- Bettors don’t think Trump will fire officials who discussed a bombing campaign over Signal.
- Hegseth is the most vulnerable among Cabinet-level officials, according to Polymarket.
When The Atlantic magazine revealed on Monday that top US officials were using Signal, a popular messaging app, to plan a bombing campaign in Yemen, observers wondered whether there would be any consequences for the apparent lapse in operational security.
It’s unlikely, according to crypto bettors.
There’s a one-in-ten chance President Donald Trump fires national security advisor Mike Waltz before June, according to bettors on Polymarket. That market was created Monday and had accumulated just $14,600 in bets come Tuesday afternoon.
But another long-running market on the crypto betting platform — “Who will Trump fire in first 100 days?” — has more than $717,000 on the line. That market saw Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth jump to the top of bettors’ lists as the most likely cabinet-level official to get axed before April 29.
Still, there’s just a 4% chance Hegseth gets fired by that date, according to bettors on Polymarket.
This is as likely as Bitcoin returning to $100,000 or a “megaquake” occurring anywhere on planet earth by the end of the week, according to other betting markets on the platform.
An ‘outrageous’ breach
On Monday, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote that he had been mistakenly added to a private group on the Signal messaging app on March 11 by Waltz.
The group was reported to include administration officials like Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
On March 15, Goldberg watched in real time as the group’s planning of a bombing campaign became a reality in the city of Sanaa in Yemen.
“At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic,” National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes said in a statement provided to The Atlantic.
In response, congressional leaders are calling for “heads to roll.” Signal is an encrypted messaging app, but military operations are rarely, if ever, coordinated over mass market applications due to security concerns.
“This is an outrageous national security breach and heads should roll,” Representative Chris Deluzio, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, told Axios.
Hegseth referred to Goldberg as “deceitful” following the article’s publication, according to the AP.
The odds on Polymarket that Trump would fire Waltz topped out on Monday at 49%. But they’ve fallen since, in part because Trump has defended the embattled official.
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump told NBC News on Tuesday.
Controversy and accuracy
Polymarket creates betting markets with simple, binary options, such as “ETH above $2,000 on June 30?”
Bettors buy shares whose price reflects an outcome’s odds at the time of purchase. In the case of the Waltz market, bettors could buy “yes” shares for $0.10 Thursday. Those shares would be worth $1 if they were right — in other words, if Trump fires Waltz before the end of May — and nothing if they were wrong.
Past and ongoing markets include bets on the recovery of the sunken Titan submersible, the outcome of Trump’s hush-money trial, and the outcome of upcoming elections in Canada.
The platform has attracted controversy for allowing prediction markets in bad taste, for its sometimes controversial method of resolving disputed bets, and for allegedly skirting local laws in some jurisdictions.
Nevertheless, Polymarket bettors have a decent track record.
They accurately predicted the length of Changpeng Zhao’s prison sentence after the Binance co-founder pleaded guilty to violating US money laundering laws, as well as the verdict in the criminal trial against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
One recent analysis found that markets on the platform were 90% accurate one month from their resolution.
Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com. Andrew Flanagan is a markets correspondent for DL News. Have a tip? Reach out to aflanagan@dlnews.com.
