Is Someone Close to Netanyahu Manipulating Polymarket Bets on His Election Victory? - Israel Elections 2026
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The fresh account then vanished from trading for two and a half months, before returning to Polymarket – this time to bet on Netanyahu. 25xp put roughly $40,000 into this bet and alone controls about a quarter of the betting market in Netanyahu’s favor. Its bets on Netanyahu came, almost without exception, right after Netanyahu’s odds had fallen – both on Polymarket and in the polls – in what can be read also as an effort to help counter the decline. On June 21, for instance, a heavy purchase by the account was among those that helped push the “yes” share price up from 33 to 35 cents, and the next day from 36 to 37. On June 26, hours after another major account betting against Netanyahu called turo knocked the price down eight points, 25xp made its largest single purchase yet, $20,500, again helping to offset the drop.
Could it be that someone in Netanyahu’s circle, with access to classified information, is using part of the money made from that Iran windfall to prop up the prime minister’s standing on the platform and push back against his declining status? Or is this nothing more than one of those extraordinary coincidences that have plagued the Middle East since the dawn of history?
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When we told the two researchers about the strange case of 25xp late one night, they expressed particular interest, because his case appears to combine two kinds of bias at once: on one hand, a consistent effort to raise, or at least preserve, the value of a specific share; and on the other, a bet that – going by several signs – is based on inside information.
According to the analysis the researchers conducted at our request, 25xp is just one of a handful of accounts that generated most of the activity in the Netanyahu market during roughly half of the trading hours in recent weeks. “They move the market, purchase after purchase,” they conclude.
One might ask how such “whales,” invested in the market with large sums, create bigger waves than smaller betters: The reason is that bettors with small sums produce a negligible effect that gets swallowed into the bigger market swings, too slow and less noticeable than someone who, in a single stroke, injects thousands of dollars into the market and thus manages to move the needle. Our analysis reveals that a single large bet is enough to shift the odds on an Israeli candidate by whole percentage points, for hours or even days. In addition, placing a large bet affects the price immediately, but it can also create a dynamic that draws in more bettors in the same direction – similar to how stock pump-and-dump scams operate.
According to the figures Polymarket displays to users, the question of who will be Israel’s next prime minister is churning almost $30 million, and that makes quite an impression. Masses, it seems, are buying and selling – giving the market the veneer of a hive mind. But in fact that sum is just the market volume, and actually includes the sum of all the money that has changed hands cumulatively – so a $1,000 position that is sold for $1,000 makes $2,000 in volume, though no new money was actually invested. Volume and the funds that feed its calculation can also be conjured out of thin air, using tricks that we will soon see have already taken place in the betting on the prime minister.
The real amount actually sitting in the pot of the Israeli prime minister market at the start of this week was 39 times lower – about $760,000, roughly the price of a three-room apartment in the Israeli suburbs.
Our analysis reveals that in the betting markets on the specific candidates – yes/no on Netanyahu, or on Eisenkot or on Bennet, and so on – there are only a few thousand small bettors and very few large ones. Eighty percent of those betting on Netanyahu in recent weeks, for instance, put less than $10 on the bet. By contrast, about three whales hold close to a third of the betting market on him.
▻https://archive.ph/2026.07.30-102055/https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/2026-07-30/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/is-someone-close-to-netanyahu-manipulating-polymarket-bets-on-his-election-win/0000019f-af43-debc-a79f-efe3da6d0000