P2P.me, a non-custodial stablecoin-to-cash conversion service backed by Coinbase Ventures and Multicoin Capital, has issued a public apology after it emerged the company placed bets on its own fundraising round through the prediction market platform Polymarket. The firm acknowledged the move on X on Saturday, calling it an inappropriate attempt to demonstrate public conviction in its own prospects. Despite netting less than $15,000 in profits, the company recognized that even a modest financial gain could carry significant reputational consequences.
“It created confusion and hurt trust,” P2P.me stated in its post. The company said it should have allowed its product and mission to speak for themselves rather than speculating on its own outcome. The firm described the decision as a mistake and indicated it would introduce an internal policy on prediction market trading going forward.
The bets were placed on MetaDAO, a Solana-based fundraising and governance platform through which P2P.me was conducting its public fundraise. Some of the company’s wagers were tied to a $140 million funding milestone, while the positions that paid out were linked to a smaller $6 million target. Notably, the bets were placed ten days before the public fundraising campaign launched on March 25, and at the time the company had only received a $3 million non-binding oral commitment from Multicoin Capital.
A pseudonymous co-founder of MetaDAO, known as Prohp3t, said the platform would have advised P2P.me against using Polymarket had it been aware of the plan in advance. While stopping short of endorsing the conduct, Prohp3t characterized it as a guerrilla marketing effort that went too far. In response, MetaDAO said it would offer refunds to investors who wished to exit before the fundraise closes on Tuesday, with approximately $20,000 in refund requests received out of $6.7 million committed.
The episode also caught P2P.me’s major investors off guard. Two people familiar with the matter told Decrypt that some of the firm’s largest backers were unaware it had been wagering on its own fundraise. A Coinbase Ventures spokesperson confirmed the firm has not committed capital beyond P2P.me’s initial $2 million seed round, which Coinbase Ventures and Multicoin Capital jointly led.
P2P.me said it named its Polymarket account “P2P Team” in the interest of transparency. The account has made 27 predictions in total, with its largest single win of $8,173 coming in January, when the firm correctly wagered that a separate MetaDAO project would not reach $100 million in commitments. The company maintained that it did not believe it was trading on a guaranteed outcome at the time the bets were placed.
The incident arrives as prediction markets face growing scrutiny over the potential for insider abuse. Recent enforcement actions have targeted individual traders with access to non-public information, but P2P.me’s situation highlights that similar concerns can emerge at the organizational level. Just days before MetaDAO’s fundraise went live, Polymarket updated its rules to explicitly ban trading by individuals who hold enough authority or influence to affect the outcome of an event they are betting on. Decrypt said it reached out to Multicoin Capital and Polymarket for comment.
Originally reported by Decrypt.
