A U.S. F-15E two-seat fighter jet was shot down in Iran on April 3. One crew member has been rescued, but the other weapons systems officer remains missing. The rescue operation is ongoing.
However, just as the search and rescue operation was in full swing, a bet appeared on the prediction market platform Polymarket, asking users to guess when the pilot would be rescued, sparking social controversy.
Lawmakers condemned the betting as "disgusting" and demanded the removal of 219 war betting schemes.
U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, strongly criticized the existence of the marketplace on the X platform. Moulton pointed out that while a life-or-death search and rescue operation was still underway in Iran, people were betting on the pilots' fate on the platform.
"They could be your neighbors, friends, or family," the Massachusetts Democratic congressman wrote, "and people are gambling on whether they'll be saved. It's absolutely disgusting."
Polymarket later apologized in a reply to Moulton's post and stated that it had removed the marketplace. "We immediately shut down this marketplace because it did not meet our integrity standards," Polymarket said. "This marketplace should not have been listed, and we are investigating how it bypassed our internal safeguards."
However, Moulton was not satisfied. He responded that Polymarket's integrity standards were seriously inadequate, pointing out that there were still 219 war- related bets being executed on the platform, and demanded that the platform immediately remove them all.
As the legislative wave intensifies, the CFTC has also stepped in.
This incident comes as discussions about regulating prediction markets are rapidly intensifying in the U.S. political arena. Last month, members of Congress introduced a Senate bill to ban prediction markets from accepting transactions related to sports events and casino games; Democratic Senator Chris Murphy also pledged to push for legislation to ban betting linked to government actions, specifically targeting various forms of betting on war.
More specific bills are also emerging. The End to Prediction Markets Act, introduced by Senators Merkley and Klobuchar, aims to ban the president, vice president, members of Congress, and their families from trading in prediction markets; while the BETS OFF Act, introduced by Representatives Budzinski and Smith, requires platforms to prohibit betting on topics such as government actions, terrorism, war, and assassination.
On April 2, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) also filed a lawsuit against Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois. The focus of the dispute is the regulatory boundaries of each state over the prediction market, and the tug-of-war of jurisdiction between the federal and state governments has officially come to the forefront.
