U.S. special forces arrested President Maduro in Caracas early on March 3. Hours before the operation was revealed, a new account on the blockchain prediction platform Polymarket placed a $32,500 bet on Maduro's removal from office.
Mysterious bets surge 12 times
When the world received the war alert, the "Yes" rating in this market surged, and a mysterious account profited over $400,000, a return of over 1200%. The implied probability of the contract rose sharply before the official US statement, leading the market to suspect that someone possessed undisclosed military intelligence and was cashing out on-chain in advance.
The Prediction Markets Act "Closes Loopholes"
The aforementioned leak became a catalyst for Democratic Representative Ritchie Torres to push forward the "Public Integrity Act for Financial Forecasting Markets of 2026." The draft bill stipulates that federal elected or appointed officials and executive branch employees who possess material non-public information (MNPI) are prohibited from trading contracts related to government policy, military operations, or election results on interstate forecasting platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi.
While the 2012 Stock Act restricted officials from trading stocks, it failed to foresee that the market would become an even more flexible arbitrage opportunity more than a decade later. As the Trump administration eased legal challenges to new platforms, political contracts quickly became mainstream, and officials with inside information naturally couldn't resist getting involved, thus exposing regulatory issues.
On-chain anonymity poses challenges to law enforcement.
The market size is projected to reach $44 billion by 2025, breaking into the mainstream financial sector. Meanwhile, suspected employee leaks of betting information have surfaced in areas such as Google's trending topics and GPT model upgrades.
Polymarket wallets are presented only by addresses, making it difficult for the SEC and CFTC to trace them. How to prove that the anonymous addresses are related to government or corporate insiders will test future law enforcement technologies.
The Trump administration favors a more hands-off approach to the market, but Ritchie Torres emphasizes that the legislative goal is not to shut down the platform, but to ensure that price forecasts are based on publicly available information and prevent it from becoming a cash cow for special positions. He stated:
"We cannot allow federal officials to exploit the public's trust in the government and turn it into illegal windfall gains for themselves. This bill will bring the prediction market back to fairness and transparency."
