Public surfaces and account-gated surfaces
The resolved-PnL leaderboards on /wins and /losses are public and include trades that were originally tagged as insider- suspect. The live insider-suspect feed itself, with wallet-level enrichment and real-time alerts, is gated behind a Rivo account. Feed access requires a $15/month subscription.
What to read next
For the broader whale-detection pipeline that produces the insider-suspect feed, see the Polymarket whale tracker page. For Telegram alert delivery, see our Polymarket Telegram bot page. For the alerts infrastructure overall, see our alerts page.
Backtesting whale activity with strategies
The standard advice in prediction markets is to follow the smart money. It does not say which smart money. Large positions on heavy favourites resolve correctly most of the time and return very little per dollar staked; large positions on longshots lose far more often and pay multiples when they land. Politics, sports and crypto markets behave differently again. Which of those is worth copying is an empirical question, and tracking trades as they happen does not answer it.
A Rivo strategy is that question stated as a rule and answered against data. A rule might read: entry price under 20 cents, trade size over $10,000, new positions only. Every whale trade satisfying it is recorded, and scored win or loss once the underlying market resolves.
A strategy can be tested against history and run forward at the same time. On creation it optionally claims every qualifying trade from the preceding 90 days, most of which sit in markets that have already resolved, so the strategy carries a settled record immediately rather than accumulating one over a season. From that point it also claims new qualifying trades as they print. Positions in markets that are still open are priced against current odds and marked as unrealised; they are reported separately from settled results, and are never blended into a single figure.
Criteria can constrain category, sports league, trade size, the entry price band, the position type (a new position, an addition to an existing one, or a reversal), and free text matched against the market title. Specific markets can also be followed directly, in which case their whale trades join the strategy whether or not they satisfy the other criteria.
Each recorded trade stores the side, entry price and size at the moment it printed, so a strategy's history stays reproducible. Open positions are marked against current odds; settled positions are scored win or loss against the market's resolution. A stake is set per strategy or per trade, so the reported return reflects the size you would have taken rather than the size the whale took, which keeps two strategies comparable instead of dominated by whichever caught the largest single position.
Every strategy reports its own win rate, realized return, open exposure and a cumulative return curve. All figures are paper results that assume a fill at the whale's entry price, and are not investment advice.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as Polymarket insider trading?
On Polymarket, insider trading refers to large directional positions placed by wallets that appear to have material non-public information about an upcoming event. There is no enforcement mechanism on a decentralized prediction market, so the only public signal is behavioral: fresh wallets funded shortly before an event, single-ticket positions sized far above category norms, and unusually well-timed entries that precede a major price move.
Is insider trading on Polymarket illegal?
Polymarket operates as a decentralized prediction market on Polygon and is not a regulated securities exchange in the same sense as US equities. There is no SEC-style insider-trading prohibition that applies to event contracts on Polymarket directly. That said, the underlying activity, for example trading on stolen earnings data, may still be illegal under other statutes in the jurisdiction where it occurred.
How does Rivo identify insider-suspect wallets?
Rivo surfaces unusual large entries and puts the trader record beside them. Fresh funding, concentrated positioning, timing, category history, size, and later resolved performance can all be relevant, but none proves access to non-public information. The product supplies evidence for review rather than declaring a trader an insider.
Where can I see Polymarket insider trading discussions on Reddit?
Active discussion of suspected insider activity takes place in the Polymarket subreddit and in prediction-market focused subreddits. Threads typically center on a specific wallet that took a large position before a non-obvious outcome, with community members reviewing the wallet's funding history and trade timing. Rivo surfaces the same wallets in the live feed without requiring users to monitor Reddit manually.
Are insider trades good to copy on Polymarket?
Insider-suspect trades are some of the most profitable positions on Polymarket when the underlying information advantage is real. The risk is that many flagged wallets are not actually informed; they are simply lucky, or running a different edge that does not generalize. Rivo's resolved-PnL leaderboards let you verify whether a flagged wallet has produced consistent positive returns before copying its activity.
Does this matter for sports betting?
Sports markets see some of the sharpest well-timed entries, because team and injury news reaches some bettors before the wider market. A well-timed entry on a Polymarket sports market is worth checking against your sportsbook's line on the same game, since books reprice on the same news. Rivo surfaces the trade within seconds so you can evaluate it before the lines move.