A trader made a nearly 100x return on investment on decentralized betting platform Polymarket in less than a minute, thanks to a mistake by a UFC announcer.
In Sunday’s UFC heavyweight bout, Tyrell Fortune defeated Marcin Tybura to secure his first UFC victory. But the event was not without drama. Cage’s announcer, Bruce Buffer, first read the result in Tybura’s favor, a result that lasted less than a minute before Buffer corrected the error.
Polymarket trader LlamaEnjoyer, also known as Verrissimus on X, took advantage of the error, turning approximately $676 into $67,000.
When Tybura was named the winner, its shares soared to 99 cents and Fortune’s shares plummeted to about 1 cent. LlamaEnjoyer said they almost bet $100,000 on Tybura at 99 cents, but stopped when they realized something was wrong. Instead, the trader purchased $676 worth of 1-cent Fortune stock. Seconds later, when the UFC corrected the announcement, shares immediately jumped to $1.
“I almost bought Tybura at 99¢ with $100,000. I stopped, realized something was wrong. Canceled my order, got 1¢ of stock back instead. UFC corrected the winner seconds later. Easiest 100x ever,” Verrissimus said on X.
LlamaEnjoyer’s quick thinking illustrates how quickly prediction market prices can fluctuate during live events, especially when big announcements are misread or misreported.
The incident also raises questions about how payments are handled if there is an error in the “source of truth” – the benchmark that contracts rely on to settle outcomes. Since the error came from the UFC advertiser, there could be a dispute over payments or contract termination, even if the merchant’s actions remain completely legitimate.
