「My method is actually very simple」, Vitalik Buterin said last week when asked how he made $70,000 in a year, 「I would look for markets that have already gone into 'crazy mode,' and then bet against — these crazy things will not happen.」

When the world goes crazy, rationality is the best arbitrage

At the end of January 2026, in an interview in Chiang Mai, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin publicly discussed his trading experience on the prediction market Polymarket: In 2025, he used about $440,000 in capital to make around $70,000 in profit.

Although this amount is insignificant to Vitalik, who is worth hundreds of millions, his trading strategy mentioned in the interview and his understanding of the Polymarket settlement mechanism indicate that he is not just playing around, but has developed a very sophisticated trading logic after delving deep into the entire prediction market system.

To make it easier for the audience to understand, he even gave a few specific examples: For instance, last year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Trump, who has repeatedly publicly stated that he is the most qualified person to receive the award.

After being widely reported by the media, the probability of Trump winning the award once exceeded 15%, and many traders believed that in Trump's style, he would use various means to force the Norwegian Nobel Committee to eventually compromise and award him the prize.

Vitalik's assessment of this matter was straightforward: This 15% does not reflect the actual probability but rather reflects emotion. What I need to do is stand on the opposite side of emotion and use rationality to profit from that overestimated probability difference.

Starting from "Trump won't get the prize," deduce Vitalik's Polymarket account

Based on the clues revealed by Vitalik in the interview and Polymarket's mechanism for traders' "trackable records," we can actually try to outline his account profile: $440,000 in capital, $70,000 in annual profit, earning money by betting that Trump would not receive the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.

After a series of filtering, two accounts emerged: momom and terremoto.

In addition to matching the principal and profit, the trading logic of both parties perfectly aligns with Vitalik's profit system for the "short sentiment": over 70% of the trades are betting on something not happening, with no speculative price or sports-related trades.

Furthermore, through further on-chain fund tracing, it was discovered that although terremoto's fund deposit amount matches $440,000, the money was split into several small deposits of thousands of dollars, with no activity between multiple on-chain wallets other than fund transfers.

On the other hand, momom's on-chain deposits consist of several transfers of over one hundred thousand dollars. Considering that momom's account has only one "Yes" bet transaction, coupled with terremoto's high-frequency trading, resembling more of a full-time trader active in the prediction market every day, we ultimately believe that momom better fits Vitalik's profile.

If momom is indeed Vitalik: What is his strategy?

Imagine this: Today is March 3, 2025. As a devoted Trump supporter, you are convinced that he is unlike past puppet presidents controlled by the deep state. Within a year of Trump taking office, he fulfilled various campaign promises (ICE cracking down on immigrants, imposing tariffs to "protect domestic businesses," etc.).

You also distinctly remember that he promised during his campaign to push for the disclosure of UFO and extraterrestrial-related documents.

Just yesterday, you saw a news report about U.S. lawmakers pushing new legislation to establish a "UFO Task Force." Additionally, in the comments, someone mentioned another related news:

A former U.S. Air Force and intelligence officer, David Grusch, revealed that the U.S. government has been running a "decades-long UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program," recovering aircraft of "non-human origin" and "non-human biological remains."

As these clues connect, you have realized something extraordinary: Trump is highly likely to disclose alien-related documents!

At this moment, you see in the prediction market that the probability of "Will the U.S. announce the existence of extraterrestrial beings in 2025?" is only 10%. This means Trump has nearly 11 months to disclose the relevant documents.

"This probability is severely underestimated!" After just going through news, comments, and even adding information from your own search, you have come to this conclusion and subsequently placed a bet on "Yes."

This is a bet with a potential return of nearly tenfold, which you believe to be your most successful investment since the beginning of 2025. What you don't know is that the counterparty on the other side of the order book is none other than Vitalik.

This is exactly what this account did back in March last year: amid a lot of market noise and overwhelming media coverage, he bet, with a 10% probability, that the US would not announce the existence of aliens in the next ten months. This trade ultimately brought him a 10% profit.

Interestingly, an identical market has reappeared, and he has once again bet that the event will not occur this year. Even as of the time of writing, his trade is still in the red. You could even copy his trade at a cost below Vitalik's.

Conclusion

Only a month has passed since 2026 began, yet various seemingly impossible events have repeatedly filled the headlines of major media outlets: Venezuelan President Maduro was snatched from his country by the US in a chicken-catching helicopter-style operation, Trump tried everything, including NATO allies, to secure Greenland, and the Epstein files almost mentioned every US political and business heavyweight.

Undeniably, we are living in an era engulfed by uncertainty. In such a backdrop, "it seems like anything can happen."

Prediction markets translate this illusion directly into probability: with each breaking news, every tweet, every exaggerated media interpretation, a certain "Yes" outcome's price is briefly pumped up.

And many star traders like Vitalik take advantage of overestimated probabilities to bet on the non-occurrence of an extreme event. After optimizing such a strategy through sophisticated trading systems based on mathematics, statistics, such as the Kelly criterion, this approach has become one of the most robust investment methods in today's prediction markets.

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