News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Polymarket Promo Code COVERS: Get a $50 Bonus Before the Australia vs Türkiye Group D Kicks Off
The Polymarket promo code to use right now is COVERS, and it unlocks a $50 bonus for new users on one of the best prediction market apps available today. This June 13 offer is perfectly timed for those looking to trade on the Australia vs Türkiye Group D clash. A minimum deposit of $20 is required to activate the welcome reward. Polymarket Promo Code: Grab Your $50 Bonus for Australia vs Türkiye Using the Polymarket promo code COVERS during registration is the key step to unlocking this welcome offer. New users who sign up and deposit at least $20 will receive a $50 bonus to use across the platform's wide range of prediction markets. The offer is available in all U.S. states except Nevada, so make sure you are physically located in an eligible state before registering. Here are the key terms and conditions to keep in mind before claiming: * Available in all U.S. states except Nevada * Minimum deposit of $20 required to activate the bonus * Proof of ID is required, including a photo of a driver's license or passport and a selfie * You may also be asked to verify your Social Security Number during registration * You must be physically located in an eligible state at the time of sign-up Once your account is active and funded, you can place your first trade on the Australia vs Türkiye Group D match. If you trade on Türkiye to win and they pull off a 2-1 victory as predicted, your position pays out accordingly. If Australia holds on for a surprise result and your trade does not go your way, the bonus funds provide additional trading value to keep you active on the platform. Polymarket also covers markets far beyond sports, including politics, economics, and entertainment, giving you plenty of options to explore. For a full breakdown of available offers, check out the best prediction market promos currently on the market. Use the correct Polymarket promo code for your state How to Claim Your Polymarket Welcome Offer for the Australia vs Türkiye Match Claiming your Polymarket welcome bonus is straightforward. Follow these steps to get started and place your first trade on Australia vs Türkiye: Pages related to this topic
Polymarket's international volume drops for second straight month By Investing.com
Investing.com -- Polymarket's international prediction market platform recorded $7.1 billion in trading volume during May, marking the second consecutive monthly decline, according to data from Dune Analytics. The May figure represents a decrease from April's $9 billion in volume. Both months fell short of the platform's peak performance in March, when it processed $10.5 billion. The decline marks a reversal from earlier growth trends. Between August and March, Polymarket's volumes expanded by more than 850%, Dune Analytics data showed. The platform's U.S. operation showed different results, with volume rising to $1.77 billion in May from $1.26 billion in April. The international platform's volume decrease occurred while competing platforms reported growth. Kalshi, Polymarket's main competitor, processed more than $17.9 billion in volume during May. Early June data indicates a potential shift in the trend. Polymarket's international platform processed $1.9 billion in volume during the first week of June, the highest weekly total since late April. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.
CFTC plans new prediction market rules that could affect Polymarket and Kalshi
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has proposed a new framework for reviewing prediction market contracts that could reshape how platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi operate in the United States. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the CFTC is preparing rules that would establish a formal process for evaluating event-based contracts rather than imposing blanket restrictions on entire categories of markets. The proposal would also outline factors regulators could use when deciding whether a contract serves the public interest. Prediction markets allow users to trade on the outcomes of future events ranging from elections and economic data releases to sporting events. Trading activity in the sector has increased sharply over the past few years, helping platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi attract growing volumes and public attention. The proposal arrives as regulators continue to examine how these markets should be supervised. Earlier this year, members of a U.S. House panel opened an inquiry into insider trading concerns involving prediction market platforms, adding to scrutiny of the fast-growing sector. Some event contracts could face additional review Under the framework described by the Wall Street Journal, certain sports-related contracts may receive closer regulatory attention. These include markets tied to player injuries and highly specific in-game events, which regulators may evaluate separately before determining whether they can continue to trade. Contracts linked to wars, terrorism, political violence, or assassinations could face even stricter examination. According to the report, the CFTC is considering public-interest standards when reviewing these categories, allowing the agency to assess individual contracts on a case-by-case basis rather than relying on broad prohibitions. The review comes at a time when the agency is taking a more active role in overseeing emerging financial markets. As crypto.news reported earlier, the CFTC recently warned regulated derivatives venues that 24-hour, seven-day-a-week trading models may work for crypto-native products but may not be appropriate for every traditional asset class. The agency said exchanges and clearinghouses should carefully evaluate products before extending continuous trading and clearing while maintaining controls designed to prevent market abuse. Prediction markets face growing legal and regulatory scrutiny Legal scrutiny of prediction markets has also intensified through enforcement actions and court proceedings. As reported earlier by crypto.news, a Manhattan court has scheduled a Dec. 7 trial for Army soldier Gannon Van Dyke in what prosecutors describe as the first U.S. insider trading case involving a prediction market. Federal prosecutors allege that Van Dyke used classified military intelligence connected to an operation involving Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to place profitable wagers on Polymarket. Court filings cited by prosecutors claim he turned roughly $33,000 into more than $410,000 through 13 Venezuela-related bets. Van Dyke pleaded not guilty during his April arraignment. Meanwhile, regulated prediction and derivatives platforms continue expanding their product offerings. On June 10, Kalshi launched XRP perpetual futures under the XRPPERP ticker, giving U.S. traders access to leveraged XRP exposure through a cash-settled contract with no expiration date. The launch expanded Kalshi's crypto derivatives lineup beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum and brought another crypto product into a CFTC-regulated marketplace.
SpaceX valuation after IPO: what SPCX is worth in year one - FinanceFeeds
The biggest IPO in market history will not have its first-year value set by the 21 banks running the book -- that part of the story is already over. SpaceX lists on Nasdaq as SPCX on June 12, 2026 at a fixed $135 per share, a $75 billion raise at a $1.75 trillion implied valuation, and for the first time in IPO history there are three independent, live pricing rails telling you what happens next: Polymarket's pre-IPO contracts price the first close at roughly $2.3 trillion, independent models from Morningstar and NYU's Aswath Damodaran cluster between $780 billion and $1.3 trillion, and the order book itself reportedly drew $150 billion in demand. The spread between the most bearish rail and the most bullish one is about $1.5 trillion -- the widest disagreement over a listing's first-year value ever recorded before a single public share traded. That triangulation is the story competing coverage keeps missing. Every previous mega-IPO -- Saudi Aramco in 2019, Alibaba in 2014, Facebook in 2012 -- went public with exactly one forward signal: the bankers' book. SPCX arrives with a functioning derivatives layer built on crypto rails before the equity even exists. Polymarket and Kalshi run strike-laddered markets on the closing market cap, and Bybit has already turned pre-IPO SpaceX exposure into a tradable token, as FinanceFeeds reported when the product launched. Having tracked Polymarket's pre-IPO strike ladder since the contracts went live in May, the notable pattern is its stability: traders have held a 2.0T-plus consensus through every Morningstar downgrade headline. For brokers and trading platforms, that means the year-one SPCX trade starts with a visible, liquid disagreement -- and disagreement is where volume lives. Key Facts: * SpaceX prices its IPO at a fixed $135 per share on June 11, 2026, selling 555.6 million shares to raise $75 billion at a $1.75-1.77 trillion valuation -- Capital.com, TechCrunch, June 2026 * Polymarket traders price the first-day closing market cap near $2.3 trillion, with 64% on $2.0 trillion-plus and 96% above $1.2 trillion -- Polymarket via PredictionNews, May 21, 2026 * Morningstar's discounted cash flow model values SpaceX at roughly $780 billion -- less than half the ask -- CNBC, June 3, 2026 * SpaceX generated $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025, up 33% from $14.1 billion in 2024, with Starlink contributing over $10 billion across 10 million-plus subscribers -- Sacra, company figures, February 2026 * The order book reportedly attracted about $150 billion in demand against a $75 billion raise -- Yellow News, June 2026 * Elon Musk has discussed allocating up to 30% of IPO shares to retail investors, versus the 5-10% standard -- Reuters, May 2026 * NYU valuation professor Aswath Damodaran puts fair value near $1.3 trillion -- Moneywise, June 2026 What is actually happening -- and why the price is fixed SpaceX confidentially filed its S-1 on April 1, 2026 and chose an unusual structure: a fixed $135 offer price rather than a bookbuild range, with final pricing confirmed after the market close on June 11 and trading opening June 12. The fixed price converts the IPO from a negotiation into a referendum -- demand shows up as allocation pressure and day-one movement rather than a revised range. The reported $150 billion of demand against $75 billion of stock is the first data point on that referendum. The valuation case rests on two businesses moving at different speeds. Starlink crossed 10 million active customers across 160 countries in February 2026 and produced more than $10 billion of 2025 revenue -- it is the only consistently profitable part of the company, with analyst projections for 2026 ranging from $15.9 billion to $24 billion. Launch remains the moat but not the margin. The S-1 itself concedes "a history of net losses and may not achieve profitability in the future," across 38 pages of risk factors. A useful analogy for the structure: SPCX at $135 is priced like a utility that owns a venture portfolio -- the cash-generative connectivity layer is the utility, while Starship, Mars ambitions and the AI operations are embedded call options the buyer pays for upfront. The private-market run-up frames how much of the future is already in the price. SpaceX was valued at $400 billion in a July 2025 tender, then roughly $800 billion in a December 2025 insider sale at $421 per share, and now $1.75 trillion at the IPO -- a 4.4× repricing in 11 months on a 33% revenue growth rate. Morningstar's equity team, led by analyst Nicolas Owens, assigns about $611 billion of enterprise value to launch and Starlink combined, plus $170 billion of probability-weighted credit for the AI operations. "We think the company has been significantly overvalued and investors will have opportunities to buy the stock at more attractive levels after the IPO." -- Nicolas Owens and Morningstar equity analysts (CNBC) Quick Take: A fixed $135 price, $150 billion of reported demand, and a 94-107× sales multiple -- the offer is structurally designed to trade up on day one, while the models say the gravity is far below. How exchanges, tokenisers and prediction markets responded The industry response is what makes this IPO a digital-assets story rather than just an equities one. Bybit moved first, packaging pre-IPO SpaceX exposure as a tradable token -- extending the tokenised-equity playbook that platforms tested on OpenAI and other private names into the largest listing ever. Polymarket and Kalshi both opened pre-IPO contract suites: strike-laddered closing-market-cap markets, ticker markets, and timing markets, effectively building a synthetic when-issued market that regulated US equity venues never offered retail. On the same rails, Kalshi and Polymarket traders price Elon Musk's odds of becoming a trillionaire above 90%, a derivative bet on the same listing. The traditional side adapted in the opposite direction: inclusion rather than innovation. Reuters reported Musk has pushed to allocate up to 30% of shares to retail investors -- at least three times the standard 5-10% -- a distribution decision that matters for year-one float behaviour, because retail-heavy registers historically hold tighter through drawdowns but amplify momentum in both directions. Twenty-one banks are on the offering; index providers are the next gatekeepers, and with the company still loss-making, S&P 500 eligibility is off the table for now while Nasdaq-100 inclusion -- which carries no profitability requirement -- is the realistic passive-flow catalyst. Not everyone is celebrating the disclosure standard that came with all this. "The stock is set to be priced at 107 times sales, which would make it one of the most expensive stocks in history. It will be twice as valuable [as] Walmart while generating less revenue than Macy's." -- Ed Elson, analyst and co-host, Prof G Markets -- who called the S-1 "unserious, empty, hallucinatory, and borderline dishonest" (Yahoo Finance) Quick Take: Crypto-native venues built the forward market; Wall Street built the allocation machine. Year one of SPCX is the first live test of which one prices a mega-cap better. The three pricing rails -- and what they imply for year one Put the three rails side by side and the year-one corridor emerges. The prediction-market rail is the most granular: Polymarket's ladder puts 96% above $1.2 trillion, 91.5% above $1.6 trillion, 84% above $1.8 trillion and 78% above $2 trillion for the listing close, with the headline consensus near $2.3 trillion and a separate 75% probability that SPCX finishes day one above the $135 offer. The model rail spans Morningstar's $780 billion to Damodaran's $1.3 trillion. The book rail -- $135 and $150 billion of demand -- sits between them. Sources as listed; Polymarket cents read as implied probabilities on strike-laddered closing-market-cap contracts. The data synthesis no single rail states: weight Polymarket's distribution against the model anchors and the implied 12-month corridor runs from roughly $1.3 trillion (the Damodaran floor, reached if the lockup unwind meets a single Starlink growth miss) to $2.3-2.5 trillion (the prediction-market consensus extended by index inclusion), with a probability-weighted midpoint in the $1.8-2.0 trillion band -- above the IPO mark, far below the euphoria scenario. History rhymes with the wide end of that range. Facebook lost more than half its value within four months of its 2012 debut before recovering to its offer price inside 15 months; Alibaba -- the previous US-listing record holder -- gained nearly half its value in year one before round-tripping the entire move; Saudi Aramco, the prior global record listing, barely moved for a year as its tightly held float suppressed price discovery. SPCX's structure borrows from all three: a retail-heavy register like Facebook, a momentum narrative like Alibaba, and a controlled float -- Musk retains voting control through a dual-class structure -- like Aramco. Mega-IPOs tend to converge on fundamentals only after their first lockup expiry -- for SPCX, the standard 180-day window lands in December 2026, the same month as the Nasdaq-100 annual reconstitution. That collision of forced sellers and forced buyers in the same month is the single most important year-one mechanic, and almost nobody is pricing it as an event. The regulatory follow-on questions are already live, as FinanceFeeds covered when Kalshi drew a regulatory referral over its advertising. Quick Take: Weighted across all three rails, the defensible year-one corridor is $1.3-2.5 trillion with a midpoint near $1.9 trillion -- about $160 per share against the $135 offer. The regulatory tension: a when-issued market nobody licensed The push-pull is sharper here than in any prior listing. On one side, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reviewed a conventional S-1 -- 38 pages of risk factors, a dual-class structure preserving Musk's control, and disclosed net losses. On the other, the forward market in that same security's outcome runs on venues the SEC does not regulate: Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)-supervised event contracts on Kalshi, and Polymarket's offshore-rooted order books. US senators are already probing how the CFTC supervises this perimeter -- Senator Elizabeth Warren's records request on CFTC staff exits and CLARITY Act negotiations, covered by FinanceFeeds, lands precisely on the question of who polices event contracts referencing securities. Tokenised pre-IPO products occupy a third lane again: securities-like exposure wrapped in crypto rails, marketed cross-border, with disclosure standards set by the issuer rather than a regulator. For compliance teams at brokers and exchanges, SPCX is a preview: every future mega-listing will arrive with an unlicensed when-issued market attached, and the first enforcement action in that gap will define the product category. What happens next -- three predictions First: SPCX closes its first day above $135 and the $2 trillion strike resolves YES. The causal chain is mechanical -- $150 billion of demand for $75 billion of stock leaves roughly half the interest unfilled at the offer, the 30% retail allocation skews the register toward holders who buy momentum rather than sell into it, and Polymarket's 75% close-above-offer price agrees. Second: the December 2026 lockup expiry collides with the Nasdaq-100 reconstitution window, producing the year's deepest drawdown and its best entry -- exactly the "more attractive levels" Morningstar told clients to wait for. If the Facebook 2012 path repeats even at half magnitude, a $1.4-1.5 trillion print inside the first nine months is the bear rail's moment. Third: by the first anniversary in June 2027, the prediction-market and tokenised layers will have migrated from novelty to infrastructure -- every brokerage that watched Bybit tokenise pre-IPO SpaceX exposure and Polymarket out-forecast the sell-side will want the same forward market for the next decacorn listing. The probability-weighted landing zone: a $1.8-2.0 trillion market cap at the one-year mark, with round trips through both $1.4 trillion and $2.3 trillion along the way. FAQ What will SpaceX be worth after its IPO? At the fixed $135 offer price, SpaceX lists at a $1.75-1.77 trillion valuation on June 12, 2026. Polymarket traders price the first close near $2.3 trillion, while independent models from Morningstar ($780 billion) and Aswath Damodaran ($1.3 trillion) sit far below -- a record-wide disagreement. What will SpaceX be worth one year after the IPO? Triangulating the prediction-market ladder, the order book and independent models gives a probability-weighted corridor of roughly $1.3-2.5 trillion, with a midpoint near $1.8-2.0 trillion. The December 2026 lockup expiry and Nasdaq-100 reconstitution are the two events most likely to set the year's extremes. Is SpaceX profitable? No. The S-1 discloses "a history of net losses and may not achieve profitability in the future." Starlink, with over $10 billion of 2025 revenue and more than 10 million subscribers, is the profitable unit; total 2025 revenue was $18.7 billion, up 33% year on year. How are crypto platforms involved in the SpaceX IPO? Bybit tokenised pre-IPO SpaceX exposure, and Polymarket and Kalshi run strike-laddered prediction markets on the closing market cap -- together forming an unofficial when-issued market on crypto rails that existed before the equity itself traded. Can SPCX join the S&P 500 or Nasdaq-100 in year one? The S&P 500 requires positive earnings, which rules SpaceX out for now. The Nasdaq-100 has no profitability test, making the December 2026 reconstitution the realistic first index catalyst -- and a source of passive inflows colliding with the lockup expiry that same month. This article is informational analysis only and is not investment advice. Valuations, prediction-market prices and odds cited are timestamped snapshots and move constantly. Do your own research.
Kalshi and Polymarket crack down on paid influencers claiming election fraud
Updated June 8, 2026 at 6:23 PM PDT As vote tallies in the Los Angeles mayoral election trickled in slowly over the last week, unsubstantiated claims exploded on X that a fraudulent plot was underway to deprive the MAGA-backed former reality TV star Spencer Pratt the second-place slot to advance to the November runoff against incumbent Democrat Karen Bass. A portion of these unfounded conspiracy theories pointed to changing betting odds for the three top candidates on prediction market sites Kalshi and Polymarket to suggest something sinister is afoot with the vote count. Some influencers supercharging such fraud claims online did so in posts sponsored by the companies themselves. "They are actually doing it. They are counting votes until SPENCER LOSES. Someone DO SOMETHING," Trump-aligned influencer Mila Joy wrote to her half a million followers a day after the election as she reshared a Polymarket post with a graph showing that Pratt's betting odds were falling on the site. "Is CA cheating to get Spencer Pratt out?" questioned commentator David Freeman, who posts under the handle Gunther Eagleman on X, as he shared a Kalshi post showing the odds between Pratt and progressive Democrat Nithya Raman. The Associated Press called the second-place spot for Raman on Monday afternoon after her vote share overtook Pratt's on Sunday. At the bottom of both X posts, the words "paid partnership" appear in tiny font, a subtle reference to the millions of dollars Kalshi and Polymarket have pumped into programs that pay influencers to reshare corporate posts as a way to boost engagement. The Los Angeles mayoral race is the clearest example yet of how prediction market posts about how the changing betting odds for candidates are being weaponized on X to sow doubt about the integrity of elections. It's likely a preview of what's to come this year ahead of the midterm election. Kalshi and Polymarket are increasingly pervading ever more corners of daily life. Their rise has set off dozens of legal battles and raised novel questions about the ways betting on just about anything can have real-world consequences. Now it appears they are driving the latest battlefield in political misinformation wars on X. "From the perspective of the influencer looking to get rich, their only job is to attract attention," Emerson Brooking, a disinformation expert at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, wrote in an email. "They will do this by sharing markets that align with what their audiences want to see. And if the betting markets are wrong, it is much wiser for them to allege fraud (and keep the lucrative promotions contract) rather than acknowledge that the gambling sites got it wrong." In recent days, Kalshi and Polymarket have attempted to rein in some of their paid influencers. After NPR asked Kalshi about several partnership posts on Friday, the company said it told the influencers to take the posts down. Some of the posts, including Freeman's post questioning "CA cheating," have been deleted. Semafor first reported on Kalshi's crackdown. On Monday, Polymarket told NPR it, too, is pulling back its sponsorship of some creators who were spreading election falsehoods. Joy's post is still live on X with the "paid partnership" tag, but the tag has been removed from posts by two other influencers paid by Polymarket. "Companies shouldn't be paying people to spread misinformation," said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, who has reviewed the sponsored posts that flew across X. "In the Trump Republican Party, fraud allegations are going to be often received with a lot of enthusiasm, especially when people often get confused about the difference between the odds of someone winning and vote share." Inside Kalshi and Polymarket paid partnerships Paying influencers as social media promoters is a type of "growth hacking" tech startups often deploy to maximize the reach of their brand in an attempt to drive more users to the services. "It's a high-risk, high-reward situation," said Seton Hall University's Jess Rauchberg, who studies digital media culture. "But it's a strategy that gets people talking about the brand." Kalshi and Polymarket have offered creators as much as $500 per post, according to two people who formerly worked on partnerships at Kalshi and Polymarket and who were not authorized to speak publicly about the programs. Inside Kalshi, the approach has sparked debate over what responsibility the company has when creators promote its site by spreading misinformation and other harmful content across X, according to the former Kalshi employee. A Kalshi spokesperson confirmed on Monday that the company now prohibits anyone in its affiliate program to question the integrity of an election, or to undermine a legal ruling or official determination about an election. Previously, the company took a mostly hands-off approach to what its affiliate creators posted to boost one of Kalshi's markets, according to the former Kalshi employee. Before the recent controversy, one of the only times Kalshi cut ties with a paid creator over a post promoting the company was when one of their contributors posted to X celebrating the death of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, the former Kalshi employee said. Similarly at Polymarket, affiliate posts were given wide latitude, as long as the person posting plugged the company's markets, according to the former Polymarket employee. And there appeared to be little vetting of creators, with Polymarket tapping former Rep. Matt Gaetz as one of its paid contributors. The U.S. House Ethics Committee found Gaetz paid an underage girl for sex. On Monday, Polymarket said that while it does not have language specifically banning creators from posting election-related disinformation, any post denying the result of an election would violate its rules against spreading false and misleading information. Polymarket told NPR posts from two of the creators it works with have lost the "paid partnership" tag. It has not asked creators to delete any posts, but told them about the company's content guidelines. While the company would not specify which creators, NPR confirmed "paid partnership" tags have been removed from Jun. 4 posts by right-wing influencers Benny Johnson and Kangmin Lee sharing the same Polymarket post about Raman's rising odds on the betting site. Seton Hall University's Rauchberg said the crackdowns are just the latest example of how the rival companies are constantly trying to one-up each other. "They want to spread this rhetoric that 'Kalshi is for everyone, Polymarket is for everyone,'" she said. "They want to give the impression that they don't have a political affiliation, but consumers are becoming more savvy that both companies are engaging in a type of 'purity politics,' each trying to outdo the other over which is the best app to use." Not disclosing whether a social media post was sponsored is illegal under rules the Federal Trade Commission adopted in 2024. The Trump administration has not rolled back these rules, but it has also not announced any enforcement actions. Why California vote counting attracts fraud claims The Los Angeles mayor race was particularly vulnerable to becoming the focus of election conspiracy theories for a number of reasons. Prediction market data may have been one of them. Pratt, an outsider candidate who received outsized attention and engagement on X, was favored for second place on betting markets on both Kalshi and Polymarket's sites in the days before the election -- even when the largest polls of likely voters showed him in third place. While the city's mayor is a nonpartisan office, a registered Republican like Pratt faced a challenge in a heavily Democratic city. But some social media commentators cited his favorable betting odds as evidence he could reach the November runoff. Posts about what betting markets are saying about a candidate can confuse voters who may not understand the difference between betting behavior and a poll, said Zarine Kharazian, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, who studies online rumors related to elections. "It runs the risk of confusing people into thinking that, 'Okay, these markets have the pulse on public sentiment about the election and who's going to win,' when that's not necessarily the case," Kharazian said. Heading into the Jun. 2 primary, election experts were already worried that California's notoriously slow ballot count would provide the opportunity for baseless fraud allegations to blossom. A large portion of voters in the state use mail-in ballots, a form of voting President Trump has tried to associate with fraud. Election officials must verify mailed-in and dropped off ballots, making them slower to count. The state accepts ballots that are postmarked on the day of the election that arrive within seven days. Ballots that are counted later in the process typically skew Democratic since more voters from that party embrace voting by mail. This phenomenon has been the basis for unfounded allegations of fraud in recent years, including by Trump. The challenge has been particularly stark this year because so many Californians waited until Election Day to drop off their ballots, said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. State officials are "doing what they've always done -- counting all the ballots, under transparent observation from the candidates and parties, and reporting each batch as soon as they can," Becker said, "yet the profiteers and grifters are loudly echoing our foreign adversaries in spreading lies designed to delegitimize our transparent election process." President Trump himself has claimed without evidence that there was fraud in the Los Angeles mayoral's race. He called the election race "rigged" in a Truth Social post early Monday, and wrote it was "not possible" for Pratt to lose to Raman after the lead he began with when vote counting began. The first assistant U.S. Attorney for the Los Angeles area, Bill Essayli, announced on X days earlier that his office had multiple election fraud investigations underway. Over the weekend, Essayli debunked one popular conspiracy theory circulating on X -- that Pratt had received zero votes in a ballot count update -- as false. Election experts say the baseless fraud allegations in California do not bode well for the upcoming November midterm season. "I think we're going to get punched in the face so badly on election denialism in November," said Stephen Richer, the former Republican recorder for Maricopa County, Arizona who dealt with baseless fraud allegations in the aftermath of the 2020 election. He is now a legal fellow at the Cato Institute and a senior fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Richer recalled that during the 2020 election, people trying to undermine the election results latched on to graphs that showed a blue line representing former President Joe Biden's totals suddenly jump higher as ballots were counted. "And so now it seems that they're using these prediction market graphs to tell a similar story," Richer said.
Kalshi and Polymarket crack down on paid influencers claiming election fraud
Updated June 8, 2026 at 9:23 PM EDT As vote tallies in the Los Angeles mayoral election trickled in slowly over the last week, unsubstantiated claims exploded on X that a fraudulent plot was underway to deprive the MAGA-backed former reality TV star Spencer Pratt the second-place slot to advance to the November runoff against incumbent Democrat Karen Bass. A portion of these unfounded conspiracy theories pointed to changing betting odds for the three top candidates on prediction market sites Kalshi and Polymarket to suggest something sinister is afoot with the vote count. Some influencers supercharging such fraud claims online did so in posts sponsored by the companies themselves. "They are actually doing it. They are counting votes until SPENCER LOSES. Someone DO SOMETHING," Trump-aligned influencer Mila Joy wrote to her half a million followers a day after the election as she reshared a Polymarket post with a graph showing that Pratt's betting odds were falling on the site. "Is CA cheating to get Spencer Pratt out?" questioned commentator David Freeman, who posts under the handle Gunther Eagleman on X, as he shared a Kalshi post showing the odds between Pratt and progressive Democrat Nithya Raman. The Associated Press called the second-place spot for Raman on Monday afternoon after her vote share overtook Pratt's on Sunday. At the bottom of both X posts, the words "paid partnership" appear in tiny font, a subtle reference to the millions of dollars Kalshi and Polymarket have pumped into programs that pay influencers to reshare corporate posts as a way to boost engagement. The Los Angeles mayoral race is the clearest example yet of how prediction market posts about how the changing betting odds for candidates are being weaponized on X to sow doubt about the integrity of elections. It's likely a preview of what's to come this year ahead of the midterm election. Kalshi and Polymarket are increasingly pervading ever more corners of daily life. Their rise has set off dozens of legal battles and raised novel questions about the ways betting on just about anything can have real-world consequences. Now it appears they are driving the latest battlefield in political misinformation wars on X. "From the perspective of the influencer looking to get rich, their only job is to attract attention," Emerson Brooking, a disinformation expert at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, wrote in an email. "They will do this by sharing markets that align with what their audiences want to see. And if the betting markets are wrong, it is much wiser for them to allege fraud (and keep the lucrative promotions contract) rather than acknowledge that the gambling sites got it wrong." In recent days, Kalshi and Polymarket have attempted to rein in some of their paid influencers. After NPR asked Kalshi about several partnership posts on Friday, the company said it told the influencers to take the posts down. Some of the posts, including Freeman's post questioning "CA cheating," have been deleted. Semafor first reported on Kalshi's crackdown. On Monday, Polymarket told NPR it, too, is pulling back its sponsorship of some creators who were spreading election falsehoods. Joy's post is still live on X with the "paid partnership" tag, but the tag has been removed from posts by two other influencers paid by Polymarket. "Companies shouldn't be paying people to spread misinformation," said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, who has reviewed the sponsored posts that flew across X. "In the Trump Republican Party, fraud allegations are going to be often received with a lot of enthusiasm, especially when people often get confused about the difference between the odds of someone winning and vote share." Inside Kalshi and Polymarket paid partnerships Paying influencers as social media promoters is a type of "growth hacking" tech startups often deploy to maximize the reach of their brand in an attempt to drive more users to the services. "It's a high-risk, high-reward situation," said Seton Hall University's Jess Rauchberg, who studies digital media culture. "But it's a strategy that gets people talking about the brand." Kalshi and Polymarket have offered creators as much as $500 per post, according to two people who formerly worked on partnerships at Kalshi and Polymarket and who were not authorized to speak publicly about the programs. Inside Kalshi, the approach has sparked debate over what responsibility the company has when creators promote its site by spreading misinformation and other harmful content across X, according to the former Kalshi employee. A Kalshi spokesperson confirmed on Monday that the company now prohibits anyone in its affiliate program to question the integrity of an election, or to undermine a legal ruling or official determination about an election. Previously, the company took a mostly hands-off approach to what its affiliate creators posted to boost one of Kalshi's markets, according to the former Kalshi employee. Before the recent controversy, one of the only times Kalshi cut ties with a paid creator over a post promoting the company was when one of their contributors posted to X celebrating the death of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, the former Kalshi employee said. Similarly at Polymarket, affiliate posts were given wide latitude, as long as the person posting plugged the company's markets, according to the former Polymarket employee. And there appeared to be little vetting of creators, with Polymarket tapping former Rep. Matt Gaetz as one of its paid contributors. The U.S. House Ethics Committee found Gaetz paid an underage girl for sex. On Monday, Polymarket said that while it does not have language specifically banning creators from posting election-related disinformation, any post denying the result of an election would violate its rules against spreading false and misleading information. Polymarket told NPR posts from two of the creators it works with have lost the "paid partnership" tag. It has not asked creators to delete any posts, but told them about the company's content guidelines. While the company would not specify which creators, NPR confirmed "paid partnership" tags have been removed from Jun. 4 posts by right-wing influencers Benny Johnson and Kangmin Lee sharing the same Polymarket post about Raman's rising odds on the betting site. Seton Hall University's Rauchberg said the crackdowns are just the latest example of how the rival companies are constantly trying to one-up each other. "They want to spread this rhetoric that 'Kalshi is for everyone, Polymarket is for everyone,'" she said. "They want to give the impression that they don't have a political affiliation, but consumers are becoming more savvy that both companies are engaging in a type of 'purity politics,' each trying to outdo the other over which is the best app to use." Not disclosing whether a social media post was sponsored is illegal under rules the Federal Trade Commission adopted in 2024. The Trump administration has not rolled back these rules, but it has also not announced any enforcement actions. Why California vote counting attracts fraud claims The Los Angeles mayor race was particularly vulnerable to becoming the focus of election conspiracy theories for a number of reasons. Prediction market data may have been one of them. Pratt, an outsider candidate who received outsized attention and engagement on X, was favored for second place on betting markets on both Kalshi and Polymarket's sites in the days before the election -- even when the largest polls of likely voters showed him in third place. While the city's mayor is a nonpartisan office, a registered Republican like Pratt faced a challenge in a heavily Democratic city. But some social media commentators cited his favorable betting odds as evidence he could reach the November runoff. Posts about what betting markets are saying about a candidate can confuse voters who may not understand the difference between betting behavior and a poll, said Zarine Kharazian, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, who studies online rumors related to elections. "It runs the risk of confusing people into thinking that, 'Okay, these markets have the pulse on public sentiment about the election and who's going to win,' when that's not necessarily the case," Kharazian said. Heading into the Jun. 2 primary, election experts were already worried that California's notoriously slow ballot count would provide the opportunity for baseless fraud allegations to blossom. A large portion of voters in the state use mail-in ballots, a form of voting President Trump has tried to associate with fraud. Election officials must verify mailed-in and dropped off ballots, making them slower to count. The state accepts ballots that are postmarked on the day of the election that arrive within seven days. Ballots that are counted later in the process typically skew Democratic since more voters from that party embrace voting by mail. This phenomenon has been the basis for unfounded allegations of fraud in recent years, including by Trump. The challenge has been particularly stark this year because so many Californians waited until Election Day to drop off their ballots, said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. State officials are "doing what they've always done -- counting all the ballots, under transparent observation from the candidates and parties, and reporting each batch as soon as they can," Becker said, "yet the profiteers and grifters are loudly echoing our foreign adversaries in spreading lies designed to delegitimize our transparent election process." President Trump himself has claimed without evidence that there was fraud in the Los Angeles mayoral's race. He called the election race "rigged" in a Truth Social post early Monday, and wrote it was "not possible" for Pratt to lose to Raman after the lead he began with when vote counting began. The first assistant U.S. Attorney for the Los Angeles area, Bill Essayli, announced on X days earlier that his office had multiple election fraud investigations underway. Over the weekend, Essayli debunked one popular conspiracy theory circulating on X -- that Pratt had received zero votes in a ballot count update -- as false. Election experts say the baseless fraud allegations in California do not bode well for the upcoming November midterm season. "I think we're going to get punched in the face so badly on election denialism in November," said Stephen Richer, the former Republican recorder for Maricopa County, Arizona who dealt with baseless fraud allegations in the aftermath of the 2020 election. He is now a legal fellow at the Cato Institute and a senior fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Richer recalled that during the 2020 election, people trying to undermine the election results latched on to graphs that showed a blue line representing former President Joe Biden's totals suddenly jump higher as ballots were counted. "And so now it seems that they're using these prediction market graphs to tell a similar story," Richer said.
Will SpaceX Merge With Tesla? Here's What Prediction Markets Say.
Speculation about a potential merger between SpaceX and Tesla(NASDAQ: TSLA) is surging. While such a deal is far from certain, trends on prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket are showing a growing belief that the integration of Elon Musk's largest assets could unlock meaningful synergies across a multitrillion-dollar artificial intelligence (AI) enterprise. Does a merger between SpaceX and Tesla make sense? Combining the two companies would blend Tesla's expertise in terrestrial AI -- physical assets like humanoid robots, autonomous vehicles, and energy storage -- with SpaceX's orbital capabilities, such as Starlink satellites and its potential space-based data centers. Shared projects like the planned Terafab chip factory in Austin, Texas, already showcase some operational synergies between SpaceX and Tesla, where advanced semiconductors can power AI capabilities across cars, robots, and orbital infrastructure. Following SpaceX's anticipated $1.77 trillion initial public offering (IPO), the company could use its highly valued shares as currency to merge with Tesla -- creating a roughly $3.3 trillion entity that would unify Musk's broader vision of building an AI ecosystem spanning Earth and the final frontier. How do prediction markets work, and are they reliable? Prediction markets operate similarly to stock exchanges. Traders buy and sell shares in bets on the outcomes of specific future events. As capital flows into bets on each side, prices fluctuate and directly translate to implied probabilities. Some people argue that prediction markets are more accurate than traditional polls because participants have actual skin in the game in the form of payouts and losses. In this sense, prediction markets may be able to aggregate dispersed information more efficiently than a routine gauge of public opinion. With that said, prediction markets are far from foolproof. Many of the events featured on these platforms have low liquidity, which can amplify the volatility of their values. In this specific case, I would not be surprised if trader biases within Musk's retail investor fandom are skewing results. At best, predication markets can serve as a barometer or proxy for somewhat informed sentiment rather than pure hype. What are the chances SpaceX and Tesla will merge? As of this writing (June 3), Kalshi puts the chances of a SpaceX-Tesla merger occurring before March 2027 at 51%. The predicted likelihood of a deal before May 2027 is 61%. Polymarket is a little more aggressive, saying there is a 41% chance of a merger being announced by December. In either case, the likelihood has trended upward recently -- likely driven by a recent update to the language in SpaceX's IPO filing. The company altered its disclosures to reflect that it "may issue a significant amount of equity in connection with future transactions." This new wording has reignited rumors that Tesla could merge with SpaceX relatively soon after its IPO next week. Smart investors understand that momentum on prediction markets also suggests that you should act with caution. A proposed deal between SpaceX and Tesla would face immense scrutiny from regulatory authorities and require shareholder voting. While the prediction markets may see such a tie-up as becoming more plausible, that outcome is far from guaranteed. Adam Spatacco has positions in Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Kalshi and Polymarket crack down on paid influencers claiming election fraud
As vote tallies in the Los Angeles mayoral election trickled in slowly over the last week, unsubstantiated claims exploded on X that a fraudulent plot was underway to deprive the MAGA-backed former reality TV star Spencer Pratt the second-place slot to advance to the November runoff against incumbent Democrat Karen Bass. A portion of these unfounded conspiracy theories pointed to changing betting odds for the three top candidates on prediction market sites Kalshi and Polymarket to suggest something sinister is afoot with the vote count. Some influencers supercharging such fraud claims online did so in posts sponsored by the companies themselves. "They are actually doing it. They are counting votes until SPENCER LOSES. Someone DO SOMETHING," Trump-aligned influencer Mila Joy wrote to her half a million followers a day after the election as she reshared a Polymarket post with a graph showing that Pratt's betting odds were falling on the site. "Is CA cheating to get Spencer Pratt out?" questioned commentator David Freeman, who posts under the handle Gunther Eagleman on X, as he shared a Kalshi post showing the odds between Pratt and progressive Democrat Nithya Raman. The Associated Press called the second-place spot for Raman on Monday afternoon after her vote share overtook Pratt's on Sunday. At the bottom of both X posts, the words "paid partnership" appear in tiny font, a subtle reference to the millions of dollars Kalshi and Polymarket have pumped into programs that pay influencers to reshare corporate posts as a way to boost engagement. The Los Angeles mayoral race is the clearest example yet of how prediction market posts about how the changing betting odds for candidates are being weaponized on X to sow doubt about the integrity of elections. It's likely a preview of what's to come this year ahead of the midterm election. Kalshi and Polymarket are increasingly pervading ever more corners of daily life. Their rise has set off dozens of legal battles and raised novel questions about the ways betting on just about anything can have real-world consequences. Now it appears they are driving the latest battlefield in political misinformation wars on X. "From the perspective of the influencer looking to get rich, their only job is to attract attention," Emerson Brooking, a disinformation expert at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, wrote in an email. "They will do this by sharing markets that align with what their audiences want to see. And if the betting markets are wrong, it is much wiser for them to allege fraud (and keep the lucrative promotions contract) rather than acknowledge that the gambling sites got it wrong." In recent days, Kalshi and Polymarket have attempted to rein in some of their paid influencers. After NPR asked Kalshi about several partnership posts on Friday, the company said it told the influencers to take the posts down. Some of the posts, including Freeman's post questioning "CA cheating," have been deleted. Semafor first reported on Kalshi's crackdown. On Monday, Polymarket told NPR it, too, is pulling back its sponsorship of some creators who were spreading election falsehoods. Joy's post is still live on X with the "paid partnership" tag, but the tag has been removed from posts by two other influencers paid by Polymarket. "Companies shouldn't be paying people to spread misinformation," said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, who has reviewed the sponsored posts that flew across X. "In the Trump Republican Party, fraud allegations are going to be often received with a lot of enthusiasm, especially when people often get confused about the difference between the odds of someone winning and vote share." Inside Kalshi and Polymarket paid partnerships Paying influencers as social media promoters is a type of "growth hacking" tech startups often deploy to maximize the reach of their brand in an attempt to drive more users to the services. "It's a high-risk, high-reward situation," said Seton Hall University's Jess Rauchberg, who studies digital media culture. "But it's a strategy that gets people talking about the brand." Kalshi and Polymarket have offered creators as much as $500 per post, according to two people who formerly worked on partnerships at Kalshi and Polymarket and who were not authorized to speak publicly about the programs. Inside Kalshi, the approach has sparked debate over what responsibility the company has when creators promote its site by spreading misinformation and other harmful content across X, according to the former Kalshi employee. A Kalshi spokesperson confirmed on Monday that the company now prohibits anyone in its affiliate program to question the integrity of an election, or to undermine a legal ruling or official determination about an election. Previously, the company took a mostly hands-off approach to what its affiliate creators posted to boost one of Kalshi's markets, according to the former Kalshi employee. Before the recent controversy, one of the only times Kalshi cut ties with a paid creator over a post promoting the company was when one of their contributors posted to X celebrating the death of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, the former Kalshi employee said. Similarly at Polymarket, affiliate posts were given wide latitude, as long as the person posting plugged the company's markets, according to the former Polymarket employee. And there appeared to be little vetting of creators, with Polymarket tapping former Rep. Matt Gaetz as one of its paid contributors. The U.S. House Ethics Committee found Gaetz paid an underage girl for sex. On Monday, Polymarket said that while it does not have language specifically banning creators from posting election-related disinformation, any post denying the result of an election would violate its rules against spreading false and misleading information. Polymarket told NPR posts from two of the creators it works with have lost the "paid partnership" tag. It has not asked creators to delete any posts, but told them about the company's content guidelines. While the company would not specify which creators, NPR confirmed "paid partnership" tags have been removed from Jun. 4 posts by right-wing influencers Benny Johnson and Kangmin Lee sharing the same Polymarket post about Raman's rising odds on the betting site. Seton Hall University's Rauchberg said the crackdowns are just the latest example of how the rival companies are constantly trying to one-up each other. "They want to spread this rhetoric that 'Kalshi is for everyone, Polymarket is for everyone,'" she said. "They want to give the impression that they don't have a political affiliation, but consumers are becoming more savvy that both companies are engaging in a type of 'purity politics,' each trying to outdo the other over which is the best app to use." Not disclosing whether a social media post was sponsored is illegal under rules the Federal Trade Commission adopted in 2024. The Trump administration has not rolled back these rules, but it has also not announced any enforcement actions. Why California vote counting attracts fraud claims The Los Angeles mayor race was particularly vulnerable to becoming the focus of election conspiracy theories for a number of reasons. Prediction market data may have been one of them. Pratt, an outsider candidate who received outsized attention and engagement on X, was favored for second place on betting markets on both Kalshi and Polymarket's sites in the days before the election -- even when the largest polls of likely voters showed him in third place. While the city's mayor is a nonpartisan office, a registered Republican like Pratt faced a challenge in a heavily Democratic city. But some social media commentators cited his favorable betting odds as evidence he could reach the November runoff. Posts about what betting markets are saying about a candidate can confuse voters who may not understand the difference between betting behavior and a poll, said Zarine Kharazian, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, who studies online rumors related to elections. "It runs the risk of confusing people into thinking that, 'Okay, these markets have the pulse on public sentiment about the election and who's going to win,' when that's not necessarily the case," Kharazian said. Heading into the Jun. 2 primary, election experts were already worried that California's notoriously slow ballot count would provide the opportunity for baseless fraud allegations to blossom. A large portion of voters in the state use mail-in ballots, a form of voting President Trump has tried to associate with fraud. Election officials must verify mailed-in and dropped off ballots, making them slower to count. The state accepts ballots that are postmarked on the day of the election that arrive within seven days. Ballots that are counted later in the process typically skew Democratic since more voters from that party embrace voting by mail. This phenomenon has been the basis for unfounded allegations of fraud in recent years, including by Trump. The challenge has been particularly stark this year because so many Californians waited until Election Day to drop off their ballots, said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. State officials are "doing what they've always done -- counting all the ballots, under transparent observation from the candidates and parties, and reporting each batch as soon as they can," Becker said, "yet the profiteers and grifters are loudly echoing our foreign adversaries in spreading lies designed to delegitimize our transparent election process." President Trump himself has claimed without evidence that there was fraud in the Los Angeles mayoral's race. He called the election race "rigged" in a Truth Social post early Monday, and wrote it was "not possible" for Pratt to lose to Raman after the lead he began with when vote counting began. The first assistant U.S. Attorney for the Los Angeles area, Bill Essayli, announced on X days earlier that his office had multiple election fraud investigations underway. Over the weekend, Essayli debunked one popular conspiracy theory circulating on X -- that Pratt had received zero votes in a ballot count update -- as false. Election experts say the baseless fraud allegations in California do not bode well for the upcoming November midterm season. "I think we're going to get punched in the face so badly on election denialism in November," said Stephen Richer, the former Republican recorder for Maricopa County, Arizona who dealt with baseless fraud allegations in the aftermath of the 2020 election. He is now a legal fellow at the Cato Institute and a senior fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Richer recalled that during the 2020 election, people trying to undermine the election results latched on to graphs that showed a blue line representing former President Joe Biden's totals suddenly jump higher as ballots were counted. "And so now it seems that they're using these prediction market graphs to tell a similar story," Richer said.
Kalshi and Polymarket crack down on paid influencers claiming election fraud
As vote tallies in the Los Angeles mayoral election trickled in slowly over the last week, unsubstantiated claims exploded on X that a fraudulent plot was underway to deprive the MAGA-backed former reality TV star Spencer Pratt the second-place slot to advance to the November runoff against incumbent Democrat Karen Bass. A portion of these unfounded conspiracy theories pointed to changing betting odds for the three top candidates on prediction market sites Kalshi and Polymarket to suggest something sinister is afoot with the vote count. Some influencers supercharging such fraud claims online did so in posts sponsored by the companies themselves. "They are actually doing it. They are counting votes until SPENCER LOSES. Someone DO SOMETHING," Trump-aligned influencer Mila Joy wrote to her half a million followers a day after the election as she reshared a Polymarket post with a graph showing that Pratt's betting odds were falling on the site. "Is CA cheating to get Spencer Pratt out?" questioned commentator David Freeman, who posts under the handle Gunther Eagleman on X, as he shared a Kalshi post showing the odds between Pratt and progressive Democrat Nithya Raman. The Associated Press called the second-place spot for Raman on Monday afternoon after her vote share overtook Pratt's on Sunday. At the bottom of both X posts, the words "paid partnership" appear in tiny font, a subtle reference to the millions of dollars Kalshi and Polymarket have pumped into programs that pay influencers to reshare corporate posts as a way to boost engagement. The Los Angeles mayoral race is the clearest example yet of how prediction market posts about how the changing betting odds for candidates are being weaponized on X to sow doubt about the integrity of elections. It's likely a preview of what's to come this year ahead of the midterm election. Kalshi and Polymarket are increasingly pervading ever more corners of daily life. Their rise has set off dozens of legal battles and raised novel questions about the ways betting on just about anything can have real-world consequences. Now it appears they are driving the latest battlefield in political misinformation wars on X. "From the perspective of the influencer looking to get rich, their only job is to attract attention," Emerson Brooking, a disinformation expert at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, wrote in an email. "They will do this by sharing markets that align with what their audiences want to see. And if the betting markets are wrong, it is much wiser for them to allege fraud (and keep the lucrative promotions contract) rather than acknowledge that the gambling sites got it wrong." In recent days, Kalshi and Polymarket have attempted to rein in some of their paid influencers. After NPR asked Kalshi about several partnership posts on Friday, the company said it told the influencers to take the posts down. Some of the posts, including Freeman's post questioning "CA cheating," have been deleted. Semafor first reported on Kalshi's crackdown. On Monday, Polymarket told NPR it, too, is pulling back its sponsorship of some creators who were spreading election falsehoods. Joy's post is still live on X with the "paid partnership" tag, but the tag has been removed from posts by two other influencers paid by Polymarket. "Companies shouldn't be paying people to spread misinformation," said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, who has reviewed the sponsored posts that flew across X. "In the Trump Republican Party, fraud allegations are going to be often received with a lot of enthusiasm, especially when people often get confused about the difference between the odds of someone winning and vote share." Inside Kalshi and Polymarket paid partnerships Paying influencers as social media promoters is a type of "growth hacking" tech startups often deploy to maximize the reach of their brand in an attempt to drive more users to the services. "It's a high-risk, high-reward situation," said Seton Hall University's Jess Rauchberg, who studies digital media culture. "But it's a strategy that gets people talking about the brand." Kalshi and Polymarket have offered creators as much as $500 per post, according to two people who formerly worked on partnerships at Kalshi and Polymarket and who were not authorized to speak publicly about the programs. Inside Kalshi, the approach has sparked debate over what responsibility the company has when creators promote its site by spreading misinformation and other harmful content across X, according to the former Kalshi employee. A Kalshi spokesperson confirmed on Monday that the company now prohibits anyone in its affiliate program to question the integrity of an election, or to undermine a legal ruling or official determination about an election. Previously, the company took a mostly hands-off approach to what its affiliate creators posted to boost one of Kalshi's markets, according to the former Kalshi employee. Before the recent controversy, one of the only times Kalshi cut ties with a paid creator over a post promoting the company was when one of their contributors posted to X celebrating the death of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, the former Kalshi employee said. Similarly at Polymarket, affiliate posts were given wide latitude, as long as the person posting plugged the company's markets, according to the former Polymarket employee. And there appeared to be little vetting of creators, with Polymarket tapping former Rep. Matt Gaetz as one of its paid contributors. The U.S. House Ethics Committee found Gaetz paid an underage girl for sex. On Monday, Polymarket said that while it does not have language specifically banning creators from posting election-related disinformation, any post denying the result of an election would violate its rules against spreading false and misleading information. Polymarket told NPR posts from two of the creators it works with have lost the "paid partnership" tag. It has not asked creators to delete any posts, but told them about the company's content guidelines. While the company would not specify which creators, NPR confirmed "paid partnership" tags have been removed from Jun. 4 posts by right-wing influencers Benny Johnson and Kangmin Lee sharing the same Polymarket post about Raman's rising odds on the betting site. Seton Hall University's Rauchberg said the crackdowns are just the latest example of how the rival companies are constantly trying to one-up each other. "They want to spread this rhetoric that 'Kalshi is for everyone, Polymarket is for everyone,'" she said. "They want to give the impression that they don't have a political affiliation, but consumers are becoming more savvy that both companies are engaging in a type of 'purity politics,' each trying to outdo the other over which is the best app to use." Not disclosing whether a social media post was sponsored is illegal under rules the Federal Trade Commission adopted in 2024. The Trump administration has not rolled back these rules, but it has also not announced any enforcement actions. Why California vote counting attracts fraud claims The Los Angeles mayor race was particularly vulnerable to becoming the focus of election conspiracy theories for a number of reasons. Prediction market data may have been one of them. Pratt, an outsider candidate who received outsized attention and engagement on X, was favored for second place on betting markets on both Kalshi and Polymarket's sites in the days before the election -- even when the largest polls of likely voters showed him in third place. While the city's mayor is a nonpartisan office, a registered Republican like Pratt faced a challenge in a heavily Democratic city. But some social media commentators cited his favorable betting odds as evidence he could reach the November runoff. Posts about what betting markets are saying about a candidate can confuse voters who may not understand the difference between betting behavior and a poll, said Zarine Kharazian, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, who studies online rumors related to elections. "It runs the risk of confusing people into thinking that, 'Okay, these markets have the pulse on public sentiment about the election and who's going to win,' when that's not necessarily the case," Kharazian said. Heading into the Jun. 2 primary, election experts were already worried that California's notoriously slow ballot count would provide the opportunity for baseless fraud allegations to blossom. A large portion of voters in the state use mail-in ballots, a form of voting President Trump has tried to associate with fraud. Election officials must verify mailed-in and dropped off ballots, making them slower to count. The state accepts ballots that are postmarked on the day of the election that arrive within seven days. Ballots that are counted later in the process typically skew Democratic since more voters from that party embrace voting by mail. This phenomenon has been the basis for unfounded allegations of fraud in recent years, including by Trump. The challenge has been particularly stark this year because so many Californians waited until Election Day to drop off their ballots, said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. State officials are "doing what they've always done -- counting all the ballots, under transparent observation from the candidates and parties, and reporting each batch as soon as they can," Becker said, "yet the profiteers and grifters are loudly echoing our foreign adversaries in spreading lies designed to delegitimize our transparent election process." President Trump himself has claimed without evidence that there was fraud in the Los Angeles mayoral's race. He called the election race "rigged" in a Truth Social post early Monday, and wrote it was "not possible" for Pratt to lose to Raman after the lead he began with when vote counting began. The first assistant U.S. Attorney for the Los Angeles area, Bill Essayli, announced on X days earlier that his office had multiple election fraud investigations underway. Over the weekend, Essayli debunked one popular conspiracy theory circulating on X -- that Pratt had received zero votes in a ballot count update -- as false. Election experts say the baseless fraud allegations in California do not bode well for the upcoming November midterm season. "I think we're going to get punched in the face so badly on election denialism in November," said Stephen Richer, the former Republican recorder for Maricopa County, Arizona who dealt with baseless fraud allegations in the aftermath of the 2020 election. He is now a legal fellow at the Cato Institute and a senior fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Richer recalled that during the 2020 election, people trying to undermine the election results latched on to graphs that showed a blue line representing former President Joe Biden's totals suddenly jump higher as ballots were counted. "And so now it seems that they're using these prediction market graphs to tell a similar story," Richer said.
Ten Trump Officials Sit On Up To $44 Million In Record SpaceX IPO: 'No Analogs,' Ethics Lawyers Say
Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Elon Musk's SpaceX is days away from what may become the biggest IPO ever, but a report Wednesday morning reports at least 10 Trump administration officials hold stakes worth as much as $44 million in the rocket company and xAI, the artificial intelligence and social media firm SpaceX merged with in February. The disclosures show federal staffers including special envoy Steve Witkoff and Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler holding combined exposure ranging from $9.9 million to $43.8 million, according to Bloomberg. A Federal Contractor Worth $1.8 Trillion SpaceX is targeting at least a $1.8 trillion valuation, with bankers eyeing $135 per share for a $75 billion raise. The deal would make Musk the world's first trillionaire. SpaceX is also a major federal contractor, pulling in $4 billion in fiscal 2025 government transactions and a $6.5 billion Space Force award last month. Paul McInerny, a former SpaceX engineer named Interior Department chief information officer this year, holds the largest stake at $5 million to $25 million. He kept it via ethics waiver, even as SpaceX seeks Fish and Wildlife Service permits for infrastructure near a Texas wildlife refuge. Not every official got a pass. New Fed chair Kevin Warsh was required to sell his SpaceX exposure, held through Stan Druckenmiller's Duquesne Family Office, before replacing Jerome Powell last month. Ambassador to Luxembourg Stacey Feinberg disclosed up to $1 million in xAI via a 1789 Capital fund, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner. Some of the officials may have already quietly cashed out. Private company stock is exempt from the 45-day reporting rule, and new May disclosures going public by mid-June will likely reveal who took profits before the IPO. Trending: Avoid the #1 Investing Mistake: How Your 'Safe' Holdings Could Be Costing You Big Time Ethics lawyer Caleb Burns of Wiley Rein called it "such a unicorn event" with "no analogs," citing the IPO's record size and Musk's recent DOGE role. The disclosures arrive amid wider Trump-orbit ethics scrutiny. The president's own Q1 filing logged over 3,700 personal trades in companies, some of which he has publicly boosted. What Prediction Markets See Polymarket traders are pricing a SpaceX listing this month at 95%. Musk to become a trillionaire is just a bit lower, at 93%. The new disclosures may add pressure to a deal already facing governance pushback, with the three largest US public pension funds recently demanding Musk rewrite SpaceX's dual-class structure. For traders without SpaceX exposure, the cleanest read-through remains Tesla Inc.. Image: Shutterstock Building Wealth Across More Than Just the Market Building a resilient portfolio means thinking beyond a single asset or market trend. Economic cycles shift, sectors rise and fall, and no one investment performs well in every environment. That's why many investors look to diversify with platforms that provide access to real estate, fixed-income opportunities, precious metals, and even self-directed retirement accounts. By spreading exposure across multiple asset classes, it becomes easier to manage risk, capture steady returns, and create long-term wealth that isn't tied to the fortunes of just one company or industry. Arrived Backed by Jeff Bezos, Arrived Homes makes real estate investing accessible with a low barrier to entry. Investors can buy fractional shares of single-family rentals and vacation homes starting with as little as $100. This allows everyday investors to diversify into real estate, collect rental income, and build long-term wealth without needing to manage properties directly. Vinovest Fine wine and rare whiskey have historically moved independently of the stock market, making them a compelling alternative asset. Vinovest manages authenticated, insured portfolios of investment-grade wine and whiskey starting at $5,000 -- sourcing, storage, and insurance all handled for you. FarmTogether Farmland has historically held its value through market volatility and delivered returns uncorrelated to stocks and bonds. For accredited investors, FarmTogether offers direct access to high-quality U.S. farmland starting at $15,000 -- fully managed, with no landlord headaches. EquityMultiple For accredited investors looking beyond stocks and bonds, EquityMultiple provides access to vetted commercial real estate deals starting at $5,000, with only ~5% of opportunities passing their due diligence process. Bitcoin IRA For investors who want crypto exposure with tax advantages, Bitcoin IRA allows you to trade 60+ cryptocurrencies inside a self-directed IRA or roll over an existing 401(k), with 24/7 trading and institutional cold storage. Minimum $3,000 to start. Crypto investing involves substantial risk of loss and early withdrawal penalties apply.
Anthropic (Claude) May Be the Only $1 Trillion IPO Worth Buying
With SpaceX potentially just days away from going public, I think many investors expected OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, to be the next trillion-dollar initial public offering (IPO). However, Anthropic, the parent company of Claude, has beaten them to the punch. The company announced on June 1 that it has confidentially filed to go public with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Will AI create the world's first trillionaire? Our team just released a report on the one little-known company, called an "Indispensable Monopoly" providing the critical technology Nvidia and Intel both need. Continue " This filing allows the company to go public following the SEC's review, although Anthropic made it clear that whether it actually follows through with an IPO will depend on market conditions and other factors. While many details about the company remain unknown, Anthropic could end up being the only $1 trillion IPO worth buying. These trillion-dollar IPOs will launch with sky-high valuations Interestingly, Anthropic is planning an IPO after just announcing a $65 billion series H private funding round at a post-money valuation of $965 billion. Investors might have assumed that would give the company some runway, but perhaps the company wants to take advantage of strong market conditions for AI companies to raise more money at a higher valuation. Image source: Getty Images. The $965 billion valuation officially eclipsed OpenAI, which earlier this year closed a $122 billion private funding round at an $852 billion valuation. SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI all promise to be game-changing companies and already have begun to change the game to an extent. But Anthropic could offer investors a more realistic valuation. SpaceX is not yet profitable and grew revenue 33% year over year in 2025 -- a massive increase for any company, but still perhaps slower than investors are looking for. With nearly $18.7 billion of revenue in 2025, SpaceX, at a $1.8 trillion valuation, would be asking for a trailing-12-month revenue multiple of 100x. Now, of course, these companies aren't going to be valued on fundamentals and could define new sectors with tremendous runways. The problem is that these valuations are baking in an incredible amount of success and may not account for roadblocks that could arise. In March, OpenAI reportedly hit a $25 billion annualized revenue run rate. Reports also suggest that the company will seek an IPO valuation of $1 trillion or more. If this were to be the case, it would be asking for a 40x forward revenue multiple because revenue run rate essentially annualizes one month's number. However, media reports earlier this year suggested that the company has been struggling to hit internal revenue targets. Furthermore, the company reportedly has $600 billion of data center commitments by 2030. Finally, as recently as April, media outlets reported that OpenAI is not expected to turn a profit until at least 2030. Anthropic is further along Anthropic has come a long way since the release of AI chatbots in 2022. OpenAI once looked like it had a lead that it would never surrender. However, Anthropic has now surpassed it in terms of valuation. Tools like Claude Code have resonated incredibly well, and enterprises appear to view Anthropic as the better large language model (LLM) company. The company also appears to have been more conservative with spending commitments. CEO Dario Amodei said on a podcast in February, "I think it is true we're spending somewhat less than some of the other players." Other media outlets have reported that the company expects to hit a nearly $50 billion annualized revenue run rate by the end of June, up from $30 billion in April, and turn an operating profit in the current quarter. That would be quite impressive. If Anthropic targeted a $1 trillion valuation in an IPO, it would only be asking investors for a 20x forward revenue multiple, half of what OpenAI would potentially request. The path to profitability also carries significant sway. Now, it's hard to know exactly what kind of valuation Anthropic will target, given its success. People betting on Polymarket, however, are placing a 53% chance (as of June 3) that the stock closes its first day of trading at a market cap over $1.8 trillion. This isn't necessarily the IPO valuation Anthropic is looking for, but what the market would assign it after having its first chance to buy the stock. Obviously, there is still a lot we don't know, and investors will want to review the company's registration statement before making a determination. But right now, there is a chance Anthropic goes public at a valuation much more reasonable than SpaceX or OpenAI's. Where to invest $1,000 right now When our analyst team has a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, Stock Advisor's total average return is 968%* -- a market-crushing outperformance compared to 211% for the S&P 500. They just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the stocks " *Stock Advisor returns as of June 5, 2026. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
Anthropic (Claude) May Be the Only $1 Trillion IPO Worth Buying
With SpaceX potentially just days away from going public, I think many investors expected OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, to be the next trillion-dollar initial public offering (IPO). However, Anthropic, the parent company of Claude, has beaten them to the punch. The company announced on June 1 that it has confidentially filed to go public with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This filing allows the company to go public following the SEC's review, although Anthropic made it clear that whether it actually follows through with an IPO will depend on market conditions and other factors. While many details about the company remain unknown, Anthropic could end up being the only $1 trillion IPO worth buying. These trillion-dollar IPOs will launch with sky-high valuations Interestingly, Anthropic is planning an IPO after just announcing a $65 billion series H private funding round at a post-money valuation of $965 billion. Investors might have assumed that would give the company some runway, but perhaps the company wants to take advantage of strong market conditions for AI companies to raise more money at a higher valuation. The $965 billion valuation officially eclipsed OpenAI, which earlier this year closed a $122 billion private funding round at an $852 billion valuation. SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI all promise to be game-changing companies and already have begun to change the game to an extent. But Anthropic could offer investors a more realistic valuation. SpaceX is not yet profitable and grew revenue 33% year over year in 2025 -- a massive increase for any company, but still perhaps slower than investors are looking for. With nearly $18.7 billion of revenue in 2025, SpaceX, at a $1.8 trillion valuation, would be asking for a trailing-12-month revenue multiple of 100x. Now, of course, these companies aren't going to be valued on fundamentals and could define new sectors with tremendous runways. The problem is that these valuations are baking in an incredible amount of success and may not account for roadblocks that could arise. In March, OpenAI reportedly hit a $25 billion annualized revenue run rate. Reports also suggest that the company will seek an IPO valuation of $1 trillion or more. If this were to be the case, it would be asking for a 40x forward revenue multiple because revenue run rate essentially annualizes one month's number. However, media reports earlier this year suggested that the company has been struggling to hit internal revenue targets. Furthermore, the company reportedly has $600 billion of data center commitments by 2030. Finally, as recently as April, media outlets reported that OpenAI is not expected to turn a profit until at least 2030. Anthropic is further along Anthropic has come a long way since the release of AI chatbots in 2022. OpenAI once looked like it had a lead that it would never surrender. However, Anthropic has now surpassed it in terms of valuation. Tools like Claude Code have resonated incredibly well, and enterprises appear to view Anthropic as the better large language model (LLM) company. The company also appears to have been more conservative with spending commitments. CEO Dario Amodei said on a podcast in February, "I think it is true we're spending somewhat less than some of the other players." Other media outlets have reported that the company expects to hit a nearly $50 billion annualized revenue run rate by the end of June, up from $30 billion in April, and turn an operating profit in the current quarter. That would be quite impressive. If Anthropic targeted a $1 trillion valuation in an IPO, it would only be asking investors for a 20x forward revenue multiple, half of what OpenAI would potentially request. The path to profitability also carries significant sway. Now, it's hard to know exactly what kind of valuation Anthropic will target, given its success. People betting on Polymarket, however, are placing a 53% chance (as of June 3) that the stock closes its first day of trading at a market cap over $1.8 trillion. This isn't necessarily the IPO valuation Anthropic is looking for, but what the market would assign it after having its first chance to buy the stock. Obviously, there is still a lot we don't know, and investors will want to review the company's registration statement before making a determination. But right now, there is a chance Anthropic goes public at a valuation much more reasonable than SpaceX or OpenAI's.
Polymarket cuts ties with George Santos as regulators probe trades on rival prediction market - AOL
NEW YORK (AP) -- The online prediction platform Polymarket is ending its paid relationship with George Santos as federal regulators investigate whether the former congressman illegally bet against his own attendance at President Donald Trump's State of the Union. Santos placed the bets on another prediction marketplace, Kalshi, after publicly announcing his intention to be at the Feb. 24 speech, according to a person familiar with the investigation. He later blamed a delayed flight for missing the event. The suspicious trades were detected by Kalshi and referred to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, a federal regulator that has opened a probe into Santos for possible insider trading, according to a second person familiar with the investigation. Both spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Santos was released from federal prison last October after Trump granted him clemency in a fraud case. By the time of the State of the Union address, four months later, he was already working in an influencer capacity for Polymarket, using his substantial online platform to promote the controversial brand. In response to an inquiry from the AP, a Polymarket spokesperson said the company was in the process of terminating the contract as a result of this week's revelations. Santos did not respond to phone calls and text messages from the AP. He wrote on social media Wednesday that the allegation was "preposterous," adding that his legal team was in touch with the Justice Department. On his podcast, "Doing Time with George Santos," the former congressman has suggested that prediction markets are "easily manipulable," and rife with abuse. "There's definitely some space for speculation. There will be investigations. There will be scrutiny," he said in March. "I just want to make sure that people understand: It is not straightforward. It is not a crime to do prediction market. I don't think people should be taking this seriously." The financial regulator overseeing prediction markets, meanwhile, has pledged to take the issue of insider trading "extremely seriously." "There is a myth in the mainstream media and social media that insider trading law doesn't apply in the prediction markets. That is wrong," David Miller, the director of enforcement at CFTC, said during a recent talk at New York Law School. "Insider trading in the prediction markets -- where there is misappropriated information -- is precisely the kind of serious violation that we are going after vigorously." That pledge comes as the Trump administration has thrown its support behind the prediction market operators and is actively suing states that have tried to regulate them. The president's son, Donald Trump Jr., has invested in Polymarket through his venture capital firm and is a strategic advisor for Kalshi. And the CFTC has faced allegations of maintaining a friendly posture toward the industry it is meant to regulate. Still, some bets have not escaped federal scrutiny. Last week, prosecutors charged a Google engineer who allegedly used the company's 2025 "Year in Search" data, before it was published, to enter Polymarket wagers about the most searched people of last year. A spokesperson for Polymarket said the company had worked closely with the CFTC, along with federal prosecutors, ahead of the insider trading charges. Experts said Santos's own alleged actions didn't appear to meet the same threshold for insider trading, since they would not have been based on stolen information. But the bets -- coupled with his public statements -- may run afoul of other financial laws. "What he's accused of sounds a lot more like market manipulation than insider trading," said Todd Phillips, the director at Klaros Group and a former Georgia State University professor who has written extensively about prediction market regulation. The federal regulator could also bring a civil action against Santos, potentially resulting in a steep fine and a ban from trading, he noted. But the rapid rise of online betting platforms has meant there are few similar cases to draw from. "We didn't have examples of people trading on contracts involving themselves. That is new, and it allows people to change their behavior in order to profit," Phillips said. "Until pretty recently, the question of George Santos being at the State of the Union was not something that had ever been traded before." ___ Associated Press reporter Larry Neumeister in New York contributed to this report
Trump-linked fund sparking odds shifts as Newsom leads Polymarket nomineer race
A Forbes-primed report on May 31, 2026 highlighted a broad field of applicants for a controversial $1.8 billion fund linked to Donald Trump, with figures ranging from George Santos to Mike Lindell becoming potential claimants. In this environment, traders on Polymarket have sparked activity around the Democratic Presidential Nominee 2028 contract, recalibrating odds as the market remains open for bets ahead of the 2028 race. A Forbes briefing published on May 31, 2026, outlines a widening list of applicants for Trump's $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, detailing names tied to the effort and the political backlash surrounding the program. The piece notes that court challenges and criticisms have accompanied the fund, while several high-profile figures are publicly weighing claims, casting a spotlight on how policy tangents can ripple through political sentiment. As the story moves through media cycles, investors are watching for any shifts in how such actions might influence voter attitudes and fundraising dynamics ahead of the next White House contest. The report underscores how these developments intersect with broader political risk, potentially affecting market-perceived probabilities for Democratic contenders in 2028, even as this is a separate policy thread from the Polymarket contract. Market participants are translating those political risk signals into price moves on contract bets tied to the nomination outcome, with liquidity remaining robust in a market that captures evolving expectations. Prediction Market Reaction Leading outcome Gavin Newsom carries roughly 26% implied probability in the current market, with other plausible contenders showing far thinner odds. Across the strike list, Yes odds for Gavin Newsom hover near 26.75% while No odds sit around 73.25%, and the overall contract has seen sustained volume as traders position around high-profile names such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Kamala Harris. For a perpendicular view, the Yes odds for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sit near 10.45% with No at 89.55%, while Kamala Harris shows about 7.85% Yes and 92.15% No, reflecting a steep skew away from these alternatives. Volume on the multi-outcome contract remains elevated, with hundreds of millions in notional traded as participants concentrate bets around the top two outcomes and selectively hedge across the rest of the field. By the Numbers Top strike rungs +41 more strikes not shown
No-Taiwan Invasion Odds Hold Near 99% on Polymarket
Following the Singapore defense forum coverage, market chatter around the China-Taiwan scenario remains unchanged as of the latest session. The Polymarket contract tied to whether China will invade Taiwan by June 30, 2026 continues trading with the No outcome leading at roughly 99% implied odds, keeping risk parity for traders. Defense spending and security tensions in Asia dominated the 2026 IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, with nations signaling higher defense budgets and greater regional vigilance. The event saw bellwether comments on China's posture and the Ukraine war's lessons shaping Asia-Pacific security thinking, as delegates from multiple countries pressed for stronger deterrence and cooperation. Beijing again sent a low-level delegation, while several Asia-Pacific governments signaled readiness to boost spending and capabilities in response to perceived rising risks. The gathering underscored a broader market narrative that geopolitical frictions could weigh on regional stability, potentially influencing defense procurement and alliance dynamics in the near term. Prediction Market Reaction Polymarket data show the binary contract on whether China invades Taiwan by June 30, 2026 remains skewed toward the No outcome, with the leading option already priced to around 99% odds and a notable absolute volume interest at the current level. The Yes side trades at roughly 0.75 odds, while No sits near 99.25, reflecting traders' belief in a low probability of a cross-strait invasion before the stated date. Total notional volume on the contract stands in the mid-eight-digit USD range, indicating persistent hedging and pre-settlement positioning as market participants react to evolving regional security signals.
Betting fraud: Google employee rakes in $1.2 million on Polymarket - Research Snipers
A Google developer used secret company data to place safe bets on the Polymarket crypto platform. The multi-million dollar fraud was now exposed and led to the arrest. The case highlights the problem behind the forecasting platform. Millions in fraud by Google developers Polymarket is currently making some headlines. The controversial platform, where you can bet on anything, such as wars, was recently even banned in Spain. Now a 36-year-old Google developer has been arrested in New York on suspicion of wire fraud and money laundering. The Italian, who works in Zurich, is said to have used insider information about his employer to place bets on the prediction platform. Between October and December 2025, the defendant placed targeted predictions under the pseudonym AlphaRaccoon. He bet on which people would take the top spots in Google's annual review. Among other things, he bet on the singer D4vd, whose chance of winning on the platform was very low. Since the employee already knew the result, he made a profit of 1.2 million US dollars (around 1 million euros). Covered tracks How ABC News reported, the man used an internal tool accessible to all employees. Google classified the behavior as a serious policy violation and immediately placed the employee on leave. The accused pleaded not guilty in court and was initially released on bail of 2.25 million US dollars (around 1.9 million euros). To cover his tracks, the developer deleted his Polymarket account after winning and moved the winnings from his digital wallet in the form of cryptocurrency. However, blockchain transactions are publicly visible, which is why observers suspected an insider behind the account early on. The hit rate for the unlikely events was too high to be based on pure chance. Second case of insider trading The current incident is the second criminal trial involving the crypto platform. A US soldier was previously indicted for using secret military information to bet on political developments in Venezuela. A US congressional committee is currently investigating how the platform can check its users and prevent illegal trading. The operators of Polymarket say they are cooperating closely with the investigative authorities. The company has now tightened its internal guidelines. The management announced technical adjustments in order to identify and report abnormalities in betting more quickly in the future.
A Google engineer bet $2.7M on Polymarket using secret search data -- and walked away with $1.2M in profit
When it comes to placing bets, part of the thrill is the unknown potential gain -- or loss. But when Michele Spagnuolo placed a bet on Polymarket last year, he probably had a pretty good idea of what the results would be. The 36-year-old software engineer was arrested last week and charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering after allegedly using confidential internal Google data to place bets on the platform's most-searched person of 2025, according to NPR (1). Must Read * Here's how to get rich from rising US property values with as little as $100 -- and without the stress of angry tenants * Robert Kiyosaki says this 1 asset will surge 400% in a year and begs investors not to miss this 'explosion' * Millionaires under 43 are reshaping investing -- just 25% of their portfolios are in stocks. Here's where their money is going Prosecutors say that Spagnuolo, trading under the username AlphaRaccoon, reportedly wagered $2.7 million across 25 separate bets -- and walked away with $1.2 million in profit. He bet that Pope Leo XIV and Bianca Censori, who married Kanye West, would not take the top spot, but that rapper D4vd would. "The employee accessed our marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies," Google spokesperson Jaclyn Vazquez told NPR. Prediction markets face continued scrutiny This isn't the first time prediction market bets have resulted in federal charges. Last month, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier was charged with using classified information about the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to pocket more than $400,000 on Polymarket. In April, Kalshi suspended three accounts (2) that it believed belonged to congressional candidates Ezekiel Enriquez in Texas, Matt Klein in Minnesota, and Mark Moran in Virginia, who were bidding on their own races. Moran allegedly placed a bet on himself under the event contract, "Who will run for public office this year?" before announcing his candidacy. Moran claimed the bet was intentional (3) to see if he would be caught. But Bobby DeNault, Kalshi's Head of Enforcement, called the candidates' wagers "political insider trading" in a company press release, and he said they violated the platform's rules. DeNault has reported that his team scours social media, employment records, and other public data, such as the FTC's campaign data lists, and uses it to prevent insider trading. "Those trigger flags in our systems, and we've prevented hundreds of cases of insider trading based on that," DeNault told ABC (4).
One Google Employee Used The Company's Internal Data To Bet On Polymarket And Won $1.2M, DOJ Says
* US prosecutors charged Google engineer Michele Spagnuolo after alleging he used confidential search-ranking data to profit more than $1.2 million on Polymarket. * Authorities said Spagnuolo accessed non-public information through an internal Google tool and placed bets on the year's top search trends before the data was released. * The case ties with growing scrutiny of prediction markets, where Polymarket uses Circle's USDC stablecoin for all trading and settlement. Google (GOOG/GOOGL) software engineer Michele Spagnuolo was charged this week with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering after allegedly using confidential company data to pocket more than $1.2 million on Polymarket. According to a criminal complaint unsealed by the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, Spagnuolo, who is based in Switzerland, allegedly used an internal tool marked "Google Confidential" to access non-public search data. Then he placed bets on Polymarket through an account called "AlphaRaccoon" on the year's most-searched people and search items before the data went public. "Unlike the counterparties to his trades, Spagnuolo knew the outcome of these wagers before the trading public because he had accessed Google's confidential," read the filing. The poll in question was on Google's yearly announcement of "Year in Search, in which it publicly releases curated data reflecting the top trending searches from that year. Authorities allege that between October 15 and December 4 last year, Spagnuolo risked roughly $2.75 million on markets tied to Google's internal search data, and made more than $1.2 million once results went public. Polymarket settles all trades in Circle's USDC stablecoin. "Corporate insiders cannot use confidential business information to turn a profit in our markets," US Attorney Jay Clayton said, adding that Spagnuolo violated duties to his employer by trading on Google's internal data for personal gain. GOOG's stock was up by 0.11% during after-hours trading. On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment around GOOG remained in the 'bearish' zone, while chatter around it stayed in the 'low' levels over the past day. Polymarket And Circle Deepen Ties The charges come as Polymarket has been expanding its crypto infrastructure. In February, Circle (CRCL) and Polymarket announced a partnership to replace the platform's existing bridged stablecoin, USDC.e, with native USD Coin (USDC) for all trading, order placement, and settlement. On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment around USDC remained in the 'neutral' zone, while chatter around it dipped to 'high' from 'extremely high' over the past day.
Meta Leads AI-Model Race by End-June 2026, Market Sees Anthropic Edge
A Meta-driven AI push is in focus as the company advances paid AI features and cloud ambitions, marking a notable shift from its ad-dominated revenue base. On the Polymarket contract linked to which company will have the best AI model by end-June 2026, traders are re pricing the leading outcome after Meta's AI strategy headlines surfaced in the related coverage. Meta Platforms is stepping up its experiment with paid AI services, including subscription offerings for its AI features and a potential cloud initiative, as reported in the latest market overview. The Bloomberg/Reuters-style briefing notes that Meta is pursuing non-advertising revenue streams and testing premium AI subscriptions in select regions, a move analysts say could redefine its growth trajectory. The article highlights that Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is betting on AI to unlock new monetization avenues, even as history shows mixed success for such pivots. The unfolding strategy comes as Meta weighs cloud opportunities that could pit it against major tech incumbents, a development closely watched by investors and buyers of AI exposure. The piece underscores that while ads remain robust, the push into paid AI products represents a strategic pivot with uncertain short-term traction. Prediction Market Reaction Leading odds on the Polymarket contract show Anthropic as the top choice for having the best AI model by end-June 2026, with implied probability around 82% in the current line. The market displays concentrated positioning around the Anthropic outcome, while alternative bets on Google, OpenAI, and others reflect thin liquidity and sharp no-odds of 85%+ for several non-Anthropic names. Total trading volume for this multi-outcome contract sits in the mid-to-high seven figures in USD terms, suggesting a steady flow of cross-venue risk on AI-model leadership as settlement nears. Positioning skew indicates traders are largely backing the leading option, with modest activity in the sub-20% buckets and a few outliers seeking hedge exposure against a potential surprise by non-Anthropic contenders. By the Numbers Top strike rungs +11 more strikes not shown
DOJ Charges Google Engineer Over $1.2M In Alleged Polymarket Insider Gains Case
DOJ charges Google engineer Michele Spagnuolo over alleged $1.2M Polymarket gains tied to confidential Google data. The U.S. Department of Justice has charged Google software engineer Michele Spagnuolo in an alleged Polymarket insider trading case. Prosecutors said he used confidential Google information to place market bets and gain more than $1.2 million. DOJ Files Charges Against Google Engineer The Justice Department charged Spagnuolo with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. He is also known as "AlphaRaccoon" on Polymarket. The case was announced by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. The FBI's New York office also joined the announcement. Prosecutors said Spagnuolo worked as a software engineer at Google. They said his role gave him access to internal systems and nonpublic business data. U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said the case involved confidential business information. He said, "Corporate insiders cannot use confidential business information to turn a profit in our markets." Prosecutors Detail Alleged Polymarket Bets The complaint said Spagnuolo created a Polymarket account in May 2024. The account used the alias "AlphaRaccoon," according to prosecutors. From October 15, 2025, to December 4, 2025, he allegedly risked about $2.75 million. Prosecutors said the trades were linked to Google-related prediction markets. The DOJ said Spagnuolo placed bets after accessing Google internal information. It also said the markets were later resolved after public announcements. Prosecutors allege the AlphaRaccoon account earned about $1.2 million from the trades. The gains came from bets tied to nonpublic Google data, they said. Read Also: Polymarket Exploit: $700K in POL Stolen, Executives Say User Funds Safe Confidential Data Access Under Review The complaint said Spagnuolo had access to an internal Google software tool. The tool displayed a "Google Confidential" banner in red text. Prosecutors said Spagnuolo had also certified Google confidentiality and ethics policies. They said those policies covered the handling of internal business information. FBI Assistant Director James C. Barnacle Jr. said Spagnuolo allegedly abused his access. He said the engineer used "nonpublic information" for personal financial gain. Spagnuolo, who resides in Switzerland, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in Manhattan federal court. The charges remain allegations unless proven in court. The case adds new attention to prediction market trading and employee access to corporate data. Prosecutors said the alleged conduct involved Google information and Polymarket markets.
