White House · Polymarket · Donald Trump · US Congress · CoinDesk
The penalty against Santos joins several other recent moves in the industry to address abuse on the trading platforms
Compiled by KHAO Editorial — aggregated from 5 sources. See llms.txt for citation guidance.
✓ KHAO Verified
"Santos placed a series of large trades in a market where the underlying contracts depended upon his own attendance at the event," Kalshi wrote in the disciplinary record posted on its site, which detailed the trading on whether Santos would attend President Donald Trump's speech earlier this year.
Key facts
- Besides the ban, Kalshi also fined him more than $70,000 in its action late last week, and federal authorities have reportedly been looking into it
- Polymarket also said its systems block the vast majority of U.S. users from its international platform, as required under a 2022 settlement with the CFTC
- Santos had received a rare ejection from Congress in 2023 as criminal investigations hounded the disgraced lawmaker
- Polymarket has referred more than 100 cases to authorities, including bets tied to a U.S. soldier accused of using classified information to wager on the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro
Summary
Kalshi has issued its first lifetime trading ban, targeting ex-Congressman George Santos, accusing him of trading on his own appearance at President Donald Trump’s most recent State of the Union address. At the same time, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a penalty and ban against a former White House teleprompter operating for placing bets on words he knew Trump was planning to utter in remarks. Polymarket is also reportedly focused on bad actors that may try to manipulate midterm elections. Ousted former U.S. Representative George Santos has earned groundbreaking status as the first individual banned for life from prediction market platform Kalshi in light of a record of allegedly manipulative trades that earned the ex-politician about $18,000 for betting on his own appearance at Trump's State of the Union speech, according to the company.