Most competent people at the DOJ have either been fired or left. And the current administration seems to love insider trading, so long as they can be the insiders doing the trading.

It lasts for now, it won’t survive when the political pendulum swings back. “Make hay grifting while the grifters shine.” is the current MO. “Temporary economic strip mining operation.”

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may" comes to mind

Grift while the grifting’s good.

I'll leave this here, Donald Trump Jr got a free stake in Kalshi. https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/options/articles/donald-tr...

Same old story, on a whole new scale. Donny Junior has a piece the numbers game on the east side, so the family makes sure the cops don’t come round asking too many questions…

also known as a bribe

> Donald Trump Jr. Got A Kalshi Stake For Free— Now It Could Be Worth Billions As Prediction Market Platform Eyes $40 Billion Valuation

> Kalshi handed him equity worth roughly $300,000 when he joined as a strategic adviser in early 2025. ... Kalshi granted him the stake when the company was valued at under $2 billion — less than a tenth of its $22 billion valuation in a funding round last month ...

Um, how does a $300K stake at an "under $2 billion" valuation become "worth billions" with a 10-50x valuation increase?

(Disclaimer: I'm not defending the Trump family in any way, the administration has been absurdly and blatantly corrupt.)

The same way young Barron has $150m to his name? Through sheer corruption?

> free

He got it for being an advisor. I assume you have similar questions about hunter biden and the gas company?

Bidens nepotism was small scale.

Donald Trump is burning down the country for his and his family’s wealth.

You don’t have to support either

Still beating the same dead horse, huh? The Trump family's corruption is on a whole new level, pretending otherwise is extremely disingenuous and bad faith. But what else would you expect from MAGA?

Insider trading is legal in commodities markets. If I am engaged in a hedging transaction I am doing so because I know about risks that I want to offload, and the buyer does also. You don't come to commodities markets without information.

Exactly. Pit mine sees who's buying what and is worried copper will go down. Datacenter people see who's inking deals and are worried it's gonna go up. They both need to get big fancy loans from their bankers to execute their upcoming projects. The bankers won't like to see unbounded risk on their balance sheets. A futures contract exists to solve this problem.

Not that this excuses some of the absurd stuff that goes on on the online betting platforms...

Just for context that’s not quite accurate. There certainly is a distinction in the rule versus securities markets, which I know is what you mean.

But it’s more accurate to say participants can trade on lawfully obtained material nonpublic information absent some independent duty not to use it, which is much narrower than saying insider trading is generally legal.

Hedging is not insider trading. Insider trading is trading based on material non-public information in breach of a duty or obtained through fraud. In that sense, it's more of a principal-agent problem.

Also -- hedging is generally not done based on material non-public information, but rather to guard against known risks. Joe the farmer sells a bunch of wheat futures when he plants his wheat, not because he thinks the price will go down, but rather because if it does he goes bankrupt and he'd prefer to accept a known rate-of-return now.

Note that's a US definition — Europe is stricter and draws the line at non-public information [0], aside from certain carveouts and safe harbors. Matt Levine describes this as "theft" (misappropriating nonpublic information) vs. "fairness" (using nonpublic information at all) — iirc if you're on a flight and overhear a passenger in business class talking about an upcoming merger they're working on, that's legal to trade on in the US but illegal in Europe. At least that's what I generally remember about "parity-of-information" theory.

[0] https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/oblb/blog-post/2024/01/insider-de...

If you and the buyer know about the risks then you’re not making a trade based on material non public information, are you?

If you make a hedging trade while having material knowledge that you withhold from the counterparty… well, that sounds like it could be edging towards fraud. Like taking out life insurance while hiding a medical condition.

But sure, it’s not against the law to do business with a sucker, so there’s degrees here.

John Tuld, in Margin Call:

Sam Rogers: And you're selling something that you know has no value.

John Tuld: We are selling to willing buyers at the current fair market price.

Prediction markets are not remotely commodities markets, regardless of whatever the Trump admin says. It’s just gambling without any enforcement on cheating.

Corruption

> a competent DOJ

The question answers itself.

Lobbying

> competent DOJ

Answered your own question.

Insider trading is like the whole point of prediction markets. Users pay the insiders for better information

There's nobody left at the DoJ in a high enough position to do anything like this. I'm not a gambler myself, but if I were, I certainly wouldn't used something that seems made for insider traders and suckers.