Lolakis

I turned a $3,000 deposit on Polymarket into over a $40,000 PnL. Here is my journey: Started the year down bad, ran $7k into the ground gambling without a real edge. Hit $3k and had a choice to make. The turning point came the day of the Iran strikes. Everyone was buying YES on strikes. I went short Bitcoin instead, felt the downside was smaller if I was wrong. Bitcoin dumped. That's when it clicked: stop gambling, size appropriately, be consistent. Since February 28th, exactly 3 months ago: I've turned that $ 3K into $ 40K. I learned so much about risk management and what it takes to be an actual consistently profitable trader. I don't have to gamble and more importantly, i don't have to stress about my positions. The approach is simple: -No moonshots. I'm not looking for 1000x - High Volatility plays with decent volume - Multiple small wins, compounding fast - Dont oversize, allows for easy exits, avoids holding the bag - I trade anything, as long as the direction is clear, the flow is good, and the arguments hold up If I can't find that, I don't trade. Going forward, I'll be sharing my thoughts on markets, the bets I'm taking, updates on my trades, and documenting my journey through prediction markets. Just decided to go full time with one goal right now: $ 100K.

Infinite returns on Polymarket 101: The "Microstrategy sells any bitcoin in may" market resolved to NO as expected. After the market resolved the orderbook still had shares which you could redeem instantly

Someone just burned 100,000$ on Polymarket: The account seems to be a crypto fund "Arca" They bought 20M Yes shares on the "Microstrategy sells any bitcoin by may" market This happened right as a UMA wallet revealed 200K votes for YES The market settles to NO in 1H 45M....

@Jeremybtc the outcome was already decided, the market resolves on the UMA vote. The price doesnt actually reflect probability of settling Y, it reflects copium.

Only 4 hours until the MicroStrategy Bitcoin sale Polymarket resolves I obviously doubt it'll resolve yes (please do though, I'd love to make $200k) But it'll be interesting to see what happens after

@jtrader You do not understand neither how polymarket works nor what you are reading. Polymarket clarified first, before UMA vote, and uma voted according to poly's clarification. The market is settling to NO in a couple of hours

If you buy YES right now and this resolves YES, you make 320x. there's a 99% chance it resolves NO. The market is telling you that loud and clear. But on paper, the rule was three sentences. The 8-K exists. Two sibling markets already paid YES on the same evidence. One of the most asymmetric bets I've ever seen on Polymarket. 7 hours to find out.

@BTCBeliever21 @lranonPM polymarket issued the clarification not UMA. UMA vote is based on the clarification polymarket issued themselves. Why would polymarket overrule UMA when they voted based on their own decision?

@lranonPM Good luck, I hope for you Polymarket doesn't overrule the UMA because of legal action and public scrutiny

Stupidity has no limits. Live example. But thanks to them, we make more money. So, to all YES holders, I'm really really grateful.

@community_fist not buying at 99c will not change the fact that the market will settle as NO given that the vote already reached consensus. your point is a bit meaningless, its just optics.

Polymarket whales should learn a simple rule: don't saw off the branch you're sitting on. What they don't seem to understand is that supporting Polymarket's outrageous handling of the MicroStrategy market will ultimately hurt them as well. Whales already enjoy significant advantages over the average Polymarket trader thanks to their capital, their ability to earn attractive APRs on near-certain markets, and their overall market access. They don't need yet another advantage in the form of opaque resolution practices based on obscure precedents and the intricacies of UMA governance that most users know nothing about. It may seem like a great opportunity to make easy money by buying Microstrategy market shares at 99 cents. And maybe it is - in the short term. But that's exactly the problem. Markets like this can generate effortless profits for whales and Polymarket today, but the long-term consequences are far more damaging. Polymarket stands to lose much more in reputation and user retention than it gains in fees from a single controversial market. And while whales may profit today, they'll likely lose far more over time as ordinary users increasingly avoid Polymarket altogether - or at least stay away from markets with rules that are vulnerable to interpretation and manipulation. The irony is that a large portion of Polymarket's markets fall into that category. A healthy prediction market ecosystem needs broad participation. If casual users stop trusting the rules, the entire pool shrinks, and even the biggest players end up worse off.

@omegadyor @bo_xbt @saylor @willo2_Poly @yuyue_chris i understand you are new, but please do not be so confidently wrong and just listen to people that are trying to explain things to you so that you can hopefully make a lot in the future.

@LolakisPM @bo_xbt @saylor @willo2_Poly @yuyue_chris THE ORDERBOOK WILL BE CLEARED 24 hours later, still isn’t.

There’s major disagreement on Polymarket about whether you sold BTC before or after May 31, @saylor. Can you clarify the correct date? The resolution is currently stuck. Appreciate your help! @willo2_poly @yuyue_chris

@omegadyor @bo_xbt @saylor @willo2_Poly @yuyue_chris 'the orderbook will be cleared' does not mean it will be taken down. it means before issuing the clarification all limit orders will be cancelled so people dont get filled from older limit orders after the clarification is issued.

You do not understand how polymarket resolutions work. Once a market is disputed, there is a window for arguments to be made and for uma to vote on them. once uma vote they have a 24h reveal window and once the market reaches consensus the market settles. we are currently in the reveal phase. this is simply the procedure for resolving markets.

@LolakisPM @bo_xbt @saylor @willo2_Poly @yuyue_chris “So let’s leave the orderbook live”

@0xNapalm if that were the case they would have already intervened, and i highly doubt if the markets team needed approval they wouldn't have gotten it before issuing the clarification on such a big market.

@LolakisPM yes, but those who wrote the clarification have managers who knows their thoughts

BUT Polymarket has already overturned an UMA resolution before back in 2024 the market "Was Barron Trump involved in $DJT?" was resolved to "No" by UMA. but after the resolution, it became clear that Barron was in fact involved in some capacity instead of hiding behind the oracle result, Polymarket publicly stated that the market had not resolved to the truth. they refunded YES holders and paid them out despite UMA's official outcome reasoning was simple: as prediction markets become an important source of information, getting to the truth matters more than blindly following a flawed oracle resolution. point isn't whether that decision was right or wrong. point is that there is already a precedent where Polymarket stepped in after an UMA resolution because they believed the outcome did not reflect reality. so when people say "UMA decides and that's the end of it," it's worth remembering that Polymarket itself has taken a different view in the past but this situation is a bit different, since we're already seeing the team's view reflected in the market comments so 10 hours and we will see the result

A lot of people are confused on what is actually happening right now in the "Microstrategy Sells BTC in may" market: The 'additional context' under the orderbook was issued by polymarket themselves UMA then has to take into consideration that clarification by PM meaning they will vote NO. That means that polymarket wont change any decision made by UMA as some people say, because they already issued their decision first. The reveal phase of the votes for UMA already started (vote.uma.xyz) and will end in 23 hours at which point the market will settle as NO. Please don't burn your money hoping for a 1000x. This is over.

@cynical_reason i personally do it manually so that i can also profit on the underlying shares. You can most likely automate it however you would probably get way more adverse fills at which point i am not sure if it would be worth it

@LolakisPM congrats! any way to automate this

+$527.03 in one day from setting limit orders The highest reward i have ever gotten on Polymarket from trading the microstrategy market Holding shares was never without risk, however this was much safer if done correctly. I was doing about 2500$ worth of shares every time, all i had to do was time it. I also profited from flipping the shares so no adverse fills here.

@MrOziPM well said, my exact thoughts

I am sorry for your loss. Clearly, Polymarket could have and should have done a a bunch of things to prevent this (and other) situations, which harm many users and lead them to lose money. And let me also say: You were not scammed of anything. 1) You write: "Polymarket SPECIFICALLY WAITED until the 8K was filed, to resolve the market." This claim is wrong. In fact, the market is still open and tradable because of the Polymarket governance that keeps all the markets open while a resolution dispute is in progress, which takes 3 days typically. Is it a bad system? Yes. Does it create an impression for unfamiliar people that new evidence is permissible? Yes. But, no, they did not do anything specifically to keep it open. It's just their crappy system. And you were unfamiliar with it. If anything, they should've done something specifically to close the market, rather than defaulting to their typical mechanism. 2) You write: "Their "sharps" could fill 6-figures against people betting on a confirmed outcome, then they could add a new rule and scam all the newcomers." It is clearly Polymarket's fault that to this day they haven't created and published resolution guidelines. It is their fault that experienced users, like myself, often benefit from knowing the unwritten governance and resolution precedents at the expense of users less familiar with them, like yourself. But there was no new rule created. With some exceptions, which are usually (but not always) written into the rules, evidence published after the market's end date cannot be taken into account. Otherwise, you would never know when a market is resolvable. I was buying No-shares before the filing was revealed on Monday morning at 80-90c precisely because of that. The market was already effectively dead, if you only knew the unwritten rules. Now, obviously, they should make that very clear, e.g. by putting a big red banner on markets that pass their end date informing users that new evidence doesn't count and that the market is in a resolution phase only. Or, they could block trading after market's resolution date. Many options. So, while I cannot blame you for not knowing the precedents and for being fooled by the market being seemingly "open" for new evidence, it is not true that new rules were added post-factum. You were simply unaware of them. 3) You write: "Now - the fact that people were willing to give me 20-25c on the dollar for an event that was 100% certain was certainly a red flag. But I had checked and re-checked the rules." You were willing to risk $0.5m on the assumption that your counterparties were simply giving you free money. I judge that to be a grave mistake of overconfidence. A more prudent approach would've been to engage with your counterparties and try to understand why they're willing to bet so much against you. +++ So while I agree that Polymarket's communication about resolution mechanics is very inadequate and leads honest well-reasoning people like you to lose money, I would caution against going into conspiratory theories of Polymarket intentionally keeping the market open and sharps adding new rules. If you want to continue trading, I'd advise you to join one of the prediction market trading communities. Checking in with some fellow traders could've saved you $0.5m here. In our PredictLab Discord, we actively discussed the market as it went and most of us decided to bet on No because of the existing clarification precedents for similar situations. I hope you will win it back one day.