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A federal regulator said he’s coming for insider traders in prediction markets

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Insider trading on prediction markets is illegal and could get perpetrators sued or land them in prison, the top enforcement lawyer at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Tuesday.

David Miller, who was named earlier this year as the enforcement chief for the federal finance regulator, said he will be hiring more staff to bring cases — and cut deals — with traders, including those active on new marketplaces like Kalshi and Polymarket.

“A myth has spread that insider trading is permissible, or even encouraged, in the prediction markets. Prominent individuals in finance, media, and particularly on social media, have contended that insider trading law does not apply to these markets,” Miller said. “These comments all suggest that insider trading is an important and acceptable part of the prediction market ecosystem. Not so.”

Miller’s remarks come amid explosive growth in prediction markets, which offer “event contracts” on things like sports and cryptocurrency price movements. Kalshi said more than $1 billion was staked on its markets related to the Super Bowl, and activity on Polymarket’s US platform jumped after it poured money into March Madness-related promotions.


David Miller

David Miller, the CFTC enforcement chief 

CFTC



The platforms’ characterization of sports betting as a financial swap has allowed millions of Americans, including in states like Texas and California that have yet to legalize sports betting, to put money at risk based on the outcomes of athletic events. The companies behind prediction markets have underscored the ways they’re different from traditional sportsbooks — for instance, by not banning high-performing users.

Speaking at an event at New York University’s School of Law, Miller said insider trading, including on prediction markets, will be one of his top five priorities.

The other four are market manipulation, including in markets for gasoline and other fuels; market abuse, like spoofing and “wash trading” that sends misleading price signals to market participants; fraud schemes like pig-butchering that impact retail investors; and “willful violations” of know-your-customer and anti-money laundering rules by entities the CFTC regulates.

He also addressed reports that the CFTC has lost many enforcement lawyers. Barron’s reported last month that every enforcement lawyer in its Chicago office, historically one of its largest, had left.

It’s “not true” to say that there’s no “cop on the beat” in commodities markets, Miller said. “We have sufficient personnel and resources. That being said, we are hiring.”

He also said the CFTC will soon release a new, simpler cooperation policy — superseding one released 13 months ago — to give entities the CFTC regulates the opportunity to avoid penalties if they fully cooperate.

Big bets on prediction markets

Miller’s remarks come after Kalshi and Polymarket, the two biggest prediction market companies in the US, have tried to emphasize their own focus on curbing insider trading.

Earlier this year, Kalshi announced that it had taken action against a California politician who wagered on his own election and an editor for MrBeast who traded on markets related to the production. Miller referred to the latter case in his remarks.

More recently, Polymarket announced a new hard line against misusing confidential information on both its international and regulated US platform. Previously, its founder Shayne Coplan had said the potential for people to trade based on insider information was “cool.”




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Alistair Barr, global tech editor of Business Insider, smiles at the camera while wearing a blue and white striped shirt.

A software CEO called me on the weekend recently with painful predictions. One is already coming true.

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On a recent weekend, I was playing with my new puppy when my phone rang. On the other end was the CEO of a major public software company with a warning: the industry was headed for painful financial reset.

I can’t say who this is because he doesn’t want to be identified, talking about sensitive topics — and he wanted to speak honestly, without the usual restrictions of his company’s public relations department. These are the times you really listen!

The topic was broadly about how AI is disrupting software and impacting the business models of companies that offer software as a service, or SaaS. I’ve covered this deeply for about a year, so this wasn’t a surprise. But one of his main messages was unexpected — and is already proving prescient.

This CEO said stock-based compensation, or SBC, is too high for SaaS companies now. Future revenue growth may not be as strong anymore, so SBC has to come down, and the financial discipline of the software industry has to improve. This year, SaaS companies will have to cut a lot of employees to adjust, he predicted.

I’ll explain this more in a second, but this reality is already beginning to play out. On Wednesday, a prominent software provider called Atlassian said it’s cutting 10% of its workforce. That followed Block’s 40% job cuts.

Both companies attributed some of these layoffs to the impact of generative AI. However, they both said they’re still hiring engineers.

“Five years from now, we’ll have more engineers working for our company than we do today,” Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brooks said in October, adding, “They will be more efficient.”

So what’s really happening here? Let’s go back to the weekend call I got from that other software CEO.

The rise of cheaper software

One broad message he shared is that generative AI is making it much easier to create software. This means the supply of software is skyrocketing, so according to the law of supply and demand, the value of software is falling.

This won’t mean the death of SaaS. In fact, cheaper and more prevalent software will be a huge boon to the tech industry because more people will use it. And smart software engineers will be needed to check that all this software is still working — and to understand deeply why it’s working or not.

“Engineering is changing, and great engineers are more important than ever,” said Boris Cherny, the head of Anthropic’s Claude Code, one of the main drivers of AI software disruption.

So, what’s likely happening is that generative AI is changing how software is made and maintained, and upending how software companies charge for their offerings.

For now, this could mean slower revenue growth for software providers. And this is what brings us back to the need for more financial discipline in the sector — and to the issue of stock-based compensation, or SBC.

Engineers and other tech talent are wooed by software companies with generous chunks of equity, known as restricted stock units, or RSUs. The awards are often valued based on the market price on the day they’re granted.

That works well when stocks are rising. But software stocks have taken a beating in recent months on concern about slowing growth and the potential impact of AI.

To keep the same level of stock compensation with the same size workforce, software companies will soon have to issue millions of extra shares. That will dilute existing shareholders and cut deeply into future earnings per share, one of the main measures of any company’s financial health.

“SBC (stock-based compensation) is coming up a lot more in our investor conversations,” Raimo Lenshow, a software analyst at Barclays, wrote in a recent research note.

He assessed software company valuations after the recent SaaS swoon in the market. Stocks looked more compelling, until he included SBC in the analysis.

“Adjusting for the large levels of stock-based compensation, the situation looks less rosy,” he warned.

So what can software companies do to address investor concerns about this? One solution is to cut jobs. That immediately reduces stock-based compensation costs, because companies don’t need to issue more new stock to those folks being let go (and future vesting ends for these people, too). This improves earnings, based on old-school GAAP measures — which is where investors like to go during times of stress in the tech industry.

This was a big driver of Atlassian’s job cuts this week, according to William Blair analysts.

“For Atlassian, it is important to moderate SBC lower as it has one of the highest levels of stock comp in the industry,” they wrote in a research note. “This has recently become a louder conversation as tech investors look for more profits from scaled businesses.”

This happened in 2022 as well, and Business Insider covered it a lot. Back then, the tech industry was coming down hard from a pandemic-era hiring binge. Growth was slowing and SBC looked completely unsustainable. Brutal financial discipline ensued and thousands of tech workers lost their jobs.

We’re in a similar moment now, according to that CEO who called me on the weekend. Before he got off the phone, he said financial discipline has to improve.

Sign up for BI’s Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.




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Dan DeFrancesco

Oil surged past $100 before coming back to Earth. Wall Street is bracing for what comes next.

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Stocks emerged unscathed from a wild day in the oil markets. Can it last?

The price of oil eclipsed the all-important $100-a-barrel benchmark, and everyone got really nervous. (Here’s a roundup of what a bunch of smart people said.)

But G7 countries pledged to release strategic oil reserves if needed, easing oil prices. President Donald Trump’s insistence the war is “very complete” was another boost. By market close, major indexes actually finished the day in the green as oil prices dropped.

At least, for now.

Wall Street vet Ed Yardeni, who is typically bullish, raised the chances of a stock meltdown from 20% to 35%. He also mentioned the dreaded s-word — stagflation — in a nod to the 1970s oil crisis that gave investors headaches.

Others are less fearful. Pantheon Macroeconomics said in a note to clients on Monday that fears over oil prices spiking inflation are overblown. The reason? The US labor market is too weak to support large price spikes.

“Higher inflation expectations will be meaningless if employers still hold the cards in wage setting and their customers retrench,” wrote Samuel Tombs, Pantheon’s chief US economist.

Energy economist Daniel Yergin is also taking an optimistic view. He believes the global economy is more resilient than we’re giving it credit for.

Ultimately, what matters most is how long this oil crisis lasts.

An extended closure of the Strait of Hormuz will be a lot harder for the markets and economy to shake off than just a one-off price spike.

“While market and survey-based inflation expectations can be sensitive to oil at high frequency, history suggests only marked and persistent spikes in the price of crude trigger persistent inflationary cycles,” BofA analysts wrote.

That’s not stopping some people from preparing for the worst.

Governments are offering suggestions to help people mitigate the impact of oil price spikes, from cutting out non-essential travel to offering more flexible work.

As useful as some of that advice might be, it’s not always actionable for Americans. With so many US cities suffering from subpar public transportation, avoiding the gas pump won’t be easy.




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Lloyd Lee

These robots are coming for the jobs no one wants — and could fill workforce gaps

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Backflipping robots make for splashy demos and viral videos, but Agility Robotics sees humanoid bots doing something simpler — solving an urgent global labor issue inside manufacturing plants.

The Oregon-based startup has so far deployed its humanoid robot, Digit, at Amazon, Schaeffler Group, and GXO, a logistics company. The startup announced in February that a few Digit robots would be deployed in Toyota’s massive manufacturing plant in Canada, marking yet another automaker betting on bipedal bots.

Daniel Diez, Agility’s chief business officer, told Business Insider that there’s a common thread at the companies he visits around the world. In Germany, Korea, Japan, or the US, manufacturers just don’t have enough people who want to work mundane, repetitive jobs.


Headshot of Daniel Diez, chief business officer of Agility Robotics

Daniel Diez, Agility Robotics’ chief business officer, said there’s a labor gap in manufacturing that will require automation.

Courtesy Agility Robotics



“It’s the same exact issue: Labor gaps in these highly repetitive physical tasks,” Diez said. “They simply can’t find the people to do this work.”

There is no shortage of manufacturing roles. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 400,000 job openings in the sector in the US as of December 2025.

In addition to vacancies, talent retention remains a top concern for manufacturers, according to a 2024 survey of more than 200 companies conducted by The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte.

Diez said there are “compounding effects” to the so-called labor gap.

A significant share of the manufacturing workforce is 55 and over, he said, meaning they’re approaching retirement. BLS’s Current Population Survey clocks the number at a little over 25%.

Add to that the Trump Administration’s push to bring onshore manufacturing back, which Diez said will only create more jobs and a greater need for automation.

“This re-shoring of manufacturing in the US is going to only occur through a combination of human employment and automation technology, like humans and robotics,” he said.

Automakers are notably bracing for this shifting tide. Tesla, Volkswagen, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, and Hyundai, among others, have made significant investments in humanoid robots with the prospect that they’ll work the assembly lines in the near future.


A humanoid robot stands

Atlas, Boston Dynamics’ humanoid robot, will be deployed in Hyundai’s factory in 2028.

Lloyd Lee/BI



Boston Dynamics in January unveiled a new iteration of Atlas, an all-electric humanoid, that the startup aims to deploy in Hyundai’s Georgia factory in a few years.

The company’s former CEO, Robert Playter, previously told Business Insider that Boston Dynamics is helping companies brace for population decline and increased manufacturing demand.

At Toyota Motor’s manufacturing plant in Ontario, the automaker is starting with three Digit bots that will do the simple task of moving totes, or plastic containers, from one spot to another.


Digit robot moves a tub

Courtesy Agility Robotics



There are robots out there that could execute much more complex tasks, while some industry insiders say humanoids, or bots with two legs and arms, are still years away from scaling. Part of the pitch for the bipedal form factor is easier integration into existing or older factories, Diez said.

“At this moment in time, it feels like an ideal solution for brownfield facilities,” he said, referring to underutilized industrial facilities that tend to have a baked-in layout. In other words, with humanoids, manufacturers can automate their properties without making significant changes to the factory layout and workflow.

Diez said that any industry with highly repetitive tasks is ripe for the adoption of humanoid robots. The industries Agility Robotics is seeing with the most “inbound” requests are coming from warehouse logistics, e-commerce fulfillment, automotive, and pharmaceutical manufacturing, he said.

“We’re not having to convince people that this is a technology need,” Diez said. “We have more than enough hand-raisers who are coming to us.”




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Fighting with Iran has spread to tankers at sea. Ships are coming under fire around the busy Strait of Hormuz.

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Deadly fighting in the Middle East has spread to tankers around the strategic Strait of Hormuz, with multiple ships coming under fire on Sunday, opening up a new front in the conflict.

The Palau-flagged oil tanker Skylight (IMO 9330020) was “targeted” a few miles north of the Khasab port in Oman, the country’s Maritime Security Center said, adding that the 20-person crew was evacuated. At least four people were injured.

An official with Operation Aspides, the European Union’s counter-Houthi mission, told Business Insider that Omani authorities carried out the rescue operations.

The US Treasury Department sanctioned Skylight and more than two dozen other “shadow fleet vessels” in December for illegally moving Iranian oil.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Gulf Cooperation Council said it condemned the “brutal Iranian attacks” targeting the Duqm port in Oman and “an oil tanker off its coast.”

The incident marked the first time that a ship had come under fire since the US and Israel began a strike campaign against Iran on Saturday morning. Tehran has retaliated by launching missiles and drones across the Middle East.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, an element of the Royal Navy, has reported at least two additional attacks off the coast of Oman. Two vessels were struck by an “unknown projectile,” it said.


A cargo ship is pictured off the coast of the city of Fujairah, in the Strait of Hormuz in the northern Emirate on February 25, 2026.

Multiple ships came under attack near the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday.

Photo by Giuseppe CACACE/AFP via Getty Images



Iran has a history of carrying out attacks against ships near the Strait of Hormuz, including with its Shahed one-way attack drones, which have gained notoriety as Russia uses them extensively in Ukraine. Its proxies have also attacked commercial vessels.

The incidents underscore the new risk to shipping near the Strait of Hormuz. The narrow body of water between Iran and Oman is one of the world’s most important global trade routes, with about 20% of the world’s daily oil supply passing through it.

On Saturday, an Operation Aspides official said that ships had received radio transmissions from the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) stating that vessels were barred from entering the Strait of Hormuz.

However, the UKMTO said on Sunday that “no official closure of the Strait of Hormuz has been formally communicated to the maritime industry through recognized maritime safety channels.”

It said that the maritime safety situation in the region remained “highly volatile,” with the ongoing fighting creating an “elevated threat to commercial shipping.” Britain warned that vessels could face military miscalculation and electronic interference.

Some vessels are avoiding the Straight of Hormuz, with international shipping companies suspending transits until further notice. Marine traffic trackers showed a significant drop in traffic through the strait after the US and Israeli strikes began on Saturday.

Iran previously threatened to shut the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for any attacks or moves it deemed hostile by the US. A full blockade, or even a sufficiently dangerous environment to deter enough ships from traveling through, could send oil prices soaring.

Israel and Iran continued to trade strikes into Sunday. Retaliatory fire from Tehran has targeted more than half a dozen other Middle East countries, including bases hosting US troops across the region.




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Taylor Rains

Jet2 barred 2 passengers after an in-flight brawl — and it’s coming for their wallets

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“Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday” — except when it ends in a midair brawl.

The British budget carrier has issued lifetime bans to two passengers after a flight from Turkey to England diverted to Belgium on Thursday following a fight on board, the airline told multiple news outlets.

It’s unclear what caused the altercation, but videos circulating on social media show passengers screaming and pushing as cabin crew and others attempted to break it up. The plane later continued to the UK after police removed the two passengers.

Jet2 said in a statement that the pair exhibited “appalling behavior” and that it would “vigorously pursue them” to recoup the costs of the diversion.

Diversions aren’t cheap: they can cost airlines tens of thousands of dollars in fuel, labor, and airport fees. Any hotel and transportation costs also add up.

“As a family-friendly airline, we take a zero-tolerance approach to disruptive passenger behaviour, and we are very sorry that other customers and our colleagues on board had to experience this too,” the airline said.

Jet2 has a history of chasing down unruly passengers. In 2019, the airline barred a disruptive traveler and billed her about $115,000 after she attempted to open an exit door midair, prompting a diversion escorted by military jets. In 2022, two brothers who fought on board another Jet2 flight forced a diversion and were later charged about $68,000 and issued lifetime bans.

Other airlines have taken similar approaches, seeking reimbursement from passengers whose behavior disrupted flights.

Budget competitor Ryanair, for example, last year filed a lawsuit seeking about $18,000 from a passenger it described as disruptive after a diversion to Portugal in April 2024 left 160 people needing overnight accommodation.

Unruly passenger incidents surged during the pandemic, when mask mandates fueled confrontations between travelers and airline staff.

Data from the Federal Aviation Administration shows there were nearly 6,000 reports on US airlines in 2021 — up about 500% from roughly 1,000 the year before.

Reports fell to about 2,500 in 2022 and further to roughly 1,600 in 2025, though they still remain well above pre-pandemic levels. There have been 126 reports so far in 2026.

The FAA maintains a zero-tolerance policy and has issued more than $20 million in civil fines since 2020 (these are separate from the money airlines can collect through lawsuits).

In more extreme cases — such as physical assaults on crew — passengers have faced criminal prosecution, including by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, resulting in larger fines and jail time.




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Author of viral ‘Something Big is Coming’ essay says AI helped him write it — and that proves his point

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The author of the viral essay warning about impending AI disruption says he couldn’t wait any longer to get the word out.

“Let’s say there is just a 20% chance of it happening, which is maybe realistic, maybe underselling it,” Matt Shumer, GP of Shumer Capital, said during an interview with Business Insider. “Even if there is a 20% chance of this happening, people deserve to know and have time to prepare.”

The people in tech who previously warned about AI’s impact were mostly speaking to others in the industry, he said. Shumer said he wanted something that spoke to his dad, a lawyer who is just a few years from retirement and is hopeful he can run out the clock on the potential massive change on the horizon.

He’s certainly found an audience.

His essay, titled “Something Big is Coming,” has been viewed over 60 million times on X alone, as of Wednesday evening. In the nearly 5,000-word post, Shumer wrote that AI’s disruption to people’s lives could be “much bigger” than COVID — a comparison that has drawn some pushback online. Shumer’s past controversy over an open-source model he promoted in 2024 has also come under scrutiny, after AI researchers discovered the model didn’t live up to his performance claims. He previously apologized, saying “I got ahead of myself when I announced this project.”

In his essay, Shumer also wrote that what he’s seeing in tech is likely what awaits other industries.

“I don’t know that this is coming for sure, but I think a lot of us in tech really see this progress, and it’s frankly dizzying, and there’s a good chance of this,” he said. “And the more people know, the better.”

Shumer is not alone in his fears about the future.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who is known for writing eyebrow-raising essays of his own, has said that up to half of all entry-level, white-collar jobs may be wiped out in the next one to five years. xAI CEO Elon Musk has called AI a “supersonic tsunami” that will quickly eliminate jobs that don’t involve physical labor.

Shumer said even he is unsettled about the prospects of AI. After all, he’s 26 and still near the beginning years of his career. In 2020, he cofounded OthersideAI, which later spawned HyperWrite, an AI-assisted writing tool.

“I don’t know how many more years of my career there will be if this all actually comes to pass,” he told Business Insider. “So, it’s frankly a little confusing and terrifying for someone like me.”

Part of the issue is that AI is unlikely to affect all industries in the same way or at the same time, making career advice highly dependent on a person’s specific situation.

“If you’re a nurse, you’re probably going to be fine for quite some time,” he told Business Insider, adding that junior associates at law school face significantly more risk because many of the introductory-type tasks they do are already being targeted by AI companies.

In his essay, Shumer wrote that his realization of what’s in store came after his experience with OpenAI’s GPT-5.3-Codex, which was released last week. In its release notes, OpenAI said GPT-5.3-Codex was its “first model that was instrumental in creating itself.” Shumer wrote that AI is now capable of doing his technical work.

As for the other tasks, Shumer has been quite open about how AI helped him write his viral essay about AI. He said he spent hours working with Claude to craft his message.

“It did help a lot,” he told TBPN on Wednesday, “and I think that’s kind of the point.”

It’s why Shumer’s message to everyone who turned away from AI, perhaps after a clunky experience with an early version of ChatGPT years ago, is that they should seize the opportunity to see the breadth of what the technology can do now.

“If you look back 10 years from now and this did come to pass, you’ll be very glad you did,” he told Business Insider.




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Katie Notopoulos

Coming off your parents’ family phone plan doesn’t make you an adult

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Before you yell at me, let me first say that I am not, and have never been, on my parents’ cellphone plan. (I didn’t get a cellphone until I was already an adult.) But I’ve long been jealous of my friends who are still on their parents’ plans — it just makes good sense!

Yahoo News recently asked whether staying on your parents’ phone plan as a 40-year-old makes you “a harmless mooch or a generational failure?”

The reporter, Fortesa Latifi, admits that she and her husband were still on their parents’ plans until recently, and that many others are like her, some even with children of their own, and quite a few feel embarrassed about it.

There are significant savings to be had by joining a family plan. For example, right now, at T-Mobile, its unlimited talk, text, and data plan costs $85 for an individual plan. For a family of four, the same plan is around $42 per person.

Why are family plans so much cheaper per line? It’s not that there are a lot more costs to operate cell service if a phone number isn’t connected to a family plan. It’s all about how advantageous it is for the carrier to sell family plans.

For one thing, if you’re part of a family plan, you’re less likely to shop around and switch carriers. It’s also easier on the carrier’s customer service: They only have to mail bills, process credit cards each month, and all that jazz for one person instead of several. (Verizon and T-Mobile didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on their pricing.)

Last year, AT&T added a new feature that makes it easier to automatically split the bill for people who share a friends-and-family account. The person whose name is on the bill is still ultimately responsible for the full amount, so enter into this kind of arrangement only with people you really trust.

AT&T pointed me to a news story published last year that quoted an exec saying 85% of their customers were on a multi-line plan. Think about that — that means if you actually are one of the suckers who is paying for a single line, you’re in the vast minority.

There’s no honor in paying more to have the bill in your own name — you’re just paying more for the same services. Does your dignity and independence win out here, or does T-Mobile? Hmm?

Does having your own cellphone line make you an adult?

AT&T released its own study (so take it with a grain of salt) that said that 76% of Americans think that coming off a parent’s cellphone plan is one of the “ultimate signs” of becoming an adult.

Sure, at first glance, this seems like a rite of passage into financial independence from your parents.

Is it a smart financial choice?

Consider that the T-Mobile plan — even if you paid back your mom each month for your portion of the phone bill, you’d be saving about $42.50 a month compared to the same service on an individual plan. That’s $5,100 over a decade if you did it from age 22 to 32.

In fact, I’d say that part of becoming an adult is being smart about spending habits and money. And sticking to a family plan is the obviously wise choice.

If you choose to remove yourself from a family plan, you’re just giving the cellphone carriers twice as much — and I see little glory or pride in that.

Look, of course, this all depends on your relationship with your family. You may not want to have this financial tie to them, and you may be in a better financial situation than your parents. But bundling phone lines with other people, whether they’re your family or just some friends, makes a lot of financial sense.

Millennials, it’s time to take pride in one smart financial decision that our generation is making. Embrace it! Be proud to be on a family plan!




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