Last month, the White House issued a formal warning to all its employees prohibiting the use of non-public, insider information to place speculative trades on online prediction markets, according to multiple sources familiar with the internal communication. The cautionary email, first brought to public attention by the Wall Street Journal, was distributed to White House personnel on March 24. This timing came exactly one day after former U.S. President Donald Trump announced a five-day halt on his public threat to launch military strikes against Iranian power plants and national energy infrastructure. The advisory was prompted by existing press reporting that raised widespread alarms over potential improper activity by U.S. government officials on popular prediction platforms including Kalshi and Polymarket. When approached for comment by the BBC, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle pushed back on suggestions of any wrongdoing by administration members, noting that all insinuations of improper trading by current administration officials are unsubstantiated, baseless claims that amount to irresponsible journalism. Ingle further clarified that every federal employee working within the executive branch is already bound by strict federal government ethics regulations that explicitly ban the use of confidential insider information to secure personal financial gain. “The only special interest that will ever guide President Trump is the best interest of the American people,” Ingle added in his official statement. The BBC has reached out to both Kalshi and Polymarket to request their perspective on the warning and broader concerns around insider trading on their platforms, and as of this reporting, neither company has issued an official public response. This latest incident is not the first time prediction markets have come under regulatory and public scrutiny. Back in January, Polymarket faced intense public and congressional scrutiny after an anonymous gambler netted nearly half a million dollars from a bet that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would be captured, placing the wager just hours before the capture was officially announced to the public. To date, the identity of the bettor remains unknown, with the only trace of the account being an alphanumeric blockchain identifier tied to the transaction. The unconfirmed but widely discussed incident sparked major questions over whether the anonymous bettor had obtained advance insider knowledge of the U.S. military operation that led to Maduro’s capture, profiting illegally from non-public information. Prediction markets, which have seen explosive growth in mainstream popularity over the past 12 months, currently host more than $44 billion (equivalent to roughly £33 billion) in total cumulative trades across major platforms. While the majority of bets placed on these platforms center on major sports events and entertainment outcomes, users increasingly trade on high-stakes political and economic events, ranging from whether the U.S. Federal Reserve will adjust benchmark interest rates to the projected outcomes of local, state, and national elections.