Marketplace The crackdown on prediction market insider trading
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Apr 7, 2026 
Daniel Ackerman, a Marketplace reporter who explains consumer inflation expectations from surveys. Megan McCarty Carino, a Marketplace reporter who unpacks prediction markets and legal uncertainty around insider trading. They explore Kalshi and Polymarket rules, the contested line between forecasting and betting, and why commodity insider-trading law is unsettled.
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Ban Influencers From Relevant Contracts
- Platforms should ban participants who directly influence outcomes to reduce perceived corruption and legal risk.
- Megan McCarty Carino reports Kalshi and Polymarket recently barred politicians and affiliated sports figures from relevant contracts as a mitigation step.
Prediction Markets Face Legal Uncertainty
- Prediction markets sit at a legal and normative crossroads between forecasting tools and regulated betting platforms.
- Megan McCarty Carino outlines that Dodd-Frank (2010) made commodity insider trading illegal but application to modern prediction markets remains unsettled.
Trading Places Shaped How Regulators Saw Commodities
- The 1983 film Trading Places dramatizes commodity insider trading and influenced public and regulatory views.
- Carino recounts the film's plot where stolen USDA data drives a futures scheme, inspiring the nickname 'Eddie Murphy rule' in later reforms.