This is The Guardian.
In the early hours of January 3rd,
Donald Trump ordered a surprise attack on the Venezuelan capital Caracas to kidnap the country's leader,
Nicolás Maduro.
Millions of Venezuelans' lives were thrown into uncertainty.
Politicians at home and abroad scrambled to respond.
It's obviously a fast-moving situation, and we need to establish all the facts.
It seemed like this was something no one had seen coming.
The public needs answers.
Across America, people are just saying, what the hell is going on?
Or almost no one.
Just hours before news broke of the military operation,
an anonymous user on the prediction market placed a significant bet that Maduro would be out of power by the end of the month.
Because it turns out that one person had literally predicted that this would happen.
The facts are not known publicly yet.
However, this particular trade really has all the hallmarks of an insider trade.
In the hours before the attack, someone, and we have no way of knowing who,
put a series of bets that trump would oust Maduro on a prediction market platform,
netting them nearly half a million dollars when it happened.
These platforms allow their users not just to bet on whoever's going to win the Super Bowl,