Kalshi Bans George Santos for Life, Fines Ex-Congressman $70,000 in Bitcoin (BTC) Prediction-Market Crackdown

Kalshi's First Lifetime Ban

Candlestick charts on prediction-market order books tell the story this week: prediction platform Kalshi has issued the first lifetime trading ban in its history, targeting former U.S. Representative George Santos over wagers on his own attendance at President Donald Trump's most recent State of the Union address. According to the disciplinary record Kalshi published on its own site, Santos placed a series of large trades in a market where the underlying contracts depended entirely on his own presence at the event. He then began making public statements about his attendance — some of them, the record states, false or misleading — in an attempt to move the prices of the Yes and No contracts. Santos ultimately put his money on not attending, and he did not attend, pocketing roughly $18,000 in the process. Late last week, Kalshi fined him more than $70,000 on top of the permanent ban, and federal authorities have reportedly been examining the episode. Santos was expelled from the House in 2023 amid criminal investigations and was serving a fraud sentence when Trump commuted it last year. The ban was one of five new enforcement cases at the platform; the other four subjects received temporary suspensions after cooperating with investigators. A Kalshi spokesperson said Santos is barred permanently given his lack of cooperation, with additional financial penalties attached. He did not respond to requests for comment.

CFTC Hits Ex-White House Aide

The regulator that oversees these venues moved the same week. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced in its own press release that former White House teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez must pay more than $170,000 and accepted a three-year trading ban for placing bets on “mention” contracts — products that pay out when a prominent figure utters a specific word during a public address — tied to Trump's remarks, an information advantage no outside trader could replicate. His penalties were explicitly reduced in recognition of what the agency called exemplary cooperation. Rival platform Polymarket, meanwhile, says its surveillance stack combines machine learning, blockchain analytics, trade surveillance and open-source research to flag abnormal activity across decentralized applications (dapps). The company has referred more than 100 cases to authorities, including a U.S. soldier accused of using classified information to bet on the capture of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and suspected insider trading ahead of U.S. military action in Iran. Polymarket also notes it blocks the vast majority of U.S. users from its international platform, as required under its 2022 settlement with the CFTC.

US Open Partnership Terms

Even as the enforcement drumbeat continues, the category is winning mainstream sports real estate. Kalshi has become the exclusive prediction market partner of the US Open, according to reports citing two sources familiar with the agreement. The deal reportedly took effect immediately and was not formally finalized until after last week's qualifying rounds, just before the main draw opened Sunday in Flushing Meadows. Financial terms were not disclosed — a gap worth flagging rather than inferring around. The USTA, which owns and operates the tournament, is barring rival platforms from advertising inside the venue and on television, including across ESPN's broadcasts; one source described that exclusivity term as unusual. Notably, the association had planned to weigh prediction-market partnerships only for 2027 and beyond and, as of last week, had not formally approved the category at all, before chief executive Craig Tiley — who joined this year after more than a decade running Tennis Australia — pushed the deal through. Kalshi does not yet appear on the tournament's official partner list. The scale behind the push is clear: Kalshi, Polymarket and Polymarket US handled a combined $43.4 billion in volume in August, with Kalshi accounting for $35.55 billion. Sports-DraftKings-style betting names have taken note, with Kalshi and Polymarket already holding NHL partnerships and team-level deals across MLB franchises. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Binance.

Compliance Bar Keeps Rising

Our read of the week: platform self-policing, regulator action and mainstream distribution are arriving together, and that convergence is the maturation test for prediction markets. Kalshi's own disciplinary notice sets the precedent that self-referential trading plus price-moving public statements constitutes manipulation, while the CFTC filing shows the federal bar applies to insiders too. What remains undisclosed matters as much: the US Open deal's economics, and the scope of the federal probe around Santos, are both unconfirmed. For Bitcoin (BTC) traders, the same CFTC-regulated framework increasingly governs the venues catalogued in our Best Crypto Exchanges guide — a compliance perimeter that now encircles prediction markets and crypto venues alike.