Charles, identified as a core investor in World Liberty Financial, immediately drew criticism after posting on X that insider trading on prediction markets is “totally legal” because the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulates them as derivatives and not securities.
Wintermute’s Evgeny Gaevoy and others, with comments ranging from “deeply amoral” to warnings that it could carry criminal consequences despite technical regulatory differences.
Is insider trading legal?
Karbon, the pseudonymous commentator account @karbonbased simply known as Karbon, wrote about his personal policy of refraining from trading on any market where he possesses non-public information, stating he values being “home with my wife and son, not in prison.”
The post was in response to a World Liberty Financial (WLFI) investor allegedly publicly defending insider trading on prediction platforms. The core investor in the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial initiative took to Twitter to call insider trading on prediction markets legal, resulting in immediate backlash.
“It’s totally legal to insider trade on prediction markets as CFTC regulates them as derivatives, not securities. Insider trading rules don’t apply here. And here’s the point people miss: prediction markets are literally designed to attract insiders.
That’s the whole point. The market works best when people with real information participate. The average person scrolling Twitter doesn’t add much value to predicting complex outcomes. Prediction markets are basically a legal way to buy insider info,” he wrote.
Evgeny Gaevoy, the founder and CEO of Wintermute, said he would “think less” of anyone he learned had engaged in insider trading on platforms like Polymarket or Kalshi.
Cryptopolitan reported yesterday that a bill called the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026 is in the works to prevent individuals who might have privileged information about certain issues from being able to make trades on outcomes of bets relating to those issues.
Is insider trading legal on prediction markets?
While Charles claims the CFTC’s classification of prediction markets as derivatives exempts them from securities law, legal experts have noted this interpretation is untested in court.
Traditional insider trading laws primarily target securities markets under the SEC’s jurisdiction. However, the Commodity Exchange Act does contain anti-fraud and manipulation laws that could potentially apply to trading on material non-public information, but no major enforcement action has established a clear precedent specifically for prediction market insider trading.
World Liberty Financial, a crypto project launched by the Trump family, has faced scrutiny over potential conflicts of interest. Critics pointed out the potential for individuals connected to the Trump administration to possess non-public information valuable for prediction markets.
Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Maxine Waters have called for investigations into WLFI to determine whether the Trump family’s role in the project is affecting its regulatory compliance.
In November, reports surfaced alleging that World Liberty Financial sold tokens to individuals linked to sanctioned countries such as Iran, North Korea, and Russia.
Wintermute has also faced insider trading allegations in the past, although nothing has stuck legally. It is important to note that some of the allegations also come from users on the wrong end of the firm’s market-making activities.
Tier1Hater, a crypto commentator who initially highlighted Charles’s statements in a post on X, accused WLFI of running “a blatant misinformation campaign” and characterized the insider trading defense as “normalizing corruption while painting it as innovation.”
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