How a French “whale” made over $80 million on Polymarket betting on Trump’s 2024 election win

This week, 60 Minutes correspondent Anderson Cooper reported on Polymarket, a prediction market where users can bet against each other on the outcome of future events like football games, political elections, or even celebrity pregnancy announcements.

The Polymarket website features up to 15 categories of markets that users can bet on. The markets are often presented as questions, like “#1 Searched Actor on Google this year?” or “Xi Jinping out before 2027?”  

Bettors can bet “Yes” or “No” on an outcome. The betting odds – or predictions – are prominently displayed next to each question, and also presented below on a graph, showing how the odds change over time. Rules for each market are spelled out too. 

Polymarket bettors can potentially win — or lose — serious money by betting on political elections around the world, one of the biggest draws of the platform. 

In 2024, the presidential race between then-Vice President Kamala Harris and President Trump attracted a “whale,” or a high-stakes bettor.

An anonymous man living in France placed substantial bets on Polymarket in early October 2024 that Mr. Trump would win the election. Most pollsters thought the race was too close to call.

“Everyone said, ‘He’s an idiot and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,’ people thought he just liked Trump… and he actually commissioned a ton of private polls,” Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan explained to Cooper. 

“He did something called neighbor polling, which is you ask people who they think their neighbors are likely to vote for… [in] an election where there’s a stigma to saying you’re gonna vote for somebody and people feel some sort of social awkwardness.” 

The “French Whale,” as he has now become known, contracted polls in battleground states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, using global research data and analytics group YouGov, which also conducts polls for CBS News.

In addition to a more traditional poll that asks the participant which candidate they would vote for, the “French Whale” requested a so-called “neighbor poll,” where respondents were asked which candidate people in their “social circle” would vote for. 

The results showed a significant discrepancy: the neighbor polls showed much more support for Mr. Trump than the traditional poll. 

The “French Whale” then raised his stake in Mr. Trump winning the election to $80 million, using several different accounts, about three weeks before Election Day. 

“He thought Trump was undervalued… and they were confident in their research that Trump was likely to win,” Coplan told 60 Minutes. 

When Mr. Trump won the 2024 presidential election, the “French Whale” made over $80 million from his wager. 

The Polymarket CEO said the “French Whale” story highlights how Polymarket bettors are financially incentivized to find cutting-edge information.

“If this guy was not able to make [over] $80 million, but rather able to make $80,000, he would’ve never gone through the hassle,” Coplan explained.

“But when you get markets that are big enough… you create this incentive for people to go above and beyond to try and find truth.”

Cooper asked Coplan if election betting markets on Polymarket are vulnerable to influence: “If people are looking… and they see, ‘Oh, there’s somebody who’s betting huge amounts that Trump is gonna win, does that influence the market?”

“It definitely puts people on alert. But at the same time, if they think that some guy, some French whale is just buying like crazy and he’s out of his mind… that’s an incentive for all the smart money to take the other side,” Copaln said. 

On Polymarket, bettors take both sides of the bet— “yes” and “no.” You can sell shares to other bettors anytime. But when an event is over and the market resolves, holders of winning shares win everything, each receives $1 per share, while losing shares are worthless.

For some users to profit, others have to lose.

“The people who were on the other side of [the “French Whale”] obviously didn’t fare well,” Coplan said. 

The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Patrick Lee. 

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