CrowdIntelPeace was priced at 9 cents. Somebody bought $200K of it in February.
The Ukraine-ceasefire market sat at single-digit cents for months. A handful of accounts loaded up early and rode it to 98¢ when the news broke on May 9.
The event
Polymarket’s “Russia x Ukraine ceasefire by June 30, 2026?” market priced YES at 7–11¢ through May 7 — single-digit cents for months. On May 8 it stepped to 34¢; on May 9 it hit 98¢ on $49.6M of volume as the ceasefire news broke.
Daily YES price, “Russia x Ukraine ceasefire by June 30, 2026?” — from full on-chain reconstruction.
Anyone holding YES from April was paid ~10x. The real question is who was buying at single-digit cents, weeks early — and how big.
The centerpiece — VladimirPooper
Wallet 0xa53e…218d opened its ceasefire positions roughly three months before the spike. Per Polymarket’s own activity records, its stake sat across the whole complex — every leg entered while peace was still priced in single-digit to low-thirties cents.
| Market | First buy | Avg entry | Bought | Realized |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ceasefire by end of 2026 (YES) | 2026-02-11 | 37¢ | $160,918 | +$224,280 |
| Ceasefire by June 30 (YES) | 2026-02-11 | 18¢ | $42,571 | +$28,738 |
| Ceasefire by end of 2027 | — | — | — | +$29,665 |
| Ceasefire by May 31 (YES) | 2026-04-16 | 5¢ | $5,806 | +$662 |
≈ +$283K realized across the ceasefire complex, positions opened ~3 months before the news. Lifetime account PnL per Polymarket: +$82,473 (per-market figures are realized on these markets; the lifetime figure is his account total).
The club — same market, same shape
VladimirPooper was not alone. A small set of coordinated accounts took the same early, single-digit entries into the ceasefire market and rode the same spike.
| Wallet | Username | Entry | Bought | PM lifetime PnL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0xf797…0bf2 | DerDon | 26¢ from Apr 3 | $9,361 | +$98,500 |
| 0x9e36…508f | (none) | 8.2¢, Apr 4–9 | $783 | +$8,877 |
| 0x9648…6825 | anoin123 | 12–20¢, Jan–May (601 fills) | $62K | −$5,367,637 |
On anoin123: the biggest war-market winner is deep underwater lifetime — a separate story.
0x7c3db723f1d4d8cb9c550095203b686cb11e5c6b— “Car” — 35–56¢, Feb–May, $546K — excluded: publicly known whale (+$1,481,831).
- Two near-identical markets exist (duplicate slugs, different resolution terms) — every claim here is pinned to the resolved market’s condition_id.
- VladimirPooper realized his gains by selling into the news (average exit well below $1) — never “held to $1.”
- Buying a ceasefire at 9–37¢ in February is a macro call, not evidence of foreknowledge. Three months of lead time is an opinion, not a leak. That is what makes it printable.
How we computed this
The measure, the multiple-testing correction, and what we do not claim.
Skill vs entry odds, never raw win rate
For each wallet, over resolved positions, expected wins = Σ(entry price) and variance = Σ p(1−p). The z-score is (actual wins − expected) ÷ √variance. Entry price is the market’s own probability at purchase, so buying 95¢ favorites earns no credit — the null already expects those to win. A raw win rate is meaningless on its own.
Multiple-testing honesty
We scanned 102,263 wallets meeting the filters (≥20 resolved positions, ≥$10K staked, entry price 2–98¢). At z ≥ 3 chance alone would produce ~138 flags; we found 740. The Bonferroni-corrected line for this scan is z ≥ 5 — every headline account here clears it.
The dollars are Polymarket’s own
Every dollar figure comes from Polymarket’s public APIs (leaderboard profit + activity redemptions). Our internal ledger is used only to find wallets and compute the odds-based statistics, never to quote profit. Named per-market claims are re-derived from Polymarket’s activity records — buys, sells, and redemptions — so an account that scalped out early is not credited with a jackpot it never held.
What we do not claim
Addresses are pseudonymous; usernames are quoted as displayed. We assert no identity, no intent, and no wrongdoing — trade data cannot prove those. The words used are statistically extreme, coordinated, and anomalous. A shared funder plus an improbable record is evidence worth examining, not a verdict.