Overview
- An anonymous Polymarket account turned roughly $34,000 into more than $400,000 by wagering that Nicolás Maduro would be out of power, with the final trade logged at 8:58 p.m. on Jan. 2 before the U.S. operation was announced.
- The tight timing and narrow focus of the wagers have prompted questions about possible use of confidential information, and the Defense Department notes its ethics rules bar using nonpublic information for private gain.
- Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres introduced a bill on Friday to restrict government employees from trading politically related event contracts following the suspicious Maduro trade.
- As prediction markets surge to about $3 billion in weekly volume, the CFTC’s diminished staffing and leadership vacancies raise concerns about enforcement capacity, according to recent reporting.
- Polymarket, which did not comment, runs an offshore, largely pseudonymous exchange with prior investigative scrutiny, and it is now facing user backlash after declining to pay out on a separate Venezuela “invasion” market, according to Futurism.