PANews reported on January 5th that, according to Lookonchain's tracking and analysis, a trader named "beachboy4" made 53 prediction trades on Polymarket over 35 days. Despite a 51% win rate (27 wins), he ultimately lost over $2 million. His largest single profit was $936,000, and his largest single loss reached a staggering $1.58 million, with an average bet of approximately $400,000 per trade, classifying it as a high-risk activity.
This address bought into the "consensus direction" at high prices of 0.51–0.67 in multiple trades, creating an extremely poor odds structure of "limited upside + complete downside." The trader failed to use stop-loss, hedging, or early profit-taking mechanisms, resulting in most of the losing positions becoming worthless. Furthermore, this trader frequently made reckless bets on "high-confidence" events, such as popular NBA or soccer teams, in transparent and price-efficient markets. Ultimately, the losses were not due to bad luck, but rather to a structural imbalance in the strategy.
Lookonchain summarizes five practical lessons: avoid entering the market at high prices, control the risk of each trade, take profits and cut losses in a timely manner, assess the risk-reward ratio, and abandon markets where there is no advantage.
