Polymarket’s top trader is sports gambler ‘Swiss Tony’
FT analysis shows biggest winners on prediction platform are a mixture of long-shot bettors and high-frequency traders
The best-performing gambler on Polymarket is a pseudonymous account that made $12mn trading on sports events under the name “swisstony”, FT analysis of blockchain data has revealed.
Using data since April 2026, the FT has analysed 170mn bets made by 1.2mn retail accounts on the gambling site to identify the accounts that made the most money over that time.
The analysis reveals a mixture of strategies among these highest-profit wallets. Some lucked out on a few big swings, often risking more than $1mn in a single wager, while two of the top 10, including swisstony, pursued high-volume strategies that appear to be algorithmically determined.
The swisstony account took 184,000 positions on the betting market in the period in 113,112 different markets. For a period starting in June, the account bet at least once an hour for 26 straight days.
One of the other top 10 accounts, joseph00677, was a more traditional sports gambler, placing a small number of large, successful bets on European international football, Champions League and the English Premier League. The account dropped from ninth to 10th place in the ranking this weekend after a heavy loss from backing Chelsea to beat Tottenham Hotspur.
The other leading accounts, however, were all accounts betting very large sums — often more than $1mn on a single event — on a few matches during the men’s football World Cup.
Wagers of this size would be difficult to place with traditional betting companies, which often impose deposit and stake limits. Some gamblers in jurisdictions with tighter gambling laws might also struggle to find legitimate local bookmakers.
Polymarket, which allows most users to trade without passing know-your-customer processes and by connecting an anonymous cryptocurrency wallet, offers a new outlet for these high-stakes gamblers.
Polymarket said it monitored large positions, especially “in markets where the risk of manipulation is higher”. The company added that although it did not perform ID checks, it screened for sanctioned cryptocurrency wallets and surveilled its markets alongside partners, including Chainalysis.
“Every trade is public on-chain, and on-chain analysis is often a more powerful tool than an ID check,” the company said.
The second highest-performing account, mintblade, successfully backed Saudi Arabia to hold off Uruguay in the World Cup and New Zealand to survive against Iran. The third-biggest winner was a similar type of user with the handle fishalive. The account took two positions — both on Spain’s World Cup match against Cabo Verde.
They bet $440,000 that Spain would not beat the tiny archipelago, a position that had implied odds of just 9 per cent and would net them $4.7mn in profit. They also bet $3.85mn on Spain not to win by more than 2.5 goals. In the event, Cabo Verde held out for a draw.
The two high-volume accounts in the top 10 — swisstony and RN1 — were pursuing quite different strategies.
According to Chris Park, founder of prediction markets analytics company MSR Decode, swisstony is “essentially a very good bettor” — profiting by selecting contracts that “look cheaper than professional bookmakers say they are worth”. The account largely profited by accepting prices posted by other traders rather than doing anything more complicated.
It was also efficiently run. While it never had more than $17mn on the market at any one time, it continuously recycled its capital and placed a total of $657mn of bets. This high volume meant that it was able to make a large profit from an average rate of return per bet of just under 2 per cent.
By contrast, RN1 profits primarily by offering standing orders to buy both sides of the market, seeking arbitrage opportunities. Park characterised this model as “playing the part of the house” in a traditional gambling model.
While the RN1 account is still active, the swisstony account has not bought new shares in two months and has updated its profile to “So long, and thanks for all the fish” — a reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
The real identity of swisstony’s operator is unknown. While the name hints at an Alpine origin, “Swiss Toni” was also the name of a wheeler-dealer car salesman character from The Fast Show, a British TV sketch show that ran from 1994 to 1997.
Gambling groups such as DraftKings and Flutter — which owns brands including Paddy Power, Betfair and FanDuel — have said they are profiting by deploying their odds-setting strategies as market makers on prediction markets.
Prediction market users on social media platforms including X, Reddit and Discord have been examining the trading patterns of some of Polymarket’s newest high-fliers for any sign that swisstony — one of the platform’s most-watched accounts — had returned under a different guise.
Park speculated that some successful traders would choose to move to a network of smaller accounts or to a less transparent off-chain prediction market, so that rivals could not “crack their techniques”.
The FT’s analysis also reveals how gamblers on Polymarket fare and what they are betting on. Of those who wagered more than $100, 68 per cent lost money. Of these, 4 per cent lost their whole stake.
While sports betting is still Polymarket’s main source of revenue, betting on crypto price movements has become a significant driver of revenue, with $5.1bn wagered on these markets in the period covered by the analysis.
However, one of Polymarket’s most striking betting options — allowing gamblers to place wagers on whether a cryptocurrency will go up or down in price over the next five minutes — has been fading in popularity, along with other crypto trades.
In May, 115,000 accounts took part in these markets, betting $630mn. By September, only 52,000 accounts took part, betting $389mn.