Slotkin Demands Trump Administration Do More to Combat Insider Trading in Prediction Markets

WASHINGTON, D.C.
— Today, U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) joined eleven of her Senate colleagues in demanding answers from the Trump Administration’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Michael Selig on his plan to combat insider trading, manipulation, and fraud in prediction markets, which currently facilitate illegal gaming nationwide.
Their letter follows
reporting
that trading volume for the market on whether Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro would be out of power by the end of the month spiked just six and a half hours before Maduro’s capture was announced.
“A newly created Polymarket account invested $30,000 on Friday in favor of Maduro’s exit, netting more than $436,000 in profit after Maduro was taken into custody Saturday morning. Polymarket even began offering a contract around 3 a.m. Saturday – an hour and a half before President Trump’s official announcement – on whether Maduro would be in U.S. custody by January 31. The trading volume for this contract reached $1.3 million,”
wrote the Senators.
Read the full letter
here
.
Additional signatories include Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Andy Kim (D-NJ), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Peter Welch (D-VT).
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