House Oversight staff urge limits on federal workers’ prediction-market trades

US House Oversight staff urged Congress to consider restricting which prediction-market contracts federal personnel can trade. The 13 November memo to the committee’s majority members recommends barring those personnel from trading at least on government actions and political outcomes, including when they use only public information.

The memo also discusses a broader ban and recommends that Congress consider how exchanges and regulators can share information to enforce trading restrictions. It sets out policy options and leaves the scope and enforcement of any future legislation open.

Staff point to the Commodity Exchange Act, as amended by the STOCK Act, which already bars covered officials and employees from trading specified derivatives using non-public information obtained through their work. The Senate took a separate step in April when it adopted a rule prohibiting prediction-market participation by senators, Senate officers and employees.

What exchanges told staff

The House committee’s summary says staff received nearly 1,700 pages of documents and communications and took part in five bipartisan briefings. Four of the five platforms in the inquiry supplied substantial documentation or briefed staff on their surveillance. Staff credit exchanges with first detecting and reporting most of the incidents described in the memo.

The memo distinguishes QCX, the regulated US exchange doing business as Polymarket US, from the separate international platform at Polymarket.com. That distinction matters when reading its examples. The Google search-data case cited by staff involved trades alleged to have taken place on Polymarket.com. Prediction Frontier previously covered separate congressional calls for safeguards on election contracts.