Kalshi, one of the leading prediction market firms, said it caught and penalized two users for insider-trading activity on its platform, including an editor for the popular social-media star MrBeast.
The company said it has more than a dozen active insider-trading cases among 200 it’s investigated. On Wednesday, Kalshi disclosed the details of two that it resolved, including against Artem Kaptur, who was identified as working for James Donaldson, known for his MrBeast persona that’s tied to its massive social-media presence as well as the reality competition show, “Beast Games.”
Kaptur was said to have entered $4,000 in trades regarding what would occur on the MrBeast show, for which he worked as a visual effects editor. Kalshi suspended him for two years and fined him more than $20,000.
“Beast Industries has no tolerance for this behavior, whether by contestants or our own employees,” the company that employed Kaptur said in a statement. “We have a longstanding policy in place against employees using proprietary company information which safeguards the highest standards and ethics throughout our organization.”
Beast Industries said it has “already initiated an independent investigation” on that matter, though it encouraged Kalshi to “be more open” to communicating its findings in the future.
Insider trading is banned at Kalshi, a regulated exchange licensed as a “designated contract market” with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the company described its actions against Kaptur and another user who took advantage of (CFTC) their unique knowledge in violation of user policy.
In the other case, user Kyle Langford was said to bet $200 on his own candidacy for California governor and posted about it on social media, earning him a 5-year ban and a penalty of 10 times the trade amount.
Langford, now running for Congress, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did the CFTC immediately respond to questions about its role in these matters.
The pair of cases at Kalshi further underline one of the concerns at the U.S. regulator of derivatives, the CFTC. While that agency is now working on rules to govern the prediction markets, its previous chairman under the administration of former President Joe Biden had often lamented that the CFTC isn’t able to police the whole world. Markets that extend to miniscule bets on topics both broad and obscure and in jurisdictions around the world can pose a potential challenge for — at last count — about 114 U.S. enforcement employees.
In a recent CNBC interview, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour struggled to draw the line on what constitutes insider trading when questioned on a hypothetical example of people in the stadium before the Super Bowl having knowledge about what performer Bad Bunny would do as his opening song — a matter that drew Kalshi contracts.
Mansour equated it with controls at stock market firms, saying, “we do the same thing on Kalshi. We have the same mechanism for enforcement.” However, he said Kalshi users have to recognize the risks of betting on information under uncertain restraints. “We want to work with policymakers and regulators to get that right,” he said.
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