Aditi Bharade

Kalshi says it will crack down on politicians and athletes betting

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As lawmakers zero in on insider trading risks, Kalshi said it is rolling out a fresh set of guardrails for its sports and political betting markets.

In a press release on Monday, the New York City-based prediction markets platform said it is introducing guardrails, which “preemptively block politicians, athletes, and other relevant people from trading in certain politics and sports markets.”

The move was made to comply with congressional proposals that prohibit insider trading, the company said.

For politicians, Kalshi said it already prevents elected officials from betting. But the platform will now extend that ban to political candidates trying to trade on their own campaigns.

Additionally, people in college and professional sports, including athletes, personnel, and referees, will be “preemptively blocked from trading markets associated with sports they are involved in.”

Kalshi said in the release that such trades were always banned. But prior to Monday’s new feature launch, investigations were done after the trades were placed.

The company also announced a new whistleblower function that allows Kalshi users to flag potential violations, saying that “no screening system is perfect, and motivated bad actors consistently try to find a way.”

Kalshi’s announcement landed on the same day California Sen. Adam Schiff and Utah Sen. John Curtis introduced a bipartisan bill in the Senate, the “Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act.”

The legislation aims to prohibit Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulated companies, such as Kalshi and Polymarket, from listing any predictions that resemble a sports bet or “casino-style game.”

New York Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez reacted to the Kalshi announcement on Monday, saying in an X post that it was “just a fig leaf to deflect from criticism,” and “absolutely not enough.”

She said there were many other individuals, including staff, advisors, consultants, cabinet secretaries, and spouses, who could trade on insider information.

Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour responded to Ocasio-Cortez’s X post, saying that Kalshi “already bans, monitors, and enforces against all the groups” that she had mentioned. He added that the new features add “pre-trade screens” to block people from participating.

While Kalshi has been publicly cracking down on users trying to profit from nonpublic information, its rival Polymarket is going the other way.

Polymarket’s founder and CEO, Shayne Coplan, said in a November “60 Minutes” interview that some people will have an edge in the market, an inevitability which he said is a “good thing.”




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Betting on the Oscars or the Super Bowl halftime show would be banned under new prediction market bill

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If two lawmakers on Capitol Hill get their way, making prediction market bets on the Oscars or the Super Bowl halftime show would be illegal.

“If you bet on who’s performing at the Super Bowl Halftime Show, and lose your money to someone who controlled the answer, you’re getting ripped off,” said Democratic Rep. Greg Casar of Texas.

“Wouldn’t the government protect consumers from markets that were transparently rigged?” said Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut. “The people who benefit in these markets are always the powerful.”

Murphy and Casar introduced a bill on Tuesday that would ban a slew of prediction markets currently offered by platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket.

Dubbed the Banning Event Trading on Sensitive Operations and Federal Functions (BETS OFF) Act, the bill would ban prediction market trading on the following:

  • terrorism, assassination, and war;
  • non-financial government actions in general;
  • events where individuals know or can control the outcome.

At a press conference on Tuesday, both Murphy and Casar largely focused on what they described as the perils of allowing prediction market trading on government actions, including the war in Iran.

“It is frankly stunning to people that it is legal, that it is allowed, for these prediction markets to allow for bets to be made on such consequential questions like war and peace,” Murphy said.

Yet trading on events like awards shows and other cultural events has only grown in popularity. According to Kalshi, traders bet more than $105 million on the Oscars this year, up from roughly $30 million last year.

Despite that growing popularity, both lawmakers told Business Insider that they weren’t concerned about ending up on the wrong side of public opinion, given their belief that those markets are susceptible to corruption and rigging.

“When people get on their phone and see these prediction markets, they expect that there are rules to make sure the game isn’t rigged against them,” Casar said. “I think that voters would clearly stand with us, saying we want to make sure that you aren’t betting on a rigged poker game.”

As prediction markets have come under greater scrutiny, Kalshi has emphasized that its rules forbid insider trading, and the company recently said it took action against a MrBeast video editor for insider trading.

Polymarket has generally taken a more lax approach, and because it’s an international platform that hasn’t yet fully rolled out its US markets, American regulations don’t always apply.

Murphy and Casar’s bill aims to change that, including by amending existing laws to block payments to offshore prediction market platforms and imposing criminal penalties on people who promote them domestically.

Here’s the full text of the “BETS OFF Act”:




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A $25B credit investor says betting only on AI chips misses the bigger cycle

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The artificial intelligence boom is real — but there’s more to the AI trade than chips alone, according to a credit investor.

“This is a super-duper micro cycle that will outlast many investing careers,” said Scott Goodwin, the cofounder and managing partner of Diameter Capital Partners, a quote he attributed to his partner Jonathan Lewinsohn.

AI represents what Diameter Capital sees as a long-running, disruptive cycle — but buying the most obvious winners isn’t the only way to play it, he said on the “Goldman Sachs Exchanges” podcast published on Friday.

Diameter Capital, which manages approximately $25 billion in assets, has focused on where AI demand could create less obvious bottlenecks — and where those bottlenecks show up in credit markets.

The AI opportunity beyond chips

That view led Diameter to buy the unsecured debt of a midsize telecommunications company in 2023.

Goodwin said the bet was rooted in the idea that as companies move from training AI models to actually using them, demand shifts away from chips alone and toward the networks that carry data.

“It had to leave the data center. How would it leave? It would leave on the commercial fiber, the pipes,” he said.

The telco went on to sign more than $10 billion in contracts with hyperscale cloud providers, and the debt has rebounded to face value, Goodwin said.

Diameter Capital also made “a big bet” on a satellite company tied to the wireless spectrum — a wager that later paid off after the company sold spectrum assets and the debt returned to face value.

Goodwin’s comments come amid growing debate over whether sky-high AI valuations are sustainable and whether investors are overlooking other opportunities tied to the technology.

Risks and rewards

Goodwin warned that parts of the AI-credit boom may be taking on risk that’s hard to price, especially in chip finance.

Some investors, he said, are taking on “residual risk,” or the riskiest slice of chip-financing deals — betting on what the hardware might be worth years from now. Cutting-edge firms refresh their technology often, so chips can quickly become outdated for some customers.

“We call up really smart people in Silicon Valley, we call up really smart people at Big Tech companies and ask them what the residual value is on these chips three, four, five, six, seven years forward,” he said. “None of them have a clue.”

Goodwin said the next phase isn’t just about spending on infrastructure — it’s about competitive disruption rather than capital expenditure.

“Who are the companies, who are the entities that are going to adopt AI and take a step forward versus their peers? And who are going to be the losers?” he asked.

“That is actually a longer cycle than the capex cycle, so that’s really interesting,” he said.




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Disney is betting OpenAI can help it solve a key problem

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Disney is losing the war for attention. Can its blockbuster OpenAI licensing deal change the momentum on the battlefield?

Soon, you’ll be able to use OpenAI products, such as ChatGPT and the video generator Sora, to create content featuring Disney characters like Mickey Mouse, Ariel, and Darth Vader.

CEO Bob Iger said the move would let Disney take advantage of a fast-growing area of entertainment.

Iger said initially Disney would “curate some of the videos that have been created on the Sora platform and put them onto Disney+, which we think is a great way to increase engagement with our Disney+ users, particularly the younger users.” Iger said eventually the company wants users to create AI videos within Disney+ itself.

There’s a key word in Iger’s comment that signals why Disney might be particularly motivated to make this deal: engagement.

Time people spend on Disney’s and other leading streaming services has stayed essentially flat over the past few years, while YouTube and social video have grown. Disney’s share of US TV viewership for its streaming services — including Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ — has been stuck at around 4.8% this year, according to Nielsen. YouTube is the top streaming platform on TVs, with a nearly 13% share in October, and its lead has been widening.

Data from analytics firm Luminate showed that engagement with Disney+’s original content fell to a 3% share of US viewing time in the third quarter of 2025. That’s down from 9% three years earlier, the largest decline among paid streamers.

Disney has been highly protective of its famous characters and favors keeping people on its own platforms. This stance has made it difficult for the company to capitalize on the rise of user-generated content. And it’s losing its monopoly on its core constituency, kids, as they increasingly watch YouTube over Disney+.

Hollywood needs new strategies to keep people engaged

Traditional media companies are struggling to grow, so they’re trying to figure out new ways to get people to engage with their content, whether it be games, live events, or fan content creation, media analyst Doug Shapiro, a senior advisor at BCG, recently told Business Insider.

“It’s a zero-sum game they’re losing, and it’s only going to get worse,” he said. “I think they’re all asking themselves, how can they have a deeper relationship with fans?”

Disney invested $1.5 billion in Fortnite maker Epic Games last year and struck a deal with Webtoon to create a new digital platform for Disney’s comics, including Marvel and Star Wars. Outside Disney, Netflix is opening Netflix Houses, mini theme parks in malls that let people enter the worlds of its popular shows. Amazon has backed Fable Studios, a startup that has an AI streaming platform that lets users make their own shows and play with existing IP.

John Attanasio, CEO of Toonstar, a tech-driven animation studio, said Disney’s IP is so popular that the Sora videos could help drive more audience. He thought Disney could potentially charge for access to AI tools on Disney+ or use the Sora videos to discover franchise extensions.

“UGC, when it’s so specific, the reach is limited,” he said. “But when you use known IP, that expands the potential audience.”

Disney fans and Hollywood insiders had mixed reactions to the OpenAI news.

Shae Noble, a Disney superfan in her late 30s, said she could see herself sending birthday messages or making fan videos of the characters interacting in interesting ways — especially if it were integrated into Disney+.

“I’ve already seen some of the negative impacts of AI and people pushing it too far to create harmful images,” she added. “So it’s smart of them to be proactive about it.”

Some in Hollywood worried about the risks to professional creators.

For one thing, the deal puts the emphasis on existing IP rather than making new content, Toonstar’s Attanasio said.

The Writers Guild of America came out swinging against the deal, and said it planned to meet with Disney to explore how much the pact would let user-generated videos use the work of its members.

Sam Tung, a storyboard artist and cochair of the Animation Guild’s AI committee, wondered if OpenAI’s guardrails would be strong enough to protect Disney’s IP, recalling a widely publicized incident earlier this year when Fortnite users used AI to make the Darth Vader character swear. He also doubted the UGC would move the needle on engagement.

“I think what audiences want is high-quality stuff to watch with your family,” Tung said.

James Faris contributed reporting.




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