A trader profits $400,000 from the Maduro arrest incident, and US lawmakers plan to introduce legislation to combat "insider trading" in prediction markets.

On January 4th, according to The Block, Punchbowl News founder Jake Sherman disclosed on Saturday that U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres will introduce legislation called the “2026 Financial Prediction Market Public Integrity Act,” aimed at combating potential insider trading behaviors in prediction market platforms. The report states that the bill proposes to prohibit federal elected officials, political appointees, and executive branch employees from trading prediction market contracts related to government policies or political outcomes when they possess or reasonably could obtain significant non-public information in connection with their official duties. In the comments section of Sherman’s related post, the public relations account of prediction market platform Kalshi responded that their platform rules already explicitly prohibit insiders or decision-makers from trading using material non-public information. The introduction of this bill was prompted by trading activity on Polymarket involving a newly created account: just hours before U.S. President Trump announced that the U.S. military had detained Venezuelan President Maduro during a nighttime operation, the implied probability of related contracts on Polymarket showed an abnormal increase. After the news of Maduro’s detention was confirmed, one account, with an investment of approximately $32,500, earned over $400,000 in profit, yielding a return of over 1200%. This account had previously only participated in predictions related to U.S. intervention in Venezuela.