U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) wants to restrict government officials from using online prediction markets. It comes after several people made hundreds of thousands of dollars predicting the start of the war in Iran.
The bets were placed on Polymarket, where users can wager on current events.
Murphy said government officials shouldn't be able to use the markets. He speculated that in this case, they may have been.
“There are people close to Donald Trump (R) who, on Friday, knew what was happening on Saturday,” Murphy said. “And it is very likely, probable even, that the people who placed those bets were people with inside information.”
Murphy is co-sponsoring legislation to ban the president, vice president and members of Congress from using the markets. It’s unlikely to pass in the Republican controlled Congress, which Murphy admitted. He said it’s still an important issue to raise the alarm on.
“If we continue to allow people to bet on war, on military strikes, then you're going to have people inside the situation room who are making decisions not based on what's good for national security, not on whether or not we should send our young men and women overseas to die, but based upon whether they'll make money off of war,” Murphy said. “There's going to be somebody in that room who's going to be pushing us into war because they can cash in.”
A request for comment from Polymarket on this story was not returned before press time.
