{"id":888455,"date":"2026-01-28T23:11:51","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T05:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/28\/vitalik-made-70k-betting-against-crazy-things-on-polymarket-heres-how\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T23:11:51","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T05:11:51","slug":"vitalik-made-70k-betting-against-crazy-things-on-polymarket-heres-how","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/28\/vitalik-made-70k-betting-against-crazy-things-on-polymarket-heres-how\/","title":{"rendered":"Vitalik Made $70K Betting Against \u201cCrazy Things\u201d on Polymarket \u2013 Here\u2019s How"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Vitalik Made $70K Betting Against \u201cCrazy Things\u201d on Polymarket \u2013 Here\u2019s How <\/h2>\n
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\n <\/p>\n

Crypto Journalist<\/p>\n

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Anas Hassan<\/p>\n

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\n <\/p>\n

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Crypto Journalist<\/p>\n

Anas Hassan<\/span>\"Verified\"<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Part of the Team Since<\/p>\n

Jun 2025<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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About Author<\/p>\n

Anas is a crypto native journalist and SEO writer with over five years of writing experience covering blockchain, crypto, DeFi, and emerging tech.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Last updated:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Vitalik<\/p>\n

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin revealed he earned $70,000 on prediction market platform Polymarket last year through what he calls \u201canti-insanity mode<\/strong>,\u201d a strategy of betting against irrational market frenzy.<\/p>\n

The disclosure came during an extensive interview with Foresight News in Chiang Mai, where Buterin outlined his growing concerns that crypto applications are diverging from their original missions despite significant technological progress.<\/p>\n

Buterin\u2019s profit strategy involved identifying markets caught in \u201ccrazy mode<\/em><\/strong>\u201d and wagering that unlikely events wouldn\u2019t materialize, including bets against Donald Trump winning the Nobel Peace Prize and the dollar collapsing to zero during panic periods.<\/p>\n

The comments arrive as prediction market adoption surges<\/a>, with Polymarket app installs jumping 1,200% between January and December 2025, while weekly trading volume across platforms exploded from $500 million to nearly $6 billion.<\/p>\n

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Three Urgent Missions Driving Ethereum\u2019s Direction<\/span><\/h2>\n

Buterin framed his current motivation around three escalating concerns that extend beyond technical development into existential threats facing the crypto industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy biggest fear right now is that the entire industry will eventually degenerate into a place for 100% cryptocurrency speculation, with only conjecture and no real applications,<\/em>\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Beyond this \u201cdoomsday scenario<\/em><\/strong>,\u201d Buterin emphasized the need to improve Ethereum\u2019s technology, particularly by making Layer 2 networks more efficient and decentralized<\/a> while catching up with Web2 user experiences<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His third priority addresses a darker possibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we fail with Crypto, the future technological world could very well be completely dominated by Centralized AI, which would be a very dangerous future,<\/em>\u201d Buterin warned. <\/p>\n

He positioned cryptocurrency as \u201cour defense against this trend of digital totalitarianism and for maintaining diversity and freedom in the technological world.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n

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When Technology Succeeds, But Applications Fail<\/span><\/h2>\n

The Ethereum<\/strong><\/a> founder identified a fundamental disconnect emerging across blockchain development over the past year that threatens the industry\u2019s broader purpose.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the past year, Ethereum has made tremendous progress in scaling technology,<\/em>\u201d Buterin explained, noting gas capacity increases from 30 million to 60 million with goals reaching 300 million this year.<\/p>\n

However, a recent network research report from MigaLabs shows that Ethereum has struggled with data-heavy blocks<\/a> since December\u2019s Fusaka upgrade<\/a>, with missed-slot rates climbing above 1.7% when blob counts exceed 16.<\/p>\n

Despite these challenges and advances, he also expressed deep concern about application-layer stagnation, arguing that prediction markets remain the only sector showing explosive growth in 2025, yet even these platforms expose significant problems.<\/p>\n

Buterin criticized Polymarket\u2019s focus on short-term bets, such as hourly Bitcoin price movements and weekly sports outcomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese short-term bets don\u2019t have much social significance in the long run,<\/em>\u201d he said, advocating instead for mechanisms with long-term incentives like Robin Hanson\u2019s Futarchy concept, currently being tested by MetaDAO, where prediction markets determine governance methods rather than just betting outcomes.<\/p>\n

When asked about priority applications, Buterin emphasized decentralized social networking first, followed by \u201csmarter<\/strong>\u201d DAOs that move beyond simple token voting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can\u2019t just be about issuing a token and having a vote,<\/em>\u201d he said. \u201cDevelopers need to think more deeply: What are the specific goals of this organization? What kind of governance structure best matches these goals?<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n

As these infrastructure challenges persist, the Ethereum Foundation recently elevated quantum resistance<\/a> to a top strategic priority, allocating $2 million in funding and a dedicated Post Quantum team.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Oracle Vulnerabilities Threaten Prediction Market Growth<\/span><\/h2>\n

Buterin highlighted critical security flaws in current oracle systems that could undermine the reliability of prediction markets as adoption accelerates.<\/p>\n

He recounted a Ukrainian conflict market in which the Institute for War Studies\u2019 maps served as the data source for determining Russian control of a train station.<\/p>\n

\u201cISW employees, perhaps by mistake or intentionally, hacked their own system, and their maps suddenly updated to show that Russian troops controlled the train station<\/em>,\u201d Buterin explained.<\/p>\n

This caused an event with a 5% probability to become certain instantly before ISW retracted the update the next day.<\/p>\n

Current Oracle solutions face serious limitations. While centralized models like Bloomberg require trusting a single entity, decentralized token-voting systems like UMA suffer from game-theoretic flaws that allow whales to manipulate voting results.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you vote for the truth, if you oppose the majority, the system will judge you as the loser and you will lose money,<\/em>\u201d Buterin said, forcing participants to vote with whales rather than truth.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Despite Buterin\u2019s warning, the Prediction Market economy is booming. Polymarket returned to the U.S. market<\/a> following CFTC approval with ultra-low 10-basis-point taker fees, while the company secured a $2 billion investment from Intercontinental Exchange at a nearly $9 billion valuation.<\/p>\n

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Vitalik Made $70K Betting Against \u201cCrazy Things\u201d on Polymarket \u2013 Here\u2019s How Crypto Journalist Anas Hassan Crypto Journalist Anas Hassan Part of the Team Since Jun 2025 About Author Anas is a crypto native journalist and SEO writer with over five years of writing experience covering blockchain, crypto, DeFi, and emerging tech. Last updated:\u00a0 January<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":888456,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1922,60543],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-888455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-betting","8":"category-vitalik"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/888456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}