Winning Bettor Had Faith in Trump, Made Nearly $85 Million off November Win

Being bullish on Donald Trump’s chances in the 2024 presidential election has made one man a “whale” — one rich enough to buy a thousand yachts, give or take.

According to Fox Business, the anonymous cryptocurrency bettor — who placed massive wagers on Trump on trading platforms that functioned, essentially, as election betting sites — took home roughly $84 million from his gambles.

The man, simply known as “Théo,” placed bets on crypto exchange Polymarket totaling more than $30 million and predicting a Trump victory.

Just betting on Trump taking the White House over the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, wasn’t what garnered him all the cash, however.

After all, just before Election Day hit, Trump was a 58.1 percent favorite to win the Oval Office, compared with Harris’ 41.9 percent.

However, “Théo” also made bets that the markets thought were extremely unlikely, according to The Wall Street Journal: He bet Trump would win the popular vote, as well as all three “blue wall” swing states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Trump won all seven swing states and the popular vote.

“Théo,” who is also known as the “Trump whale” — a “whale” is basically someone who has a huge amount of cryptocurrency, in the terminology of the blockchain world — used a series of anonymous accounts to place his bets.

However, the Journal first drew attention to his large wagers on Oct. 18.

“In dozens of s, Théo said his wager was essentially a bet against the accuracy of polling data,” the Journal said in a Nov. 6 article. “Describing himself as a wealthy Frenchman who had previously worked as a trader for several banks, he told the Journal that he began applying his mathematical know-how to analyze U.S. polls over the summer.

“He concluded the polls were overstating support for Vice President Kamala Harris. Unlike most armchair political commentators, he put his money where his mouth was, betting more than $30 million that Trump would win.”

Not only that, but he said after the results began rolling in “that he had commissioned his own surveys to measure the neighbor effect, using a major pollster whom he declined to name. The results, he wrote, ‘were mind blowing to the favor of Trump!’”

“Public opinion would have been better prepared if the latest polls had measured that neighbor effect,” he wrote.

The original estimate of his profit by crypto-tracker Chainalysis initially had his profit at $78.7 million.

A later update, on Nov. 7, put the number at closer to $83.5 million, with another potential $2.1 million profit on the table.

Update: We identified a 10th address associated with “Theo” which increases the estimated total profit by $4.8M to $83.5M. An 11th address is suspected with another $2.1M profit, but unconfirmed. https://t.co/aTLPhikkrF

— Chainalysis (@chainalysis) November 7, 2024

Nevertheless, “Théo” doesn’t describe himself as a MAGA kind of guy: “My intent is just making money… I have absolutely no political agenda,” he said.

Still, he marveled at the Democratic cant of surveys, particularly by the mainstream media. Those polls, “in his view, were biased toward Democrats and tended to produce outlier poll results that favored Harris,” the Journal reported.

“In France this is different!! The pollster credibility is more important: they want to be as close as possible to the actual results. Culture is different on this,” he wrote in an .

Well, I hope culture in France also likes multiple yachts on the Mediterranean. According to Assets America, a preowned, entry-level yacht costs about $100,000, although mega-yachts commissioned new can have a price of $1 million for every 3.3 feet of length. So he can either buy 850 entry-level yachts or one 250-foot mega-yacht.

Or, you know, bet against the same biased pollsters again four years from now. At that point, maybe our “whale” will be buying an entire ocean liner — because, let’s face it, after years of polling misses, things don’t seem primed for a change.

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