FOIA docs: the CFTC launched at least three previously unreported investigations into Polymarket trading, including about Google's 2025 Year in Search Ranking
The agency that oversees prediction markets has investigated Polymarket trades on Biden pardons and the Iran war …
Context & Ripple Effects
Polymarket's regulatory arc has been uneven: the DOJ and CFTC ended two Biden-era investigations in July 2025, but sources reported a broader CFTC investigation into Polymarket began earlier in 2026. In May, authorities had also sent information requests to Kalshi and Polymarket, many tied to Iran- and Venezuela-related wagers.
The FOIA records add transaction-level detail to that arc, showing the CFTC's attention reaches discrete contracts and the trading around them. That focus aligns with a March study that identified patterns consistent with nonpublic-information trading on Polymarket.
First-order effects
- Polymarket's trades tied to Biden pardons, the Iran war, and Google's 2025 Year in Search ranking are subject to separate CFTC scrutiny, extending the agency's documented inquiry from platform-level oversight to particular markets and participants.
Second-order effects
- The contract-level investigations reinforce compliance pressure on Kalshi and other prediction-market operators; Kalshi had already removed sports-related word-choice bets after the CFTC's probe of “mention markets.”
Third-order effects
- If the CFTC continues pairing platform investigations with reviews of specific event contracts, market design and trade-surveillance controls may become prerequisites for prediction-market access rather than back-office compliance features.
The trend: Prediction markets are moving toward a regulatory model in which rapid contract creation is constrained by scrutiny of both event design and potential information advantages in trading.