Prediction markets: You’re always betting against the house
Here’s a round-up of a few recent prediction market stories. Try to spot the common theme!
- Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term: A Google software engineer was charged with using non-public “Year in Search” data (including that singer d4vd was the most searched person of 2025) to make more than $1.2 million.
- DOJ investigating ex-US lawmaker Santos for insider trading on Kalshi, source says: The former congressman allegedly bet that he would not attend the State of the Union after publicly suggesting that he would.
- White House teleprompter operator made more than $100K betting on Trump’s speeches: Sources: A technical assistant who has operated Trump’s teleprompter since 2016 allegedly bet on the contents of the president’s remarks (while regularly receiving last-minute edits from Trump himself).
In the words of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan: “What’s cool about Polymarket is that it creates this financial incentive for people to go and divulge the information to the market.”