Polymarket Traders Knew The Weeknd Was Going to Beat Drake on Spotify Wrapped

Hours earlier than Spotify introduced its 2025 Wrapped outcomes, the chances on The Weeknd ending third on Polymarket’s contract surged from 40% to 99%.

Polymarket shared the information on X, framing it as proof that prediction markets work. But embedded in its personal submit was a contradiction: @FhantomBets referred to as it a ‘leak,’ in contrast it to the Nobel Prize incident in October, and described it as ‘the identical trick.’”

Not crowdsourced, an endpoint was discovered

Itay Yakobov, commenting on the episode on LinkedIn, described what he referred to as “The $3,162,695 Backend Heist.” According to Yakobov, merchants “scraped a publicly accessible WordPress file linked to a staging API” on Spotify’s newsroom site. The information confirmed that Drake had dropped from third to fourth after Spotify purged what he described as bot streams—elevating The Weeknd.

Polymarket is asking this a ‘discovery’

Yakobov’s account aligned with particulars shared by@IwqanBJZ, often called Suhaan on Z. “Polymarket is asking this a ‘discovery’ like they crowdsourced some good perception,” the dealer wrote. “No – somebody discovered an uncovered endpoint.”

@IwqanBJZ shared a screenshot from Fireplace Pro, a third-party Polymarket analytics instrument, exhibiting that one account had purchased shares in The Weeknd market at 3.64 cents. According to the screenshot, the account made greater than $12,000 in revenue.

The screenshot additionally confirmed different accounts with substantial positive factors, together with +$21,565 and +$17,163. The timing raised questions on how merchants knew the result earlier than Spotify’s public announcement.

Spotify’s newsroom does run on WordPress, as confirmed by publicly seen references to a Google Cloud Storage bucket labeled “pr-newsroom-wp.” Whether the particular endpoint described in these posts existed, and whether or not it contained the information merchants declare it did, couldn’t be verified. Spotify didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Prediction markets proceed to increase questions of integrity

Prediction markets have confronted persistent questions on the place crowd knowledge ends and insider entry begins. Polymarket is not any exception. The platform drew consideration from investors and policymakers after its markets on the 2024 U.S. presidential election had been extensively cited by media shops as extra correct than conventional polls.

A study by Columbia University researchers revealed final month discovered that roughly 25% of buying and selling quantity on the platform confirmed indicators of wash buying and selling – synthetic transactions designed to inflate exercise. The research discovered the suspicious buying and selling peaked at almost 60% of weekly quantity in December 2024, and that sports activities markets had been notably affected, with 45% of historic quantity flagged.

In October, the Norwegian Nobel Institute launched an investigation after buying and selling on Polymarket’s Nobel Peace Prize market surged hours earlier than the winner was introduced. One pockets, recognized solely as “6741,” positioned a $50,000 wager in a single commerce on a newly created account with no prior historical past. Norwegian officers described the exercise as a possible confidentiality breach.

The Spotify case raises a unique set of questions. Prediction markets, in idea, derive their worth from aggregating dispersed info – the “knowledge of crowds” that proponents usually cite. But when the knowledge benefit comes from technical reconnaissance fairly than real market perception, the road between worth discovery and knowledge arbitrage turns into more durable to draw.

Disclosure: DeFi Rate reached out to Spotify to remark on staging entry and purging of bot site visitors. Trading information referenced on this article was obtained from screenshots shared on social media and third-party analytics instruments, in a roundabout way from Polymarket.

The submit Polymarket Traders Knew The Weeknd Was Going to Beat Drake on Spotify Wrapped appeared first on DeFi Rate.

Similar Posts