Polymarket’s disputed market on whether Strategy sold Bitcoin by the specified May 31 deadline concluded with a “No” resolution after two rounds of voting. This outcome came despite Strategy’s later public disclosure that it sold 32 BTC within the covered time window but revealed the sale only after the market’s closing date. The resolution process, controlled by UMA Optimistic Oracle token holders, sided overwhelmingly with “No,” with nearly 99% of voters rejecting the claim that Strategy sold Bitcoin on time.
The decisive vote took place during a second resolution cycle that ended early Thursday UTC, involving over 600 participants. These voters control UMA tokens, whose holders’ weighted influence determines outcomes. Polymarket emphasized that no onchain evidence or credible information confirmed the sale the market asked about within its deadline, asserting that sales disclosed after that timeframe do not count toward resolution criteria.
This ruling intensified debates about Polymarket’s token-weighted dispute resolution system. Critics argue that weighting votes by UMA token holdings grants disproportionate power to large holders, often called “whales.” The largest voter in this dispute controlled over three million UMA tokens, while another major wallet held more than 1.5 million tokens. Both earned significant financial rewards from participating in dispute resolutions, highlighting potential conflicts of interest in the model.
Many users and observers criticized the final decision, suggesting the market failed to price the actual event correctly, instead resolving based on when information became public rather than when the sale occurred onchain. One trader claimed a $500,000 loss due to the dispute’s outcome. More than $80 million was wagered on this event, underscoring the high stakes involved.
Galaxy Research commented publicly, stressing that prediction markets should resolve based on the factual occurrence of events, not on how or when an oracle interprets rules and evidence after the fact. The firm recommended improvements such as locking resolution criteria at market creation, ensuring deterministic outcomes for verifiable events, and implementing structural reforms ahead of expected regulatory scrutiny by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Galaxy also disclosed holding “yes” positions as part of a hedging strategy in prediction markets.
Concerns over Polymarket’s dispute mechanisms are not new. Past contentious resolutions, including one involving a mineral deal related to Ukraine and the former U.S. President Donald Trump, revealed similar patterns where outcomes favored token holders’ influence over strict event timelines, raising accusations of “governance attacks” and whale manipulation.