"Pentagon planning a military operation" is not exactly classified information as it is safe to assume that Pentagon is always planning a military operation.
The Ukraine war has shown that cheap intelligence tricks can be used against the average recruit, like pretending to be a dating website and getting the GPS locations of horny enemy soldiers so your drones can drop grenades on them.
It doesn't need to be crypto wallet tracking. The amount of spyware being built into phone apps is where those agencies would be putting some effort into obtaining access to.
IIRC, the bet was on "Nicolas Maduro out?":
> If Nicolás Maduro leaves office before February 1, 2026, then the market resolves to Yes.
So the bet wasn't specifically "Nicolas Maduro kidnapped?" or even "Nicolas Maduro out by January 3rd?" And IIRC there was a lot of Trump saber rattling about Venezuela in the days before, hence the creation of the bet. I could absolutely see a plausible way to link these publicly-available pieces of information into a winning bet:
* Trump talking tough about Venezuela
* Spike in DC pizza activity on January 2nd
Saying anything at all on a speculation platform, especially if others don't even know your identity (or you have no reason to believe they do), can only be treated as speculative intent, not intent to disclose classified information.
If you are a potential assassination target and you notice that a prediction market about your assassination has a sudden weird spike on a specific week, then you would likely take extra precautions in that week. After this incident, surely other world leaders and public figures are watching the prediction markets for exactly this.
The stated point of prediction markets is to aggregate private opinions into public predictions of the future. If you participate using classified information and influence those public predictions, then that's leaking that classified information. This is more true if the bets you make are large and the market is relatively small, then you will send a much more clear signal.
“Our Office will continue to hold accountable those who misuse confidential or classified information in a way that undermines and exploits our national security.”
But isn’t wire fraud harder to prove than leaking classified facts?
I can't shake the feeling that there may be political reasons to not even attempt that angle. What legal precedent would it set if a judge actually ruled on that and the prosecution won? Which entities within the government would be financially inconvenienced?
Is it true with these markets the more people bet on a specific day and time, the value will increase more, increasing the overall payout? If that is true, I wonder if they're looking at anybody else helping place the bets or a group of people trying to wager a higher amount of money to increase the return?
Think about it: you have N market makers offering both sides of the trade with a spread between them. When there is no other meaningful activity, the best prices are more or less stable. Now someone comes in and buys one side of the trade. Each marker maker will, individually, make the same two decisions:
1. "If you bought at that price, I should raise my price and charge you more"
2. "Since you bought at that price, I must assume you have more information and I should get out the way to avoid an expensive mistake"
No. From the Justice Department's own criminal resource manual:
> the four essential elements of the crime of wire fraud are:
> (1) that the defendant voluntarily and intentionally devised or participated in a scheme to defraud another out of money;
> (2) that the defendant did so with the intent to defraud;
> (3) that it was reasonably foreseeable that interstate wire communications would be used; and
> (4) that interstate wire communications were in fact used
https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
Generally, to be successfully prosecuted for a crime, the prosecutor has to show that each and every "element" of the crime has to have happened. On the above page, there were 3 different court precedents who ruled what elements that the prosecutor needed to prove were in those cases.
Is it helping sick citizens? No. Is it feeding the hungry? No. Free education, housing the un housed or protecting the environment? No, no , no.
To be perfectly clear, it’s not giving vets the benefits they deserve or keeping soldiers safe either.
Money. The priority is money.
Getting it. And making sure those that don’t have it don’t get it.