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A trader on prediction market Polymarket struck gold, turning $3,000 into $125,000 by successfully guessing who would be the most Google-searched person in 2025.
Their 3,872% profit came about because the market's outcome was a big surprise. Leading into the results being revealed, Pope Leo XIV was the most likely to be the most Google-searched person this year, with 51.5% odds, followed by Donald Trump with 9.5% odds.
At the same time, American singer D4vd had just a 7.2% likelihood of being crowned the most Googled person. Zooming out, the odds were looking even more drab, dropping to 0.2% at the end of November. But when Google revealed its list of most searched people last week, the singer was revealed to be topping the charts.
Polymarker user “Betwick” predicted YES with approximately $3,150 when D4vd was at a 2% likelihood, according to Polymarket. As a result, Betwick made $125,235 when D4vd was revealed to be the most Googled person of the year.
Prediction markets allow users to predict the outcomes of real-world events, like elections, sports games, and cultural events. Polymarket is seen as the largest prediction market as well as the fan-favorite platform, with 69% of users on Myriad's perpetual sentiment market preferring Polymarket over its competitor, Kalshi.
(Disclosure: Myriad is developed by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan.)
Who is D4vd?
D4vd is an American singer who became embroiled in controversy this September, after a 15-year-old girl, Celeste Rivas, was found dead in a Tesla registered under his name. Police officers reported that the body was in a state of decomposition, and that it was likely that Revas had been dead for an extended period of time before being found.
A missing person flyer stated that Rivas was last seen in April 2024, according to CBS News, when she would have been just 13 years old. Friends of D4vd later told TMZ that they believed that D4vd and Rivas were a couple, although they were shocked to find out her real age.
Unsurprisingly, the news provoked a social media storm around the case, with online sleuths digging deeper in an attempt to unearth the truth. As a result, Google searches for D4vd peaked in the week of September 14 to 20 before tapering off by the end of October, according to Google Trends. Still, it appears that this momentary online stir was enough to make D4vd the most Google-searched person of the year.
Before the incident, D4vd wasn’t the subject of many Google searches, despite being a somewhat popular touring artist. Following Rivas' death, that changed, with his music catalog and live performances attracting renewed attention.
His most popular song, Romantic Homicide, now has 1.77 billion streams on Spotify. The track details a breakup, with the artist metaphorically singing “in the back of my mind, you died, and I didn’t even cry.”
Previous live D4vd performances have also started to resurface, in which the artist is seen wearing bloody clothes and allegedly bringing a casket to his show for fans to write letters to “the deceased.”
D4vd reportedly brings a casket, a wreath, and a notepad with a pencil for people to write letters to the deceased during his shows while on tour
pic.twitter.com/iHRoiavRmr— FearBuck (@FearedBuck) September 18, 2025
D4vd was originally cooperative with the police’s investigation into the death of Rivas, but the singer eventually stopped helping out. In November, the LAPD identified D4vd as a suspect in connection with Rivas’ death, according to NBC Los Angeles.
All of this heartbreak, death, and controversy was enough to make D4vd the most Google-searched person in 2025—and net one Polymarket user a six-figure profit in the process.