FOR MOST OF the past year, it looked like prediction markets had kicked off a new golden age of fraud. On Polymarket, traders raked in fortunes from suspiciously timed bets on geopolitical events like the raid on Venezuela and the Iran War. It wasn’t clear whether the US government would bother pursuing some of the most flagrant bad actors, since Polymarket’s crypto-based platform was technically offshore and not regulated or licensed within the country.
Now, however, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees prediction markets, wants you to know that it’s watching very, very closely. The agency is searching for suspicious behavior from traders within the United States who have been sneaking onto offshore markets, including Polymarket’s crypto platform—which is blocked stateside—by using virtual private networks. “We're going to find them, and we're going to bring actions,” agency chairman Michael Selig told WIRED this week, speaking from the CFTC’s headquarters in a Washington, DC, office park called Patriots Plaza II.
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