I want to tell you about a guy who calls himself Basenji (https://x.com/cryptobasenji)

I watched him on Vélez por la Mañana this morning. He’s anonymous. Lives outside Colombia. Trades on Polymarket for a living. The name comes from his dog. While the rest of the country was arguing about polls for the May 31st election, this guy was reading the blockchain.

What he found is the reason I’m writing this.

A single wallet. Created for one purpose: to buy “Cepeda YES” on Polymarket. No other transactions in its entire history. Just Cepeda (Socialism), week after week, in identical chunks, at intervals so precise that no human places orders that way.

His exact words, translated:

“When you’re a trader and you want to make money, you don’t buy against your own entry price. If I have an entry at 30 cents, why would I be aggressively buying at 45 cents? It makes no sense. I’d be pushing the price against myself.”

Then Vélez asks him the question everyone watching wanted answered. How much money? Basenji answers like he’s reading the weather:

“At least $50,000. In a market with a total capitalization of $400,000.”

Twelve percent of the entire pool. From one wallet. Through automated bots. Over months.

Fifty thousand dollars buys you twelve percent of a prediction market and three months of headlines. That’s the cheapest political ad ever bought in Latin America.

The Loop Nobody Wants to Talk About

Here’s why this small operation matters more than it should:

“The main problem I identified is that Colombian media uses Polymarket as a reference in their reporting, because the polling firms are doing such a bad job. And that creates an incentive for political campaigns to try to pump the market.”

Polls are broken. Media doesn’t trust them. So media starts citing Polymarket. Polymarket has $17 million in volume for our entire election (Hungary’s recent race had $60 million resolving in two days). Liquidity that thin means a few thousand dollars moves the headline number for an entire week.

Whoever controls the bot controls the front page.

Basenji also tore the polls apart. The 2025 polling law forces sampling in territories that aren’t statistically relevant, territories that conveniently favor the government’s candidate. His weighted error margin across the major firms is over 6%. He thinks Cepeda is actually sitting at 30%. The press keeps quoting 37 to 44.

That is a completely different election than the one we have been told we are watching.

His own position, on the record, with no hedge: short Cepeda. Long Paloma and Abelardo. He compares the runoff to Chile, where the right wing outsider beat the leftist who topped round one. And he drops the line that explains all of Colombian politics in one sentence:

“Only 4 percent of Colombians trust the traditional parties. The other 96 percent don’t. That’s why Abelardo took the outsider road. Outsiders work very well in Colombia.”

The country has lost faith in everything that ran it for two centuries. Whoever runs as the wrecking ball wins. Left or right doesn’t matter anymore. That’s the dynamic the polling firms can’t measure because their methodology was built for a country that no longer exists.

Where Basenji Stops, I Start

I had lunch with a friend last week. Works in a ministry. Smart guy, master’s from Externado, makes about 9 million pesos a month in a job that he basically cannot lose unless he punches his boss on camera. I asked him who he was voting for. He looked at me like I had asked him to skip a paycheck.

“Cepeda, parce. Obvio.”

He doesn’t even like Cepeda. He told me as much over the second beer. He thinks the government has been a disaster. He thinks Petro promised everything and delivered scandals. But the math on his end is simple. Petro controls the money. The state controls his next ten years of stability. There’s a gravity that pulls government workers toward whoever holds the wallet, and what they actually believe in private has nothing to do with how they vote in public.

There are over 1.25 million people on that gravity field nationally. One in every five formal workers in this country gets their paycheck from the State. That is the largest single voting bloc nobody talks about.

Outside the capital, the picture flips. Medellín, Bucaramanga, Boyacá, parts of the coast. I don’t see anyone fired up about Cepeda. I don’t see anyone defending Petro’s legacy. I see exhaustion. Scandal stacked on scandal, UNGRD still hanging in the air, ministers leaving in handcuffs. That kind of disappointment doesn’t show up in a phone poll. It shows up at the ballot box.

The Number Nobody Is Reporting

While we have been arguing about wallets and polls, the government has spent the past three weeks taking on new sovereign debt at high interest rates. Astronomical amounts. Levels no previous Colombian government has attempted, including during the Uribe security crisis.

A month before they hand over power.

Think about that. A normal president with 30 days left thinks about transition. About not leaving the country in a smoking pile. What they don’t do is borrow at punishing rates with no time to deploy the money on actual projects. There is no infrastructure that takes effect in 30 days. There is no program that justifies it.

Unless the project is just cash.

Add it to the December 2024 “economic emergency” Petro declared, the one the Constitutional Court ordered reversed, the one where the collected taxes were never returned to the people. Pattern starts to look pretty obvious.

The Maduro Lesson Nobody Learned

Look at Venezuela. Maduro lost an election. The opposition proved it with their own receipts. Edmundo González had it locked.

Maduro stole it anyway. Like he was changing the channel on a TV. He sat in the chair, served out the term, kept the cronies, kept the apparatus running for years after the world had declared him illegitimate.

Today he is in a US federal prison. Captured. Indicted. Done.

Here is the part you need to sit with: he still got away with stealing the election. He served the years he wanted to serve. He kept enriching his people. He bled the country dry on his way out. By the time the United States actually got their hands on him, the damage was permanent. Millions of Venezuelans had migrated. The opposition was scattered. The economy was a corpse.

The lesson of Maduro is not that he eventually paid. The lesson of Maduro is that paying eventually does not deter anyone.

Petro has photos with Maduro. Multiple. They were close allies for years. Petro himself has interesting things going on with US authorities that I will not speculate on in writing, but the people who follow this seriously know what I mean.

If I am Petro right now, I am studying the middle of the Maduro story. Not the ending. The middle. The years of impunity. The fact that even prison at the end did not undo any of it.

The Bot Was a Preview

Connect the dots with me.

Basenji proved that fifty thousand dollars deployed methodically was enough to swing public perception inside a four hundred thousand dollar market. One person, one bot, manipulating the number that the entire Colombian press corps then quotes as if it were a poll.

Apply the same logic with the resources of the Colombian state. With a payroll of 1.25 million public servants. With one in five formal jobs in the country flowing through Hacienda. With control over the social programs budget. With the borrowing capacity of the national treasury. With a Constitutional Court whose rulings the executive feels free to ignore.

You stop talking about price manipulation on a crypto site. You start talking about the Maduro template, run by people who watched it work in real time.

Basenji caught the small version. The bigger version doesn’t run on bots. It runs on subsidies, on contracts, on jobs for the cousins of the people with jobs, on debt taken out today and paid back by your kids in exchange for loyalty bought in April.

What I Think Happens Next

If this election were held in normal conditions, with a level field, I do not think Cepeda wins. Basenji’s data says the same thing from a completely different angle. Cepeda at 30%, no party willing to coalition with him, considered too radical by the rest of the spectrum, Chilean pattern repeats and the outsider takes it.

But normal is not the assumption I would make right now.

The next time someone shows you a poll, ask who paid for it. The next time they show you Polymarket, ask who is running the bot. And the next time somebody tells you Petro is going to politely walk away from Casa de Nariño on August 7th, ask them if they have been paying attention to Caracas.

We are about to find out which Colombia we actually live in. The one Basenji can model with data, or the one Maduro already wrote the playbook for.

If you got something from this, share it with someone who needs the same picture. And if you are not subscribed to BowTiedColombia yet, this is what I do every week. The view from inside, in your language, without the diplomatic varnish the gringo press puts on everything that happens here.

Saludos parceros,

BowtiedColombia

I voted for him for mayor of Bogotá because he is the leader of the libertarian movement in Colombia. He wouldn’t technically be a “new Milei” because he has been trying for years, long before Milei became globally known.

I can attest to that because I voted for him and knew he wouldn’t win back then.

I find him to be a reasonable candidate.

In this article, I will share some of his thoughts on Bitcoin from 2015 and his proposals from 2014 when he was a candidate for mayor in Bogotá.

Also, I offered him a chance to write in my newsletter, and he said he would think about it.

If you want, you can comment below on what questions you’d like me to ask him. I have direct contact with him.

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What happened yesterday was simply a wake-up call for the world to realize that the president of Colombia is a drug addict.

(I don’t mean this as an insult).

All Colombians know he’s a drug addict, an alcoholic, and that he’s into trans people.

Personally, I’ve known this for years, back when I was studying at university, and Bogotá’s elite always talked about his infamous parties.

At that time, Petro wasn’t as famous as he is now.

Today, I’ll tell you about their true intentions and why it’s difficult for a dictatorship like Maduro’s to succeed in Colombia.

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This is particularly because no one in Colombia embodies the strong traits associated with the far-right. Colombia is a country that pretends to be very decent, and I believe that’s the issue. You can’t afford to be “decent” in a country flooded with drugs, prostitution, violence, and insecurity.

I’m not saying this to scare the gringo tourist but to tell them that the Colombia they know is perfect, and they’ll almost never experience any threats. Unless, of course, you start dating women in Medellín and end up dying from scopolamine. But I’m speaking about the average Colombian, who has to take public transportation to get to work and earns less than $500 a month. That’s tough, and in that scenario, they experience a very problematic Colombia.

The issue isn’t that a Bukele or Milei doesn’t exist in Colombia; the issue is that if they do, their way of campaigning is boring.

For example, I made these "Make Colombia Great Again" caps, and for my subscribers, I’m offering them for $10 if they order today at this link: bowtiedcolombia.gumroad.com/l/makecolombiagreatagain.

What I mean is that you may like or dislike TRUMP and his "Make America Great Again" campaign, but doubting his ability to do business and market himself is ignoring reality. He knows how to win. Personally, I like him, but I understand why some people may not. However, one thing is clear: Trump is better than Kamala—not so much because of him, but because of who supports him: Elon.

Elon has extraordinary skills, and having him involved in the government should be a brilliant move for all Americans. That’s undeniable.

The problem with Colombia is that there’s no one like that, not even close. The far-right is a myth here. There’s no true free-market system like there should be. There’s nothing comparable to Milei. The closest person is (Vicky Dávila), a woman who talks about reducing the size of the state and has exposed Petro’s corruption scandals. However, leadership by a woman in Colombia is very challenging.

Colombia has many problems, and I doubt a woman could successfully lead. There's drug trafficking, criminal gangs, and guerrilla groups, and these issues are better tackled with a man in charge. The problem is that such a man doesn’t exist. Here, there's a small elite that pretends to be right-wing just to hand out contracts and positions to their business friends. (In Colombia, the right and left are essentially the same).

For now, Vicky Dávila is an outsider. She hasn’t been involved in politics and wants to reduce the size of the state and fight crime. That’s the news, but we’ll see how it unfolds. And she’s beautiful too, which is important in every aspect.

In Colombia, there is a political chaos like I have never witnessed in my 29 years of life. Everyone knows that the president of Colombia is useless. People think that I hate or attack him because he is from the left, but that's not true. He is just incompetent, having used the poor to gain power. All presidents are like that, but this one is worse than all because he worsened the insecurity, took office, and now the son was imprisoned due to the ongoing investigation for receiving money from drug traffickers for his father's presidential campaign, and the response was: "I didn't raise him, that's the truth.". That had never happened in the history of Colombia.

That loser is Petro's son.

Recently, there was another scandal because both the president of the Senate and the president of the Chamber received 3.000 millones de pesos (approximately 700,000 dollars) to approve the pension and health reforms proposed by President Petro. This was done with people from his government.

Today, it became official that charges have been filed against the president for exceeding and not declaring funds that financed his presidential campaign, which could lead to the loss of his presidential status.

To this, the loser Petro has called it an attempted coup d'état, haha, it’s unbelievable. His son is in jail for receiving drug trafficking money for his presidential campaign, and he calls it political persecution and a coup d'état.

Right now, it's a complete disaster because he is playing the victim and calling on people to start a revolution because they want to remove him from power. But let’s remember his son is in jail, his brother accuses him of vote-buying. He faces charges for exceeding presidential campaign spending limits, and now officials from his government have admitted to trying to bribe the presidents of the Senate and the House of Representatives to pass his political reforms.

Recently, the Constitutional Court struck down the Ministry of Equality that he created. This ministry will only last until 2026 because its creation did not take into account the nation's fiscal procedures. In other words, they created a ministry out of nothing to pay political favors and hire people arbitrarily without considering the state budget.

It has all been disrespectful.

In my opinion, it is not advisable to stage a coup d'état because that incompetent would complain and cry for the rest of his life. It's better to let him continue to falter as he has been. We need to let more scandals emerge, which will continue to appear until he hands over power in 2026.

However, as always, everything in this life is unexpected. If he continues to become violent and says he would like to remain in power, a coup d'état to uphold the institutions of Colombia from such a disgrace of a President is inevitable.

I find it strange that many expats support Petro. They call themselves capitalists and depend on Colombia's misery to continue living well with their dollars. I understand them because I also earn in dollars, but Petro ruins foreign investment, puts many obstacles to hiring. Everything has fallen, exports, the economy, and unemployment has increased.

Many companies have gone bankrupt, and although it is convenient that the dollar conversion remains high, it is not suitable for what Colombians earning in pesos are going through. The free market generates opportunities for everyone. If everyone makes money, the peso conversion doesn't matter, and that's what people should think about.

For now, the president spends his time giving speeches saying that if the people want, he will remain in power. He has become increasingly extremist.

As always, I will tell the truth about what happens, I will give my opinion on everything. The day it is not worth living in Colombia, I will say it. For now, I believe the institutions are strong and I don't think he will remain in power, but one never knows. That's why if you want to discuss many things about Colombia, you can schedule your call.

If you have any questions and want to know whether it's worth living in Colombia or not, you can schedule your call. I have time this week and can take it.

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