A trader took advantage of the low liquidity during the weekend to perform a “smart play” on Polymarket’s XRP prediction market, successfully extracting $233,000 in profit from automated market makers, once again proving that human strategies still have a place in robot-dominated markets.
(Background recap: You treat Polymarket as a casino, but smart money is using it for crazy arbitrage)
(Additional context: In-depth analysis of the on-chain prediction market “Polymarket”)

Table of Contents

• Weekend timing is the key to victory
• Strategy wins over speed race
• Is market manipulation involved?
• Arbitrage landscape in the era of robots

In crypto prediction markets, automated trading bots often dominate with their speed advantage. However, a human trader pulled off a remarkable turnaround last weekend, precisely exploiting the characteristic of low liquidity during weekends in the XRP short-term price prediction market on Polymarket, executing a contrarian move and ultimately securing up to $233,000 in profit.

Weekend timing is the key to victory

Polymarket’s short-term crypto prediction markets—especially contracts that judge price movements within 15 minutes—are typically dominated by automated market makers. These programs track real-time prices on spot exchanges like Binance and Coinbase, quickly arbitraging when there’s a delay in contract pricing.

However, activity of market makers drops significantly during weekends, leading to shallower market depth and creating rare entry opportunities for experienced traders. This trader seized precisely this window, establishing positions at lower slippage costs, and locked in substantial gains before the bots could react.

Strategy wins over speed race

This case highlights an interesting phenomenon: in algorithm-driven markets, human traders can still find profit opportunities through timing and understanding of market microstructure.

Compared to bots relying on millisecond reaction speeds, this trader adopted a “patient waiting” strategy—taking action during the opponent’s weakest moments, using intelligence to compensate for speed disadvantages.

A Polymarket trader ran a Wolf of Wall Street–level play overnight – made $233K by drained liquidity from trading bots and it flew completely under the radar.

The setup was brilliant and extremely simple.

A trader known as @a4385 made $233K overnight exploiting 15-minute… pic.twitter.com/OgnJ8gMWp4

— PredictTrader (@polymarketbet) January 18, 2026

Is market manipulation involved?

However, this trade also sparked some skepticism among market participants. Some questioned whether deliberately entering and exiting during liquidity droughts constitutes a form of market manipulation.

Supporters argued that it’s merely a rational utilization of market structure, with no fundamental difference from traditional liquidity arbitrage strategies. In any case, this incident once again underscores that the boundaries of rules and fairness in prediction markets—coexisting with both humans and robots—remain to be clarified.

Arbitrage landscape in the era of robots

It’s worth noting that robot trading on Polymarket is no longer news. Previous reports indicated that a single automated trading program turned an initial capital of $313 into over $400,000 within a month, with a success rate of 98%.

These bots mainly operate in short-term prediction markets for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP, identifying price delays and discrepancies between contract pricing and market prices, repeatedly executing small high-frequency trades to accumulate profits.

However, this weekend’s event proves that even on the battlefield dominated by robots, human traders who understand timing and market rhythm can still find their own profit paths.