A MrBeast Employee Got Fined for Insider Trading. On a Prediction Market. Welcome to 2026.

Prediction market platform Kalshi made its first public enforcement move Wednesday since announcing a crackdown on insider trading. Kalshi fined MrBeast video editor Artem Kaptur more than $20,000 and suspended him from the platform for two years for trading roughly $4,000 on markets tied to MrBeast's videos. The company also reported Kaptur to federal regulators.

In a separate case, former California gubernatorial candidate Kyle Langford was fined about $2,250 for literally betting on himself while running for governor last year. The idea is that Langford was a “direct decision maker” in the market, which prohibited him from placing a wager on the outcome. For example, he could have placed a bet that he would lose the election, and then ended his run, ensuring that he won the bet. Kalshi banned Langford for five years,

Why this matters beyond the headlines

Prediction markets have exploded in popularity over the past year, letting users bet real money on everything from election outcomes to YouTube video performance. But as these platforms grow, they're running into a problem traditional financial markets solved decades ago: what counts as insider trading, and who qualifies as an insider? 

It’s not just Kalshi, Polymarket is experiencing similar issues. In January, a trader made $400,000 in profit on Polymarket by placing a successful bet on the capture of the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro before any public information about the capture had been released. Earlier this month, Israeli authorities arrested several people and charged two individuals suspected of using classified information to make bets about imminent military operations in Iran on Polymarket.

In the stock market, the rules are well established: if you work at a company and trade on nonpublic information, that's illegal. But prediction markets are new enough that the boundaries are still being drawn. Is a video editor who knows what MrBeast is filming the equivalent of a corporate insider? Is a political candidate betting on his own race the same as a CEO buying his own stock before an earnings beat? Kalshi is trying to answer those questions proactively, but the fact that these cases exist at all shows how quickly prediction markets are outgrowing their regulatory framework.

Sources: Kalshi, CNBC, Bloomberg, NPR