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Prediction markets have provided gamblers with a virtually unlimited number of opportunities to make (or lose) money by betting on basically everything under the sun. You can even wager on things involving the sun by taking a risk on the weather, and authorities in France are investigating someone who seemingly manipulated a meteorological outpost to try to make some cash.
Gambling has a history that stretches back well before the beginning of recorded human history, and various forms of betting have been popular in civilizations around the globe for thousands of years.
Sports and games of chance have historically been the primary focus of the majority of wagers that have changed hands, but we’ve recently entered a new (and largely uncharted) era thanks to prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi, which have provided gamblers with an unprecedented number of options to explore.
Those platforms have gamified current events, politics, and the entertainment industry as well as things as simple as the weather. They’ve also been linked to insider trading and manipulation, and we’ve been treated to our latest incident courtesy of someone who attempted to profit off the temperature in France.
A Polymarket bettor may have heated up a thermometer at a weather station in France to win a bet
Prediction markets attempt to frame the wagers users make as “positions” or “trades,” but they are ostensibly bets with odds that are tied to the number of people who’ve thrown their support behind a particular prophecy.
The largely unregulated nature of those platforms has made them ripe for abuse among people with inside information.
This week, a special ops soldier was arrested for using classified information to attempt to profit from the raid that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Polymarket, and Kalshi suspended three Congressional candidates who were fined for trying to pull a fast one with the inside intel at their disposal.
Those bad actors aren’t exclusive to the United States, and all signs point to at least one recently causing some trouble in France.
According to NPR, Polymarket had been using data from the weather station Meteo France operates at Charles de Gaulle International Airport to settle bets concerning the temperature in Paris on particular days.
On April 15th, someone with the handle “xX25Xx” threw down $119 while wagering the thermometer would surpass 18° (~64°F), and they ended up making $21,398 after an unexpected spike to 22°C around 9 P.M. that night. The nature and timing of that increase understandably raised some red flags (especially when you consider other stations in the area didn’t record any anomalies), and airport police subsequently launched an investigation after receiving a complaint from Meteo France.
It’s currently unclear who was responsible for the suspicious rise, but the leading theory is that the person who made the bet made their way to the weather station and used a cordless hair dryer, lighter, or some other heat source to skew the readings.
It’s also unclear if they were the same person behind the account with the username “Hoaqin,” which raked in $14,000 on April 6th after another spike led to them cashing in on a bet about the temperature exceeding 21°C.
However, that strategy has been foiled (at least for the time being), as Polymarket has shifted to data compiled at Paris–Le Bourget Airport in response.