Strategy’s recent bitcoin sale, the first in over three years, sparked a major dispute on Polymarket, with the dispute resolution body run by UMA token holders ultimately ruling against punters who had bet the sale would take place by May 31.
The controversy began after Strategy revealed in a June 1 filing that it had sold 32 bitcoins between May 26 and 31. Traders who purchased Yes in the May market argued that the company clearly sold bitcoin before the deadline. Others countered that the transaction was only publicly disclosed on June 1 and therefore should not be counted against the May 31 deadline.
Holders of UMA tokens, which serve as the dispute resolution level for Polymarket’s Oracle system, have sided resolutely with the latter view.
The resolution means that punters who bet that Strategy would sell bitcoin before May 31 lost, although the company later revealed that the sale took place during the last week of May. The June contract, for its part, was resolved yes because the transaction became public during June.
The outcome was driven by a handful of large token holders, undermining the fundamental promise of decentralized finance where governance is democratized and not run by a few whales.
The largest vote came from borntoolate.eth, who gave 3.11 million votes for no. Other non-major votes included AMU contributor Kevin Chan, with 1.53 million votes and several wallets totaling over a million each. Together, the four largest No voters controlled nearly 7 million votes, more than 25 times the entire Yes camp.
Several wallets identified as affiliated with Risk Labs, the company behind UMA, also voted no, alongside other prominent participants in the UMA ecosystem.
Not everyone is happy with the resolution. Galaxy Research, which had significant exposure to the May contract, pushed back heavily on
“Strategy’s Form 8k filing with the SEC explicitly stated that Strategy was sold between May 26 and May 31. A simple reading of the resolution criteria would suggest that the market should have answered YES, hence the controversy,” the company said.
