Odds On: Want to bet on the confirmation that aliens exist? Here’s how

“Odds On” is The Fly’s new weekly series diving into the most interesting bets on events trading platforms like Polymarket, Kalshi, and Robinhood. Subscribers, add $EBET to your Fly portfolios for alerts on news about events trading.

BACKGROUND: For decades, the idea of the U.S. government holding back information about extraterrestrial life has lived in a space between genuine national-security secrecy, misunderstood events and a whole lot of cultural storytelling. The modern version of the topic really begins in 1947 with the Roswell incident, when the recovery of debris from what was later identified as a weather balloon was interpreted by parts of the public as evidence of a crashed alien craft. In 2017 leaked videos from Navy pilots showed craft moving in ways the pilots themselves couldn’t explain. This shifted the conversation because for the first time in decades the government acknowledged that some sightings were real events, not fabricated stories. The Pentagon confirmed the authenticity of the videos, admitted it had quietly been studying phenomena for years through the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, and created new offices like the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and later the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office to formalize the effort. Congress, especially in the last five years, has pushed for more transparency, holding public hearings and requiring reports on UAP data. That push for disclosure has fueled speculation because the government now publicly concedes that unexplained phenomena exist but insists that none of it currently points to contact with nonhuman intelligence. So the government’s role up to this point has been a mix of investigation, classification, and cautious disclosure. It treats UAPs the same way it treats any anomalous potential threat. The public, meanwhile, tends to interpret secrecy as confirmation. The result is the gray zone we’re in now.

THE BET: Polymarket offers “Will the US confirm that aliens exist before 2027?” with a total volume of $10,341. Traders on Polymarket are pricing in a 10% chance that the U.S. government confirms aliens exist before 2027. The “Yes” contract was last trading at 10c, while the “No” contract stood at 91c.

THE RULES: This market will resolve to “Yes” if the President of the United States, any member of the Cabinet of the United States, any member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or any U.S. federal agency definitively states that extraterrestrial life or technology exists by December 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to “No”. The primary resolution source for this market will be official information from the government of the United States, however a consensus of credible reporting will also be used, according to Polymarket.