Not only did they correctly hold a Yes bet about Maduro they also "correctly" made a bet about the US invading Venezuela and then they _sold_ it early at 18c for a profit as opposed to holding it to maturity (which would've been a "no").
They also did this the correct hold vs sell-early on 4 contracts.
How do you define maturity time here? Is it when the incident occurred (in this case the downfall or the invasion)? Otherwise why is there a buffer between the time this incident took place to the time the contracts matured?
It's maturity is ideally the date listed in the contract (i.e. by Jan 9th) but may extend for 10 days in case a report's publication was delayed.
That said, you can sell contracts to other users (which is typically what happens ...) so when people buy a Yes contract for 5c they're not buying from Polymarket; they're buying it from somebody else. This allows you to make money before maturity. The reason for this is that you can mint YES+NO contracts by paying Polymarket $1 which nets you 0$ as you spent $1 and between the Yes and No contracts Polymarket pays back $1. But if you spend $1 for a YES+NO and sell the No for 50c to another user and the Yes for 70c then you net 20c or alternatively you sell the No for 5c to another user and hold the Yes to maturity and get the $1 back from Polymarket.
Although to be clear, I don't exactly know all the inner workings of Polymarket so it could be the case that they've started to act more like a House than a Market and they're actually putting money on the other side of the contract (IIRC, Kalshi is starting to do that for Sports-based contracts either that or having a partner company do it as opposed to actual users).
Not only did they correctly hold a Yes bet about Maduro they also "correctly" made a bet about the US invading Venezuela and then they _sold_ it early at 18c for a profit as opposed to holding it to maturity (which would've been a "no").
They also did this the correct hold vs sell-early on 4 contracts.