Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Made $70K From Prediction Markets Last Year. His Edge? ‘Crazy Things Won’t Happen’

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says a simple strategy grounded in reality made him five figures on prediction markets last year.

Buterin told Asian-based cryptocurrency news outlet Foresight News in an interview released on Jan. 28 that he made $70,000 on $440,000 capital by betting against “crazy things” on Polymarket last year, a roughly 16% return.

“My approach is simple: I look for markets that are in ‘crazy mode’ and then bet that ‘crazy things won’t happen,'” he said.

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Buterin said he tends to dabble in politics and technology markets, saying that they are more prone to wild bets. He cited examples such as markets predicting that President Donald Trump would win the Nobel Peace Prize or that the dollar would go to zero.

“When market sentiment enters this irrational ‘crazy mode,’ I bet on the opposite, and that usually makes money,” he told Foresight News.

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Buterin is no novice when it comes to prediction markets. The longtime supporter of the betting platforms said in 2024 that he made $58,000 betting on the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

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Butterin said at the time that prediction markets are one of the Ethereum applications that excite him the most. At the time, he cited examples showing that prediction markets can be more accurate than polls. He added that combining prediction markets with news sources could keep users better informed than relying on a single source.

However, Buterin told Foresight News he believes prediction markets still have room for improvement. The oracles, which the platforms relied on for real-world data to decide markets, are vulnerable, he said.

He cited an incident in which hackers allegedly manipulated a market on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, reportedly leading to $9,300 in profits by somehow making unauthorized changes to maps posted by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

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The market was based on whether Russia would take control of the Ukrainian city of Myrnohrad, with the oracle tied to maps posted by the ISW on X. However, bad actors were somehow able to make changes to the map posted by ISW’s X account to suggest the city had been captured, leading the market to resolve incorrectly.

“This reveals a huge problem: current Oracle data sources have far too low security standards,” Buterin told Foresight News.

Buterin said this vulnerability currently leaves prediction markets with two options: centralized models that trust companies such as Bloomberg, and decentralized models based on token voting, citing the UMA protocol used by Polymarket as an example.

Still, Buterin said he hoped the industry could find better solutions in the future.

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This article Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Made $70K From Prediction Markets Last Year. His Edge? ‘Crazy Things Won’t Happen’ originally appeared on Benzinga.com