A flurry of bets made prior to major announcements about the Iran war has ramped up speculation that individuals or groups with advance knowledge of U.S. military plans are cashing in on insider information.
And while prediction market platforms Polymarket and Kalshi now say they are taking more proactive measures designed to prevent such illicit activity, experts say there have been few signs so far that Trump administration regulators are cracking down.
“You need the deterrent factor that exists on the government side,” said Chris Ehrman, an attorney who previously served as head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s whistleblower office. Without it, he said, simply allowing the platforms to self-regulate often amounts to “whipping them with a wet noddle.”
So far, the suspect bets have been largely concentrated on Polymarket, a platform that allows users to wager on the likelihood of certain events taking place. But in at least one case, speculation about a possible insider trade has migrated to a more traditional market.
The CFTC did not respond to a request for comment. In an interview this week with the Washington Reporter, an online conservative publication, CFTC Chairman Michael Selig pushed back on the idea that his office was not taking on the issue.
“There’s this false media narrative that CFTC-regulated markets are the Wild West and have no regulation and that’s blatantly false,” he said. “The CFTC uses complex surveillance tools and has seasoned career staff that pro-actively monitor these markets for insider trading and fraud.”
The CFTC recently issued guidance that reminded prediction market platforms of their responsibilities to limit insider trading.
Noah Solowiejczyk, a partner at law firm Fenwick & West and a former federal prosecutor, said the agency has recently shown signs it wants to take insider trading cases more seriously.
“I think you’ll see an enforcement action or prosecution happen” in an events-driven insider trading case, Solowiejczyk predicted.
Once relegated to the world of finance, insider has become a major topic in recent years as concerns about everything from politicians’ stock trades to professional athletes’ performances are now widely scrutinized for evidence of manipulation — fueled in part by the ongoing creep of investing and gambling onto smartphones and into everyday life.
Data suggests traders with advanced knowledge of geopolitical events may have collectively pocketed millions from recent bets on Polymarket. Last month, in the run-up to the latest round of American and Israeli attacks on Iran, some $529 million was traded on the platform tied to the timing of the strikes, Bloomberg News reported.
Earlier this week, analytics firm Bubblemaps said a series of connected Polymarket accounts had earned $1 million over the past two years predicting U.S. and Israeli strikes in the Middle East.
On Monday, approximately 15 minutes before President Donald Trump posted that there had been “productive” talks with Iran, stocks and oil futures trades on the main exchange run by longtime markets firm CME Group saw an unusual burst of volume compared to the relatively subdued backdrop seen the rest of that morning.
The bets predicted stocks would rise and oil prices would fall that day — precisely what happened once Trump made his announcement.
Depending on when they closed, the trades could have yielded millions — though shortly after Trump’s post, Iran denied there had been direct talks, and the market moves reversed somewhat.
Polymarket did not respond to a request for comment. A CME spokespersn declined to comment.
Solowiejczyk said the CFTC has likely been hampered by staffing shortages, which may be impacting its ability to take on new cases. Barron’s magazine recently reported that the CFTC has made significant cuts in its enforcement division, including the loss of all enforcement attorneys in its Chicago office.
It is not clear to what extent the anonymity that’s available to traders on Polymarket and Kalshi would hinder a federal investigation into illicit trading.
While part of Polymarket is registered in the U.S., making it subject to federal know-your-customer requirements, another part is registered in Panama — something that could make it harder to trace individuals making insider bets. Experts also say traders can circumvent geographic restrictions by using virtual private networks, or VPNs, that mask which country they are operating in.
So far, no American has faced federal charges in connection with insider trading on event-driven news. In February, Israel charged two of its military service members with using classified information to place bets on Polymarket related to unspecified combat operations.
Polymarket only recently began accepting trades from U.S.-based users, following an effort by the Trump administration to end a Biden-era push to restrict its use here.
Kalshi is fully registered in the U.S., and recently suspended an editor for influencer MrBeast in connection with alleged insider trading.
Many of the suspect bets on Polymarket are placed by accounts that are either new or solely focused on one specific outcome, further suggesting insiders could be behind them.
Even prior to the recent military operations and the accompanying suspicious bets, accusations of insider trading on Polymarket had begun to surface.
In January, a Polymarket user earned some $400,000 betting that then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would soon be out of office. One trader appeared to make approximately $1.2 million forecasting whom Google would announce as the most-searched people of 2025.
In response to a question about insider trading in November, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan told “60 Minutes” that “having an edge” is “a good thing.”
Coplan said that while he was focused on the ethics of insider transactions, it was “sort of an inevitability that this will happen, and there’s a lot of benefits from it.”
This week, Polymarket and Kalshi both unveiled measures designed to further crack down on insider trading.
Polymarket announced new rules explicitly stating users cannot act on insider information or trade on events whose outcome they could influence.
Kalshi said it was deploying technology that would “preemptively block politicians, athletes, and other relevant people” from trading in politics and sports markets. It also said it was adding a whistleblower function to its markets homepage that would allow users to flag potential violations.
A representative for Kalshi said the company has not been involved in the recent suspect trades. “We ban insider trading and enforce it,” a spokeswoman said in an email.
Polymarket, recently valued at $9 billion, counts Donald Trump Jr. as an investor. The president’s eldest son is also a strategic adviser to Kalshi, its top competitor.
White House representatives denied any wrongdoing originated from the administration and blasted insinuations that they were.
“All federal employees are subject to government ethics guidelines that prohibit the use of nonpublic information for financial benefit,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement.
“However, any implication that Administration officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting.”
“The President has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities,” David Warrington, White House counsel, said in a statement. “President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner and to suggest otherwise is either ill-informed or malicious.”
“Don does not interface with the federal government as part of his role with any company that he invests in or advises and has no influence or involvement with administration policies relating to prediction markets,” a representative for Donald Trump Jr. said in a statement.
Members of Congress have taken a more circumspect view of event-market platforms, putting forward legislation that would ban elected officials and government employees from using them and restricting the types of events, such as war or deaths, users can wager on.
The most recent bill, introduced by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, would ban trades on government actions, terrorism, war, assassination and events “where an individual knows or controls the outcome.”
“There’s no getting around the fact that any prediction market where somebody knows or controls the outcome of a bet is ripe for corruption,” Murphy said in a statement.
“Even worse, prediction markets are also an avenue by which government decisions get influenced by who’s making money off them, and that should be unforgivable to the American public,” he said.
