How to spot insider trading on Polymarket

Yelodata · 26 October 2026

Every Polymarket trade is public, so when someone bets big before news breaks, it leaves a trail. Most of what looks like insider trading turns out to be noise, though. This guide covers the six patterns worth checking, the two that have actually predicted outcomes, and a real scan read line by line.

Why insider-like trading shows up on Polymarket

Polymarket accounts are wallets on the Polygon blockchain. Anyone can see which wallets hold a market, how much they hold, what they paid and what else they've traded. Someone who really knew an outcome in advance would leave a familiar trail: a fresh wallet, one market, a big bet at long odds, often placed alongside a few other fresh wallets.

The catch is that ordinary traders leave the same trail all the time. New users open new wallets. Fans put everything on their team. Groups of friends bet together. So the useful question isn't "does this wallet look like an insider?" but "which of these patterns actually tells you anything?"

The six patterns to check

Yeloop's insider scan scores every holder with $500 or more on one side of a market, from 0 to 100. The score adds up six parts:

1. Few markets traded (up to 20 points). A wallet whose only market is this one gets the full 20. Three markets or fewer gets 16, and it drops quickly from there. Insiders don't diversify. Neither do many beginners.
2. New wallet (up to 20). Under 7 days old gets 20, under 30 days 14, under 90 days 8. A wallet whose very first trade was in this market counts as purpose-built and gets the full 20.
3. Win record (up to 25). A record too good for the odds the wallet paid: for example, every one of 8 or more resolved bets won. The odds matter here. Winning 9 of 10 bets bought at 90¢ is just what a 90¢ price means, so a record its prices explain scores nothing.
4. All in this bet (up to 15). 90% or more of the wallet's money in this one position gets 15. No hedging looks like certainty.
5. Long-odds entry (up to 20). Bought cheap before the price moved: under 5¢ and now 80¢ or more gets the full 20. It only counts once the move has happened. The smallest case that scores is an entry under 20¢ with the price now at 50¢ or higher.
6. Bought with others (up to 15). Several wallets entering within minutes of each other, with similar sizes, especially when they're new too.

The total puts each wallet in a band: under 30 is normal, 30–49 notable, 50–69 elevated and 70 or more suspicious.

Only two of them have held up

We track flagged wallets and check how their markets resolve. Two parts have predicted outcomes: a win record too good for its odds and a long-odds entry before the move. We call those the real signals.

The other four (new, narrow, all-in, bought together) haven't predicted anything on their own. Most flags in our tracking came from exactly that combination, and following them lost money. So a wallet with no real signal is capped at 69. It can be elevated, but never suspicious, and Yeloop labels it pattern only.

A real scan, read line by line

On 26 October 2026 we ran an insider scan on the Yes side of "Will Kylian Mbappé win the 2026 Ballon d'Or?", priced at 30¢. It scored 29 holders with $500 or more. Seven came back elevated, and none had a real signal.

Here's the top wallet, which scored 64:

0x9e59…553e on the Yes side, scoring 64

Few markets traded

20/20

New wallet

20/20

Win record

0/25

All in this bet

15/15

Long-odds entry

0/20

Bought with others

9/15

Both real signals are empty: pattern only64

How to read it:

• It's a brand-new wallet and this is its first market ever. That maxes out both "few markets" and "new wallet".
• Nearly all its money is in this bet, $19.1K bought at 7¢.
• It bought around the same time as other big holders. Five brand-new wallets bought Yes at 5–9¢, so the coordination part scores 9 of 15.
• The long-odds entry scores zero, even at 7¢. The price is 30¢ now, not 50¢ or more, so the move hasn't happened yet. If the wallet knew something, the market hasn't caught up.
• No win record, because the wallet has no resolved bets yet.

So it's a pattern worth seeing, not proof anyone knew. The scan also showed how much of the move is left (entry 7¢, now 30¢: early, most of it hasn't happened) and how deep the order book is (about 2,100 shares buyable within 5% of the best price). That tells you whether following the wallet is even practical.

What a real signal looks like

Change one thing in that example: say the price had climbed to 85¢. The 7¢ entry would now be a long-odds entry before the move and score 16 points. The wallet would have a real signal, the cap at 69 would no longer apply, and it would be listed above the pattern-only wallets.

The same goes for a wallet that has won 8 of 8 resolved bets it bought at middling odds. That record is hard to explain by luck, so it counts as a real signal too.

Common mistakes

• Treating "new wallet" as evidence. Plenty of people open a new wallet for one bet they care about.
• Reading a win rate without the odds. A wallet that only buys favourites at 90¢ will win most of the time. That's the price, not knowledge.
• Ignoring how far the price has moved. If a wallet bought at 4¢ and the price is already 92¢, the information is in the price and there's little left to follow.
• Copying flagged wallets blindly. In our tracking, copying flagged wallets has lost money so far. Use the scan to understand a market, not as a tip.

How to check a market yourself

1. Open @yeloop_bot in Telegram and paste a Polymarket link, or type a few words and pick the market.
2. Choose Insider scan and a side.
3. Read the wallets with a real signal first, then the pattern-only ones, and check how much of the move is left.
4. Scan the other side too. If it looks much the same, the pattern says more about who trades this market than about either side.

To find markets worth scanning, a market sweep runs the insider scan over the 20 biggest markets at once. To dig into one wallet, see how to look up a Polymarket wallet.