Research by a famous crypto analyst indicates that the US special envoy in the Middle East, Steven Witkoffcould be behind a bet on the arrest of Nicolas Maduro with which he earned more than $400,000.
Witkoff, in addition to his position in the Trump Administration, is a partner of the US president in a crypto business called World Liberty Financial (WLFI).
The bet, made just a few hours before Nicolás Maduro was captured by order of Donald Trump this Saturday, made cryptocurrency experts suspect that it had been carried out after obtaining confidential information about the US military operation in Caracas.
The Chavista leader now faces charges of “narco-terrorist conspiracy, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the United States.”
A newly created account on Polymarket He placed money a few hours before the military operation in Venezuela was carried out.
The bet turned a position of $33,933.26 into a profit of $443,815.28. He timing raised suspicions.
Even more so when a famous crypto analyst on his X social network account, @Andrey_10gweipublished a detailed analysis of portfolios and movements between Coinbase and Polymarket.
User balance in Polymarket
In his publication he maintains that the trail behind this entire operation could lead to an environment connected to the family. Witkoff and with World Liberty Financial (WLFI)the Trump family’s crypto business.
The operation
The open bet on Polymarket (the market for predictions about real-life events) was formulated with a simple rule. Would be resolved as “Yes” if Maduro was “eliminated from power” before January 31.
The text itself that explains the bet includes assumptions such as resignation, arrest or inability to practice.
In the afternoon of Friday January 2the implied probability was very low. In Polymarket, that probability is expressed as price.
The “Yes” was trading at $0.07something that reaffirms the common market idea that it was almost impossible for that to happen.
Hours later, and with the operation already underway or about to be executed, this new suspicious account entered the ‘quotation’ with force.
Bought a large volume of “Yes” when it was cheap. After the capture became known, the price jumped and the position revalued.
Image of Nicolás Maduro shared by Donald Trump.
The money trail
@Andrey_10gwei’s thread explains the “coincidences” within the operation that, added together, draw a clear pattern. And it leaves an open question: yes Was it luck or informational advantage? by someone with knowledge of the military operation.
Its starting point is the Polymarket account associated with the bettor. From there, it traces how that account was funded before entering the market on Venezuela.
According to their analysis, there would be two portfolios that acted as funders. In crypto slang, a funder It is an address that sends funds to another. In this case, funds that end up deposited in Polymarket.
Both wallets, according to the thread, show “clean” behavior. They barely register any activity before receiving money from Coinbase and sending a deposit to Polymarket. This feature is usually interpreted as an attempt to minimize footprints.
The key detail is in Solana. Andrey detected an entry of 252.39 SOL from Coinbase in one of those wallets.
After seeing this, he searched for deposits to Coinbase with an almost identical amount in the previous 24 hours. There he finds a match of 252.91 SOL from another address. The difference would be explained by commissions and rounding.
In blockchain, those similarities matter. They do not prove identity on their own, but they allow hypotheses to be built when they are repeated with close times and similar routes.
The second major element is .sol names. They are domains from the Solana Name Service (SNS), a system comparable to license plates or domains on a website.
They serve to make a long address legible. If a wallet is called “StCharles.sol“, the user does not need to copy a string of letters and numbers.
Andrey claims that he detected domains like STVLU. SOL, StCharles.sol y StevenCharles.sol in wallets connected by deposits to and from Coinbase. And he maintains that these names would fit with Steven Charles Witkoff.
That “Steven Charles” is the point where political and business suspicion arises. Andrey’s research suggests it could be Steven Witkoff, or someone connected to him.
Despite the obvious, the blockchain analyst’s audit is not 100% conclusive. The domains .sol They could have been recorded by another user trying to falsify the identity of Steven Witkoff.
Although it is difficult to imagine that someone would have taken so much time to falsify data that is not visible except after a long and exhaustive investigation by a cryptocurrency and blockchain expert.
Why Witkoff?
Steven Witkoff is a real estate magnate from New York and a political ally the Donald Trump.
The President of the United States announced his appointment as special envoy for the Middle East last November 2024. He is known publicly for being a donor to his campaign and a businessman close to Trump.
Since then, Witkoff has established himself as a diplomatic figure of the White House circle of trust. Has been present in negotiations with Ukraine along with other top-level interlocutors. Like those carried out this week in Mar-a-Lago with Trump and Zelensky at the helm.
Steven Witkoff, at the reception table for Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago
As if that were not enough, Witkoff He was also part of the American delegation that received the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, December 29 at Mar-a-Lago (one day after they did it with Zelensky and a few days before the military intervention in Venezuela).
By then Trump had already made the decision to carry out the operation to arrest Nicolas Maduro. Only the meteorological conditions They delayed the implementation, as the US president confessed in his speech last Saturday.
Fragment of the World Liberty Financial website in which the big faces behind the project are revealed
A business derivative is added to this political profile. World Liberty Financial (WLFI)the project associated with the Trump family, presents on its own website Steven Witkoff as “Co-Founder Emeritus” already Zach y Alex Witkoff (children of the tycoon) as co-founders.
Within WLFI, the Trump family is represented by Donald Trumpas “Co-Founder Emeritus”; and Eric, Donald Jr. y Barron Trumpwho are listed as co-founders.
World Liberty Financial (WLFI) It is much more than just a cryptocurrency; It is a platform Decentralized Finance (DeFi) officially launched by the Trump family in 2024.
The platform seeks to allow users to make loans, credits and transactions with cryptocurrencies without depending on traditional banking, using the $WLFI token as a governance asset.
The Trumps act as promoters, through a business structure, the family has the right to receive 75% of the net benefits of the project.
The Witkoff Family, for its part, acts as the strategic and operational partners. His sons, Zach and Alex Witkoff, are key in providing the technical and business infrastructure to connect traditional capital with the crypto world.
In this context, Andrey’s hypothesis becomes explosive for a reason. If an environment with access to sensitive information on state decisions operates in prediction markets, the border between intuition and informational advantage is blurred.
What is Polymarket
Polymarket is a prediction market. It works as a “results” bag. The “Yes” or “No” of a real event is bought and sold. The price moves according to supply and demand.
Unlike a traditional betting house, here the user can exit before the outcome. You can sell your position if the price rises. That turns the system into a continuous secondary market.
Money usually comes in the form of stablecoin. A stablecoin It is a cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value, usually pegged to the dollar. The typical example is USDC.
Donald Trump during his press conference. Behind, Marco Rubio.
EFE
The resolution of the markets depends on a verification mechanism. At Polymarket, the process includes a proposed outcome and a dispute system.
The website’s own documentation explains that a result is “proposed” and can be challenged before being validated.
The platform also details flows for deposit from Coinbase. That point matters because it is a regulated gateway for money.
In such an exchange, the user is usually identified. And that means that the “pseudonymous” trace of the blockchain can come close to a real identity if there are legal requirements.
The gray area
The heart of the debate is not only technological. It is normative and it has been years trying to establish a consensus.
In 2022, the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in Spanish) sanctioned Polymarket and forced him to block users from the United States.
It was a sign that regulators considered these contracts to be unregistered derivatives.
In 2025, Polymarket achieved the regulatory “go-ahead” for its return to the US market under a more limited framework.
This back and forth helps to understand why we speak of “alegal” terrain in some cases. This is because the fit is incomplete, changes quickly and depends on interpretations.
In the stock market, the use of insider information is classified and prosecuted. In prediction markets, the discussion is more recent.
And the incentive is obvious: if someone knows before everyone else that an event will occur, the cheap “Yes” is an almost mechanical profit opportunity.
The paradox is that These markets are sold as instruments of collective “truth”. They add scattered signals. But they can also amplify the power of those who have early access to internal decisions.