The ousting of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro yielded some speculators a big payday on prediction markets, with one bettor winning a whopping $400,000 as a result of the dictator’s capture and removal.
One newly created account on the prediction platform Polymarket speculated on Friday that Maduro would be out of power by Jan. 31, turning a $30,000 bet into a $436,759.61 payday when U.S. forces captured the dictator just one day later, Axios reported. This and other big betting wins in recent days have sparked new congressional legislation clamping down on insider trading in prediction markets.
Democratic New York Rep. Ritchie Torres plans to introduce new legislation — dubbed the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026 — seeking to limit insider trading by federal elected officials, political appointees, or employees of an Executive agency participating in speculation when informed by nonpublic information.
A Torres spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Monday that the Maduro-related trades were the trigger for the new legislation, which may be introduced in the House as early as this week.
“The bill is designed to clearly codify that this conduct is illegal under federal law,” the spokesperson said. “At this stage, the legislation does not include separate enforcement mechanisms or additional penalties beyond those that already exist.”
The bill would make it illegal to speculate on platforms such as Polymarket if an individual “possesses material nonpublic information relevant to such covered transaction; or may reasonably obtain such material nonpublic information in the course of performing official duties, including when such information would not otherwise be available to a member of the public exercising reasonable diligence,” according to its text.
In the stock market or other traditional financial markets, it is illegal for someone with material nonpublic information to speculate using their information — a phenomenon widely known as insider trading. Such regulation, though, has yet to be implemented in some nascent online prediction markets, including Polymarket.
One Polymarket competitor, Kalshi, does adhere to insider trading bans. A Kalshi spokesperson said of the new proposed legislation that “we already ban the activity it cites and are in support of means to prevent this type of activity,” Axios reported.
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