If you wonder whether AI can take away your job, a recent example involving an AI bot suggests otherwise – it helped a trader turn a Rs 11 lakh investment into Rs 40 lakhs overnight. And all it needed from the crypto trader was to approve of an investment it made while he was asleep.
The autonomous AI trading agent executed a series of high-speed trades while he slept. According to an X post by user @0x_Discover, the AI tool, called OpenClaw, sent a notification at 3:47 AM requesting permission to allocate $12,000 (approximately Rs 11.08 lakh) across six prediction markets on the decentralised platform Polymarket. The trader approved the request with a simple “yes” and returned to sleep.
By morning, the AI agent had closed the positions, turning the initial investment into $43,800 (approximately Rs 40.47 lakh) — a profit of roughly $31,800 (over Rs 29 lakh) in just hours.
Timezone arbitrage helped with rapid gains
The AI capitalised on timezone arbitrage, i.e., exploiting price discrepancies that emerge when different regions sleep and market liquidity thins. While US traders were offline, the agent monitored Asian and European hours, spotting mispricings in short-term event markets set to resolve within 90 minutes. Polymarket, a blockchain-based prediction platform for real-world outcomes (politics, sports, crypto events, etc.), frequently sees such temporary inefficiencies due to uneven global participation.
The trader noted this was part of a nine-day streak during which the agent had been autonomously hunting similar overnight opportunities. “For the past 9 days I’ve been running an agent that hunts timezone arbitrage on Polymarket,” he wrote. It was only a single approval event that helped them earn a fortune with the help of an AI agent.
Autonomous AI agents in crypto trading
The incident highlights how AI agents prove to be highly beneficial in decentralised finance and prediction markets. These tools run 24/7, analyse vast datasets in real time, and execute trades faster than any human could. While the story has generated excitement online about passive income potential, experts warn that prediction markets remain highly volatile. Wrong resolutions, low liquidity, or sudden sentiment shifts can lead to heavy losses.
Nonetheless, the use of AI agents to reap profits without putting in manual efforts has shown how easy it can be for traders to spot on such opportunities and earn profits out of it, all without putting in major efforts.