Following Strategy's initial public disclosure of its Bitcoin sale, a Polymarket contract related to this reduction in holdings has entered the review stage. The controversy is not about whether a sale actually occurred, but rather whether the transaction should be considered to have taken place before May 31st or based on the disclosure date of June 1st.
The dispute centers on the May 31 contract.
According to Strategy's 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company sold 32 bitcoins between May 26 and May 31, realizing approximately $2.5 million. The filing was publicly released on June 1.
The rules for the relevant contracts on Polymarket state that if Strategy sells any Bitcoin before 23:59 EST on a specified date, the result is considered "yes". Currently, the contract for May 31 shows an approximately 81% probability of "yes", but its status has been marked as "under review".
Traders who support the "yes" view argue that the on-chain timestamps and the trading range in the 8-K file indicate that the selling occurred at the end of May, and the file table states that the data is "as of 4 p.m. ET on May 31, 2026".
Those who support "no" argue that the market did not see any publicly disclosed information before the May 31 deadline, therefore it should not be considered as meeting the settlement conditions.
The total trading volume of the three contracts approached $24.7 million.
This controversy has extended beyond a single market. The total trading volume of three contracts related to whether Strategy will sell Bitcoin before May 31, June 30, and December 31 has reached approximately $24.7 million.
The contract traded on May 31st, with a trading volume of approximately $14.65 million, was the most controversial. As the fact that the coins were being sold was revealed, the prices on the "yes" side of the June 30th and December 31st contracts nearly reached 100%.
This means that the market's focus has now shifted from "whether to sell" to "on which day it should be counted," which will directly affect the final payout.
UMA will make the final ruling.
For ambiguous markets, Polymarket typically handles settlement disputes through UMA's optimistic oracle mechanism. These reviews usually last about two days, after which a final result is given.
Prior to this disclosure, Polymarket had already priced in an 84% probability that Strategy would sell any Bitcoin this year, significantly higher than the approximately 10% level earlier in the spring. One factor driving this shift in expectations was Strategy CEO Phong Le's earlier statement during the Q1 earnings call that "disciplined selling of Bitcoin" could be used as a capital management tool.
This incident also shows that when prediction markets handle discrepancies in the timing of company disclosures, on-chain data, and public information releases, settlement standards can still lead to significant disputes.
