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Read Full BioThe CEO of Kalshi, Tarek Mansour, has come out in support of Rep. Ritchie Torres’ (D-NY) proposed insider trading bill, which would ban federal officials from placing bets on prediction markets involving government policy, government action, or political outcomes.
Mansour called attention to the fact that insider trading is already prohibited on regulated platforms and that recent controversies have led to confusion over the distinction between regulated U.S.-based platforms and offshore markets.
Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana told CasinoBeats, “Market integrity is integral to the functioning of any U.S.-regulated exchange. Activity from the past few days has occurred on an unregulated exchange.”
In a LinkedIn post published on January 7, Mansour said insider trading “is banned on Kalshi (and always has been),” pushing back against what he characterized as misleading coverage that conflated regulated exchanges with unregulated, offshore platforms.
Recent Polymarket Bets Renew Insider Trading Questions
Mansour’s statement comes as prediction markets find themselves increasingly under scrutiny following a suspiciously timed trade on Polymarket, where a newly created wallet made more than $400,000 from a wager of just over $30,000 betting that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would be removed from office, only hours before the U.S. operation that led to his capture became public.
That trade, along with another where Polymarket denied the U.S. invaded Venezuela, has fueled widespread speculation about insider trading and market integrity. While the Maduro wager was placed on Polymarket’s offshore-facing crypto platform, in September 2025, the company received approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to relaunch its U.S. markets and has begun rolling out its regulated U.S. app to waitlist users.
The Venezuela controversy follows allegations in late 2025 that another Polymarket trader netted $1 million in profits after making bets that seemed to be just a little too accurate about Google’s Year in Search rankings. The wager raised eyebrows, which led to accusations that the trader was a company insider who may have had access to non-public information.
How Insider Trading Bill Fits Into Debate
It’s against that backdrop that Torres released the draft bill for the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026 this week. The proposal would make it illegal for federal officials to trade on prediction markets related to government or political outcomes if they possess or could reasonably obtain material, non-public information.
Mansour said Kalshi supports the bill precisely because the rules it seeks to enforce are rules the platform already operates under. According to the CEO, Kalshi’s insider trading policies are modeled after those used by traditional financial exchanges, such as the NYSE and Nasdaq, which prohibit anyone with material non-public information from trading, including government employees, policymakers, and corporate executives.
“If you have material non-public information on a market, you cannot trade it and if you do, you are committing a financial crime,” Mansour wrote.
He also emphasized that criticism targeting regulated U.S. exchanges based on the activities of offshore platforms could distort the policy conversation. “Criticizing Nasdaq for something a foreign FX broker does is meaningless,” he said, adding that this type of confusion ultimately benefits unregulated players.
Regulated vs. Offshore Prediction Markets
Mansour’s comments highlight a significant fault line in the prediction market debate: the widening gap between U.S.-regulated platforms operating under CFTC oversight and offshore platforms that rely on decentralized or self-enforced rules.
As prediction markets continue to attract more attention, especially around elections, wars, and government actions, this distinction is likely to matter more, not less. Whether Torres’s bill advances or eventually stalls in committee, the Venezuela controversy has already ensured that insider trading in prediction markets will be on the public’s radar and a central regulatory question that the industry will, sooner or later, be compelled to address.
