Polymarket’s FAA outage hack contract falls to about 2 cents in its first day of trading

Polymarket’s contract on whether the U.S. government will officially attribute the Nov. 13 FAA outage to a hack stood at 2.25 cents as of 5:12 p.m. ET, Nov. 14, 2026, with a 2-cent bid, a 2.5-cent ask and a last trade at 2.2 cents. It opened near 15 cents late Friday afternoon. The market has drawn $129,028 in volume since it was listed late Friday afternoon, all of it inside the past 24 hours, and Polymarket’s own data puts its one-day change at minus 13.25 points.

The outage behind it led the Federal Aviation Administration to halt departures from U.S. airports on Friday afternoon. The FAA’s statement, marked preliminary, tied the ground stop to “communication issues impacting multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers” and said technicians were investigating.

What the contract asks

The market resolves Yes if the U.S. government officially attributes the Nov. 13, 2026, FAA outage to a hack between market creation and Nov. 30, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. ET. A hack means intentional, malicious activity that caused the outage. A qualifying attribution is a public statement by an authorized federal representative, acting in an official capacity, that the outage was caused by a hack. Criminal charges from federal prosecutors alleging the same also count.

Statements that call a hack suspected, likely, probable or not ruled out do not count, nor do statements that the outage bears the hallmarks of, or is consistent with, a hack. Anonymous officials and foreign governments do not qualify on their own. A qualifying attribution would settle the market at Yes even if it were later retracted. Official U.S. government statements are the primary resolution source, and a consensus of credible reporting may also be used.

How the price moved

Polymarket’s price history shows a first print of 15 cents at 5:15 p.m. ET Friday. In its first half hour the contract swung between 6.5 and 22 cents, and it stood at 18.5 cents around 6:10 p.m. It then slid through the evening, to 10.5 cents at 8 p.m., 8 cents at 8:30 p.m. and 3.8 cents by 10 p.m.

From late Friday night through Saturday morning it held between 3.6 and 5.3 cents. Between 11:25 and 11:30 a.m. ET Saturday it fell from 5.15 cents to 2.1 cents. It printed 1.55 cents at 2:30 p.m. and 2.1 cents at 5:09 p.m.

Two related Polymarket contracts opened the same afternoon. As of 5:12 p.m. ET, the contract on an attribution to Iran stood at 0.75 cents with $156,278 traded in 24 hours, and the one on an attribution to a foreign actor stood at 1.2 cents with $84,026 traded in 24 hours.

What officials have said

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy put the start of the trouble at 3:36 p.m. ET Friday, when air traffic control centers saw instability in radar and communications, and the airspace reopened at 8:15 p.m. ET, Reuters reported. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin cited “zero evidence” so far of a cyberattack or a rogue AI system, though investigators had not ruled out either. “It appears this was mechanically driven. However, we’re still looking,” Mullin said. The National Security Agency was working with the Department of Homeland Security on the investigation. The Associated Press reported that Mullin saw no “footprints” showing an attack.

At a briefing on Saturday, Duffy said the trouble followed routine maintenance by contractor L3Harris at at least one remote FAA site, where telecommunication lines were being moved from copper wire to fiber. A router involved in that work began flooding other routers in the air traffic control system with more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds. Officials have not yet determined whether the fault was contractor error or a faulty router, the Transportation Department’s account of the briefing shows. Asked about a cyberattack, Duffy said, “We don’t believe so,” adding, “we don’t believe this was cyber at all.” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said there was “zero evidence” of anything “nefarious,” CNBC reported.

None of these records contains a statement that the outage was caused by a hack.

The same outage on Kalshi

Kalshi lists no hack contract. Its event “What caused the FAA’s nationwide ground stop?” settled Yes on five outcomes Saturday: System failure, Maintenance/upgrade, Contractor failure, L3Harris and Specific cause confirmed, with those markets closing at 12:54 p.m. ET. The L3Harris market traded 67,786 contracts. Kalshi’s rules for the event state that a cyberattack, jamming or sabotage is not a system failure.

Six outcomes in that event remained open as of 5:13 p.m. ET. Software or configuration error last traded at 65 cents, human error at 29 cents, physical damage at 8 cents, the FAA’s SMART system at 3 cents, an AI system error at 2 cents and Verizon at 1 cent.

For the day’s other large price changes, see Prediction markets today: the biggest moves, Nov. 14, 2026 and the Nov. 13 edition.

Our AI news desk researched and wrote this article, and software checked every factual sentence against the records it links to, following the WriterOps methodology. Report an error.