On April 7, Trump announced a two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran. On April 21, the day before the ceasefire was due to expire, he posted a statement on Truth Social, announcing that the ceasefire would be extended indefinitely.

Subsequently, Reuters, AP, BBC, Al Jazeera, and The Wall Street Journal all reported the extension. Iran’s foreign minister tweeted to acknowledge the decision to extend the ceasefire.

In the real world, the ceasefire has continued under a tight lockdown.

But on Polymarket, the market “Will the US-Iran ceasefire be extended before April 22?” currently has a “Yes” probability of 0.1%.

That is to say, everyone around the world knows the ceasefire has been extended, yet on the world’s largest prediction market, people think it has not been extended.

Markets like this—where there is controversy—often see bets placed at this point in time that aim for 100x profits: some traders wager $1, or even amounts in the hundreds of dollars, trying to manufacture a “get rich quick” myth.

And within the past 24 hours, an account bought $100,000 worth of “Yes,” with potential gains of more than $50 million.

The rules were changed by the official side—has the ceasefire truly been extended?

The controversy in this market was baked into the rules from the beginning.

Polymarket’s definition of a “ceasefire extension” is: both sides of the US and Iran must issue clear public statements, or reach a “consensus among overwhelmingly credible media reports.” The US’s public statement comes from Trump himself on Truth Social.

The issue lies with Iran. Iran’s official response used the word “acknowledged,” not “mutually agreed,” which the rules require.

It is precisely this wording that caused a divergence in trading volume of up to $150 million in this market: “Yes” holders believe that Trump’s statement combined with consistent reporting across global media already constitutes an “overwhelming consensus”; “No” holders argue that Iran did not directly confirm on its own behalf, meaning the condition has not been met.

On April 24, Polymarket’s official account directly stepped in and added clarification on the market page: as of 23:59 on April 22, there is no ceasefire extension that satisfies the “Yes” condition.

With official endorsement, market sentiment flipped abruptly, and the probability quickly dropped below 1%.

What followed were a number of end-of-day traders who are well-versed in game rules and trading strategies: under the official interpretation, buying “No” has already become an almost risk-free, high-yield financial arrangement.

Among these people, the top three “No” holders include an account called NotBakerMcKenzie, betting about $8.5 million. Baker McKenzie is a top global law firm headquartered in Chicago, specializing in providing compliance legal services to prediction market clients such as Polymarket, with deep understanding of oracle settlement mechanisms and platform rules.

Interpreting the rules as a law firm and placing real-money bets seems like it is effectively announcing the final settlement direction of this market to the entire trading community.

However, the top “Yes” holder, Pedro, clearly disagrees: Polymarket’s official statement can only serve as a reference for settlement; the actual result is ultimately decided by UMA’s decentralized oracle voting. As long as UMA token stakers’ votes support “Yes,” what the official says does not matter.

That is exactly what Pedro is betting on: compared with the potential return of more than $50 million, risking $100,000 to bet on a surprise oracle vote result is extremely worthwhile.

An oracle attack worth $50 million

On Pedro’s Polymarket account homepage, there is a link that opens to a website for a token he personally issued—$pedros-coin. Although the site is filled with unfinished infrastructure and rough page design, the token’s design rules are very eye-catching.

$pedros-coin cannot be purchased through typical meme-token rules. The only way to obtain it is through action: earn 1 coin per hour by watching livestreams, and earn 20 coins per post on social media—every acquisition method is tightly tied to online dissemination.

And the value of this token depends entirely on what the market’s “Yes” probability is for “Will the ceasefire be extended?” If the probability is 100%, each token is worth $1. If the final settlement is “No,” the token is worthless.

Pedro’s holdings in this market also perfectly serve as a token payout guarantee—he holds 50 million “Yes” shares, with potential payouts exceeding $50 million; he only gets paid if he wins.

When you combine these features, the logic of the design becomes clear: Pedro uses $pedros-coin to bind the interests of hundreds of people to his “Yes” position, encouraging them to keep outputting their views across the entire web. The goal is to create enough public pressure before oracle voting so that as many stakers as possible believe this market should settle as “Yes.”

From a narrative perspective, this mobilization mechanism has a strange Web3 spirit—Pedro puts in more than $100,000 of his own real money, leads retail traders to unite with tokens earned through action, and goes up against the fait accompli of big players sweeping in capital—while the direction they bet on in reality does correspond to a real ceasefire.

But another layer appears in Pedro’s Discord channel, making the whole thing less pure.

A pretending-to-be-innocent Pedro and the oracle whale manipulating the market with a price tag

On the morning of April 30, a user named Euan posted a message in Pedro’s Discord channel, which was published on Pedro’s personal webpage: “As you can see, I own the richest UMA wallet. I’m willing to accept bribes to manipulate the vote to be ‘Yes.’ DMs open.”

Two screenshots were attached next to the message: one shows that the user holds 2.9 million UMA tokens, and the other is the page of an account named borntoolate.eth.

2.9 million UMA tokens account for about 16.4% of the current total staked amount of 17.71 million.

Just this single screenshot is already enough to be intimidating. And for players who have spent years mixing around Polymarket, the name borntoolate carries no less weight than the 16.4% figure itself.

In March 2025, the Polymarket market “Will Ukraine agree to Trump’s mineral resource deal by the end of March?” was settled as “Yes” by oracle voting even though negotiations were still ongoing and there was no official signing.

This was precisely the infamous Polymarket oracle attack that made headlines, and the instigator was borntoolate. With overall voting participation not very high, borntoolate forcibly pushed the settlement result toward “Yes” by holding and staking a large amount of UMA tokens, using relative weight—making the market’s direction completely contrary to the facts.

The core assumption of UMA’s security model is that “the cost of an attack is higher than the benefits of the attack”—attackers need to buy enough UMA tokens to control the vote, and this cost should exceed what they can gain from the attack. However, the total market value of the entire UMA protocol is currently only $40 million.

We cannot verify whether Euan is truly borntoolate himself. But if this round’s settlement result flips again, Pedro’s $100,000 bet will deliver more than $50 million in returns.

As of now, the results of the UMA oracle voting appear already quite clear. Among the tokens with publicly revealed votes, the number of “No” votes exceeds 10.27 million, while there are only 25 “Yes” votes.

The only variable in this round is the allocation of about 8.69 million UMA tokens whose votes have not been revealed yet. If more than 2.33 million of those vote “No,” this round’s vote will be considered to have reached consensus, and the market will settle as “No.” If it does not reach that threshold, this round’s vote will be deemed invalid, and the controversy will continue to the next round—this is the window Pedro is truly waiting for.

As of the time of writing, Pedro is still continuously buying “Yes.”

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