The penalties come amid calls for greater oversight, as the company pledges to proactively police ‘insider trading’ on its platforms.Predictive market platform Kalshi has punished three unnamed United States political candidates for taking part in “insider trading” by betting on their own campaigns.In a statement on Wednesday, Kalshi explained that it had taken the enforcement action after launching a new raft of safeguards.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listConcerns had been raised over the lack of regulations in online betting, amid an explosion in popularity for prediction market platforms. The sites allow people to place bets on an array of cultural, sporting, political and geopolitical events.“Just like in traditional financial markets, bad actors will try to cheat,” Kalshi said in a statement, adding that the three cases “are an example of how developing proactive engineering solutions can help identify illicit trading activity”.The first instance Kalshi identified involved a candidate in the Democratic primary for Minnesota’s 2nd congressional district. The statement did not identify which candidate it had penalised from the five-way primary, which will be held on August 11.Kalshi said the candidate “traded a small amount on the outcome of his own election”. He subsequently paid a $539.85 fine and was suspended from the platform for five years.A second case concerned a candidate in the Republican primary for Texas’s 21st congressional district, which former professional baseball player Mark Teixeira won in early April.Like the earlier case, Kalshi did not identify which of the three Republican candidates had placed a “fairly small” bet on the outcome of …
