US House Oversight Committee: Existing Law Already Prohibits Officials from Trading Commodity Derivatives Using Nonpublic Information

Odaily reports: A staff memorandum released by the U.S. House Oversight Committee states that the Commodity Exchange Act, as amended by the STOCK Act, already prohibits federal employees, members of Congress, and others from trading commodity futures, options, or swaps using nonpublic information obtained through their positions. The committee's investigation collected nearly 1,700 pages of documents and held five bipartisan staff briefings with prediction market platforms.

The memorandum states that Congress could consider further restricting federal personnel from participating in prediction market trading, with measures including a complete ban or restrictions on contracts involving government decisions. The committee also affirmed the platforms' self-regulation, noting that most insider trading incidents were initially detected by the platforms and reported to regulators.

Polymarket has hired former law enforcement experts and partnered with Chainalysis to launch monitoring software PolyGraph; Kalshi is also strengthening its monitoring processes. The materials also mention that a U.S. soldier was indicted in April on suspicion of conducting Polymarket trades around military operations that led to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro; a former White House teleprompter operator was fined by the CFTC in August for betting on a presidential speech. (Decrypt)