Kalshi, the US prediction market platform regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), announced on June 9, 2026 that traders wanting to participate in markets covering corporate earnings, product launches, national security, and major geopolitical events must now disclose their employer through an online form before placing bets. The policy is a direct response to a series of insider trading incidents on rival platform Polymarket and growing regulatory pressure from Washington to clean up a sector that analysts and regulators argue has expanded faster than its compliance infrastructure can keep pace with.

How the System Works

Traders submit employer information through a form that appends the data to Kalshi's existing know-your-customer (KYC) records, which already include addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, government ID documents, partial Social Security numbers, and facial recognition verification. Kalshi will not routinely confirm what users report, but if suspicious activity triggers an investigation, it can demand proof of employment at that point. Some traders may be blocked from specific markets preemptively based on their disclosed employer.

The disclosure requirement is one part of a three-component integrity framework Kalshi launched simultaneously. The platform also introduced a risk scoring system that flags markets considered vulnerable to manipulation or insider trading, along with in-platform whistleblower tools that let users report suspicious activity directly from individual market pages without navigating away from the app.

The numbers behind the rollout are significant. In Q1 2026 alone, Kalshi submitted more than 20 referrals to regulators and law enforcement, and its screening tools intercepted over 100 potential insider trading incidents. Across the past year, the platform opened 200 investigations and froze multiple flagged accounts. One notable case involved former US Representative George Santos, whose trading activity in Kalshi's "State of the Union" market was referred to regulators. Santos denied any wrongdoing.

Kalshi's own Independent Surveillance Audit Committee identified the gap that made this expansion necessary. The committee found the previous setup "allowed manual investigation of possible insider relationships on a case-by-case basis only after illegal trading has been suspected," and concluded that adding employer records would "enhance market surveillance, initial investigations and deterrence capabilities."

The Cases That Forced the Issue

Two high-profile enforcement actions on Polymarket in the months before this announcement set the context. In April 2026, an active-duty US Army service member was charged with using classified military intelligence about Operation Absolute Resolve to trade event contracts, marking the CFTC's first-ever insider trading complaint involving event contracts. In May 2026, a Google employee allegedly used confidential internal search trends data to place bets on Polymarket, reportedly netting roughly $1.2 million before charges were brought by both the DOJ and the CFTC.

Polymarket itself had moved to address the issue earlier in the year. In March 2026, the platform updated its policies to explicitly prohibit trades based on stolen confidential information or illegal tips.

The broader regulatory framework was also tightening during this period. On February 25, 2026, the CFTC issued a Prediction Markets Advisory asserting full authority over designated contract markets operating in this space. On March 12, 2026, the agency published an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking public comment on new event contract regulations. Together, these primary-source actions provided the formal backbone for the enforcement posture that followed.

The regulatory posture has hardened sharply. CFTC Enforcement Director David Miller said in March 2026: "A myth has spread that insider trading is permissible in the prediction markets. Insider trading in prediction markets is precisely the kind of serious violation that we are going after vigorously." Commissioner Michael S. Selig added: "If you attempt to engage in manipulation, fraud, or insider trading, we will find you and take action."

Why This Matters Outside the US

The policy has direct relevance for markets far from Washington. Global prediction market trading surged more than 400 percent in 2025 to roughly $64 billion in volume, and the sector is projected to reach $1 trillion annually by 2030.

Africa is one of the fastest-expanding prediction market regions in the world. Nigeria alone has an estimated 168.7 million sports bettors, with Kenya (58.3 million) and South Africa (45.5 million) also representing large participation pools. In March 2026, London-based Luno launched a structured prediction market product in Nigeria and South Africa through a partnership with US-based Limitless, letting users stake between 3 and 10,000 USDC on crypto price direction in 24-hour windows. The product is peer-to-peer and KYC-gated, but Luno has not publicly disclosed employer verification as part of that compliance stack.

The regulatory environment these platforms operate in is unsettled. Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission is still drafting comprehensive digital asset rules, and in 2025 the Lagos State Lotteries and Gaming Authority classified local platform Bayse Markets as an illegal gaming operator. The Luno Nigeria Country Manager noted that "prediction markets are a natural evolution of how our customers already engage with cryptocurrency," a view that industry observers note currently sits ahead of the legal clarity available to sustain it at scale.

South Asia represents another significant frontier for these questions. India's Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) operates one of the more developed insider trading regimes among emerging markets, with rules covering material nonpublic information that parallel CFTC frameworks in several respects. Despite formal restrictions on many prediction market products in India, documented VPN workaround activity points to substantial participation from Indian users on globally accessible platforms. For development teams in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh who build infrastructure for decentralised finance platforms serving international user bases, the compliance architecture Kalshi has assembled carries direct practical relevance.

For developers building prediction market infrastructure across these regions, Kalshi's model offers a concrete reference point. Occupational data fields, employer verification layers, and audit trail requirements are, in the view of analysts and regulators increasingly vocal on the subject, moving toward baseline expectations in regulated markets rather than remaining optional additions.

What Comes Next

Legislative pressure in the US is building alongside enforcement. Two bills now in Congress address the issue from different angles. H.R. 7004 would restrict elected officials, political appointees, and executive agency employees from trading on government-related prediction markets while holding material nonpublic information. S. 4060 takes a broader approach, seeking to prohibit the use of material nonpublic information in event contract trading generally, applying to all traders rather than only to those in government roles. Whether either bill passes, the regulatory direction is clear, and analysts and regulatory observers increasingly argue that platforms that do not build toward rigorous integrity standards will face growing exposure as the sector scales.