Polymarket, an online betting marketplace that bills itself as the future of news, can’t decide whether or not Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskyy wore a suit during a recent appearance in Europe. The gambling site is set to make a final judgement about the question in a few hours and more than $160 million in crypto is riding on it.
Polymarket is a gambling website where users predict the outcome of binary events. It gained prominence in the runup to the 2024 election, signed an exclusivity deal with X in June, and sees itself not just as an online betting parlor, but as an arbiter of truth. Its founder, Shayne Coplan, thinks that the future of media belongs to a website made for degenerate gamblers to make silly bets.
And yet this arbiter of truth had trouble figuring out if Zelenskyy wore a suit at the end of June during a NATO summit. The bet, started on May 22, is simple: “Will Zelenskyy wear a suit before July?” The answer, it turns out, is pretty hard. When Zelenskyy showed up at a NATO summit wearing a tailored jacket and a button up shirt, a stark contrast to his more casual military style garb, a community-run Polymarket account posted, “President Zelenskyy in a suit last night.”
President Zelenskyy in a suit last night pic.twitter.com/Uo3Rhuzkq1
— Polymarket Intel (@PolymarketIntel) June 25, 2025
But people who bet “no” cried foul, complaining that he wasn’t actually wearing a suit on social media and in Polymarket hosted chat rooms. Zelenskyy’s “suit” was an all black get-up with no tie and four cargo-style pockets, some pointed out. The jacket was suit shaped, but it didn’t quite fit everyone’s definition of formal dress. And, perhaps most telling on the side of “not an actual suit,” he was wearing tennis shoes.
According to the “rules” underneath the bet, the market would resolve as a “yes” if the Ukrainian president is photographed or videotaped wearing a suit. “The resolution will be the consensus of credible reporting.”
All the credible reporting around the scene described Zelenskyy’s outfit as a suit. He’s known for wearing military style outfits so the sudden formal outfit generated a lot of headlines. Reuters said the outfit was “suit-style,” a Fox News pundit joked that Trump won’t recognize Zelenskyy because he’s wearing a suit, and the NY Post said that he ditched a “T-shirt for a suit.” There were many more media outlets that noted the fashion upgrade.
At first, the betting market agreed with them. It resolved the bet as a “yes,” but the site’s “no” holders flagged the issue for a disputed resolution. Polymarket kicked the question to a third party, which considered the issue and changed the outcome to a “no.”
Some disputes on Polymarket, like this one, are resolved through a blockchain based third party system called UMA. In this system, the question of how to resolve a disputed market gets thrown to people who hold UMA tokens and who are, in theory, impartial. Holding a UMA token buys you a voice in the debate, which plays out in Discord servers and can be watched by the public.
On social media and in Discord, people are accusing UMA token holders of placing side bets on the suit question and attempting to manipulate the market so one side wins. The Discord conversation is full of people claiming UMA has failed and that Polymarket’s administrators are manipulating it directly.
“At the time of this clarification, 09:33am ET July 01, a consensus of credible reporting has not confirmed that Zelenskyy has worn a suit,” Polymarket administrators wrote below the bet. It did not elaborate on what amounted to a “consensus of credible reporting” and it didn’t return 404 Media’s request for a comment on the issue.
Unhappy “yes” betters disputed this resolution and it’s still in review at the time of publication. According to a timer on the bet, Polymarket will issue a final answer to the question by the end of the day.
So. Is it a suit or isn’t it? According to menswear expert and prolific fashion poster Derek Guy, it’s both. “If I were writing an article about Zelenskyy’s dress, I would call it a suit because it’s the shortest, easiest way to describe his outfit without getting into the history of men’s tailoring. But I would also recognize this is not what most people recognize as a suit,” Guy said in a thread about the controversy on X.
The suit, then, is in the eye of the beholder. The problem is that people have bet more than $160 million on the outcome of the question.
