The Fox News Rundown Extra: Innovation or Insider Trading? Weighing the Rise and Risks of Polymarket
Jan 17, 2026
Chris Giancarlo, former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and a member of Polymarket's advisory board, dives deep into the world of prediction markets. He explains how platforms like Polymarket function as modern betting tools predicting real-world outcomes, including politics. Giancarlo discusses the ethics of insider information, particularly around a controversial $400,000 bet on Nicolás Maduro’s capture. He also highlights the need for smart regulation as these innovative markets expand in the U.S., stressing their potential societal value.
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Real-Time Wisdom Of Crowds
- Prediction markets aggregate motivated, paid participants to produce fast, accurate probability estimates.
- Chris Giancarlo says Polymarket acts like a real-time 'weather report' for future events by incentivizing information gathering.
Users Create Peer-To-Peer Markets
- Polymarket markets are user-created and peer-to-peer, so there's no central bookie in the international model.
- Giancarlo highlights this decentralization as a key efficiency advantage over house-driven platforms.
Maduro Bet Sparks Insider Concerns
- Someone placed a Maduro-out bet hours before the U.S. operation and reportedly won big, raising insider-trading alarms.
- Giancarlo stresses that if someone violated a duty to an employer, the individual — not the platform — would be culpable.