Polymarket Declares No for May, Yes for June Following Strategy’s Bitcoin Transaction
UMA voters determined that Strategy’s June 1 disclosure was applicable for the June contract, despite the company reporting a bitcoin sale during the last week of May.
What to know:
— Polymarket resolved its contentious bitcoin-sale prediction markets by declaring the May 31 contract as No and the June 30 contract as Yes, after a vote by UMA token holders.
— The dispute revolved around whether Strategy’s sale of 32 bitcoin from May 26 to May 31 should be counted toward the May deadline, with UMA voters concluding that only the June 1 public disclosure date was significant.
— A small group of substantial UMA holders, including wallets associated with Risk Labs and notable ecosystem figures, overwhelmingly influenced the vote toward No, leading to losses for May bettors despite the sale occurring in late May.
Strategy’s recent bitcoin sale, the first in over three years, ignited a significant dispute on Polymarket, with the dispute resolution body led by UMA token holders ultimately ruling against bettors who had predicted the sale would take place by May 31.
The controversy began when Strategy revealed in a June 1 filing that it had sold 32 bitcoin between May 26 and May 31. Traders who placed Yes bets on the May market contended that the company had unambiguously sold bitcoin before the deadline. Others argued that the transaction was not publicly disclosed until June 1 and should therefore not be counted toward a May 31 cutoff.
UMA token holders, acting as the dispute-resolution mechanism for Polymarket’s oracle system, decisively supported the latter perspective.
The outcome means that bettors who wagered on Strategy selling bitcoin by May 31 lost, even though the company later revealed the sale occurred during the last week of May. The June contract, on the other hand, resolved Yes because the transaction became public in June.
The result was influenced by a small number of large token holders, which undermines the fundamental promise of decentralized finance, where governance is intended to be democratized rather than dominated by a few large players.
The most significant vote came from borntoolate.eth, which allocated 3.11 million voting weight for No. Other notable No votes included UMA contributor Kevin Chan with 1.53 million voting weight and several wallets casting over 1 million each. Collectively, the four largest No voters commanded nearly 7 million voting weight, over 25 times the total Yes side.
Several wallets linked to Risk Labs, the organization behind UMA, also voted No, alongside other influential UMA ecosystem participants.
Not everyone is satisfied with the resolution. Galaxy Research, which had substantial exposure to the May contract, expressed strong dissent on X. The firm emphasized that Strategy explicitly sold the 32 Bitcoin between May 26 and May 31, and that the market’s resolution criteria should focus on when the sale occurred — not when it was publicly announced on June 1.
«Strategy’s SEC-filed Form 8k explicitly stated that Strategy sold between May 26–31. A straightforward interpretation of the resolution criteria would indicate that the market should have resolved to YES, hence the controversy,» the firm stated.