format that gives users real transparency into how a vault works, where funds go and what risks they are taking before they deposit.”

Sentora Smart Yield also includes two core vault categories, Direct Vaults and Smart Vaults. Direct Vaults provide simpler, single-strategy exposure, typically through lending markets, and are designed to offer a cleaner, lower-complexity path to onchain yield.

Smart Vaults are more structured products that use multi-step capital deployment to pursue greater capital efficiency or enhanced returns through strategies, such as Supervised Loans and Leveraged Loops.

By making these strategies visible through a public dashboard, Sentora is bringing part of its more advanced institutional strategy set to a broader market for the first time.

In addition, each vault page includes analytics and monitoring tools designed to help users evaluate opportunities in greater detail.

These include historical yield behavior, TVL trends, liquidity conditions, withdrawal simulations, wallet concentration and strategy composition. 

For Smart Vaults, users can also view underlying deployments by protocol, blockchain and asset, giving them a clearer picture of how capital is allocated across the full strategy stack.

Sentora has also shared plans to bring DeFi Cover to all of its vaults, leveraging the Firelight protocol to add an additional protection layer for onchain asset deployments.

The result is a public product shaped by institutional requirements, not just access to DeFi yield but with the tools to assess it with greater discipline too.

As vaults continue to grow as an interface for onchain capital allocation, Sentora is positioning Smart Yield around a simple idea – yield discovery should come with structure, transparency and risk context, not just headline returns.

Sentora Smart Yield is available now at vaults.sentora.com.

About Sentora

Sentora is a DeFi infrastructure and strategy partner serving institutional and sophisticated onchain capital allocators. Through its research-led approach to vaults and private strategies, Sentora helps users and institutions access onchain yield opportunities with greater transparency into strategy design, capital allocation, and risk.

This publication is provided by the client. The text below is a paid press release that is not part of Cointelegraph.com independent editorial content. The text has undergone editorial review to ensure quality and relevance, it may not reflect the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.com. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research before taking any actions related to the company. Disclosure.

A Green Beret’s alleged $400,000 insider bet on a raid in Venezuela seemed like an isolated breach. A new report suggests it may be the visible edge of something broader.

The Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC), a nonprofit research group, analyzed every settled Polymarket contract from January 2021 through mid-March 2026 — more than 435,000 markets and $54.4 billion in cumulative volume — and found that low-probability bets on military and defense outcomes win at rates that are difficult to explain through skill or luck.

Across political markets, such “longshot” bets typically succeed about 14% of the time. In military-linked contracts, success rates have topped 50% in some cases.

“Markets tied to specific government policies, such as military and defense and foreign affairs, are harder to forecast using public information alone,” the authors wrote, making them “more susceptible to information asymmetries,” including insider trading or specialized knowledge.

In those markets, the gap between informed and uninformed traders may be widest, creating conditions in which a small group can consistently outperform not just by reacting faster, but by knowing more.

For its part, Polymarket touts its market surveillance teams and cooperation with the Department of Justice on the Venezuela case. Trading on confidential knowledge is prohibited on the platform, as it is on Kalshi.

Concentrated profits

The ACDC report’s findings add to a growing body of research pointing in the same direction. A working paper from London Business School and Yale found that roughly 3% of traders account for most price discovery on Polymarket.

Separate analysis from blockchain analytics firm Solidus Labs showed that profits are even more concentrated, with fewer than 1% of wallets capturing about half of all gains. ACDC’s contribution is to suggest where some of that edge may come from.

The report examines the June 2025 U.S. strikes on Iran as a case study. Polymarket listed several date-specific contracts on whether a strike would occur. Markets tied to June 19 and June 20 expired without incident, and no longshot bets won.

The strike came at 18:40 ET on June 21. In the hours leading up to it, 19 longshot bets totaling $164,292 were placed across the contracts that ultimately resolved YES. Eight wallets shared about $1.8 million in profits, with one taking nearly $500,000.

The Pentagon had designed the operation to be unreadable from the outside, using decoy bombers and long-range stealth aircraft to avoid detection. Despite that, a small number of traders placed large, well-timed bets on the outcome.

The pattern extends beyond a single event. Across Polymarket’s military and defense category, the report found that in five of the six two-hour windows before market resolution, winning longshot bets outnumbered losing ones, contrary to what market prices imply.

Longshot bets can outperform for other reasons, including mispricing or shifts in public expectations. But the consistency of the patterns, especially in markets tied to military decisions, suggests that some participants may be operating with information advantages that others do not have.

ACDC, being a nonprofit research group funded through the Fund for Constitutional Government, has no surveillance product to sell, compared to Solidus Labs, whose own recent Polymarket analysis doubles as a marketing case for the platform it licenses to Kalshi.

ACDC’s recommendations include identity verification for bettors, conditional payouts on suspicious wagers, restrictions on markets whose outcomes are decided by small groups, and limits on how granular contracts can become.

The report’s conclusion goes further, calling for “an evidence-informed debate about whether the public should be betting on these outcomes at all.”

MARA Holdings (MARA) has agreed to buy Long Ridge Energy & Power in a deal valued at about $1.5 billion. MARA will also assume at least $785 million of debt backstopped by a bridge loan.

The seller, FTAI Infrastructure (FIP), is up 12% in pre-market trading. MARA is ahead 3%.

The deal includes Long Ridge’s 505-megawatt combined-cycle gas plant in Hannibal, Ohio, along with more than 1,600 acres of land, water access, fiber links, fuel supply and grid connections, according to a Thursday filing.

MARA said the site could support more than 1 gigawatt of total power capacity over time.

MARA said the acquisition would raise its owned-and-operated power capacity by about 65% and expand its operating and development pipeline to roughly 2.2 gigawatts across PJM, ERCOT, SPP and international markets.

MARA plans to start construction on an initial AI and critical IT buildout in the first half of 2027, with the first capacity targeted for mid-2028. The company said it does not expect to cut Long Ridge’s current power supply to the PJM grid.

The company expects the Long Ridge assets to add about $144 million of annualized adjusted EBITDA. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2026.