The strategy’s recent bitcoin sale, the first in more than three years, sparked a major dispute on Polymarket, with the dispute resolution body led by UMA token holders ultimately ruling against players who bet that the sale would take place on May 31.
The controversy began after Strategy disclosed in a June 1 filing that it had sold 32 bitcoins between May 26 and May 31. Traders who bought Yes in the May market claimed that the company had clearly sold bitcoin before the deadline. Others responded that the transaction was not announced until June 1 and therefore should not count toward a May 31 cut-off.
Holders of UMA tokens, which act as the dispute resolution layer for Polymarket’s oracle system, decisively sided with the latter view.
The decision means punters who bet that Strategi would sell bitcoin before May 31 lost, despite the company later revealing that the sale took place in the last week of May. The June contract, meanwhile, resolved Yes because the transaction became public during June.
The result was driven by a handful of large token holders, undercutting the core promise of decentralized finance where governance is democratized and not led by a few whales.
The biggest vote came from borntoolate.eth, which cast 3.11 million vote weights for No. Other big no votes included UMA contributor Kevin Chan with 1.53 million vote weights and several wallets with more than 1 million each. Together, the four biggest No voters controlled almost 7 million votes, more than 25 times the entire Yes side.
Several wallets identified as affiliated with Risk Labs, the company behind UMA, also voted no, along with other prominent UMA ecosystem participants.
Not everyone is happy with the decision. Galaxy Research, which had significant exposure to the May contract, strongly pushed back on X. The firm stressed that Strategy explicitly sold 32 Bitcoin between May 26 and May 31, and that the market’s resolution criteria should focus on when the sale took place — not when it was publicly announced on June 1.
“Strategy’s SEC-filed Form 8k explicitly stated that Strategy was sold between May 26 and 31. A plain reading of the resolution criteria would suggest that the market should have resolved YES, hence the controversy,” the firm said.
