Hunter Guo was right about the trade. He just wasn’t right fast enough.
The 20-year-old King’s College London student lost roughly $35,000 on Polymarket after betting that Strategy, the company formerly known as MicroStrategy, would sell Bitcoin by May 31, 2026. Strategy did sell Bitcoin. It announced the sale on June 1. One day late, by the contract’s rules, and Guo’s position resolved to zero.
He wasn’t alone. The market’s resolution wiped out approximately $3.8 million in aggregate “yes” positions across 1,838 accounts. Being directionally correct but temporally wrong turned out to be indistinguishable from being completely wrong.
The fine print that ate $3.8 million
Guo bet “yes” on a Polymarket contract asking whether Strategy would sell Bitcoin by a specific deadline of May 31, 2026. The thesis was reasonable. Strategy, under CEO Michael Saylor, had built its entire corporate identity around accumulating Bitcoin. Any sale would be headline news, and Guo apparently had reason to believe one was coming.
