Overview
- The chamber’s new rule bars senators and aides from placing bets on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, a step both companies said should build trust in markets that trade on real‑world outcomes.
- Lawmakers in both parties are weighing wider action as House leaders discuss similar restrictions and sponsors push bills that would curb or ban event‑betting markets that they describe as online gambling.
- Federal prosecutors charged Army soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke with using nonpublic details about a planned operation to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro to make more than $400,000 on Polymarket, and he has pleaded not guilty.
- Platforms cite self‑policing as Kalshi fined and suspended three candidates for betting on their own primaries and Polymarket said it alerted U.S. authorities to suspicious trading tied to the Maduro operation.
- Regulation remains unsettled as the CFTC fights states like Illinois, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, and Wisconsin over who sets the rules, and venture firm Andreessen Horowitz urged the agency to resist state bans that it says would block users and drain market liquidity.