Pump.Fun's Bounties Platform Is a Black Hole of Circular Grifting The crypto platform claims you can "pay anyone to do anything," from quitting a job on camera to getting a memecoin-themed tattoo. But it mostly seems like people trying to scam each other. Would you run into a crowded university lecture hall, fart into a megaphone, and bellow "fartcoin" at the top of your lungs? If so--and should you have the means to document this stunt on video, preferably capturing the audience's reaction--you may claim a reward of approximately $1,000 . The money, of course, will be dispensed in fartcoin, a meme cryptocurrency trading at a little over 10 cents at time of publication, with a total market capitalization hovering around $130 million. Such is the promise of Pump.Fun GO, a new feature on Pump.Fun, one of the fastest-growing crypto businesses of the past few years.

Prediction Market Philosophers Got What They Wanted. Getting the future right is now big business. But at a festival in the Bay Area, forecasters worry that sports markets could take the whole industry down. On June 11, Kalshi released a buzzy ad featuring noted New York Knicks fan Timothée Chalamet. It was a zeitgeist-capturing moment for prediction markets, akin to the 2022 Super Bowl, when seemingly every commercial featured a celebrity shilling crypto.

When agents trade in a Duality-based Cost Function prediction market, they collectively implement the learning algorithm Follow-The-Regularized-Leader [Abernethy et al., 2013]. We ask whether other learning algorithms could be used to inspire the design of prediction markets. By decomposing and modifying the Duality-based Cost Function Market Maker's (DCFMM) pricing mechanism, we propose a new prediction market, called the Smooth Quadratic Prediction Market, the incentivizes agents to collectively implement general steepest gradient descent. Relative to the DCFMM, the Smooth Quadratic Prediction Market has a better worst-case monetary loss for AD securities while preserving axiom guarantees such as the existence of instantaneous price, information incorporation, expressiveness, no arbitrage, and a form of incentive compatibility. To motivate the application of the Smooth Quadratic Prediction Market, we independently examine agents' trading behavior under two realistic constraints: bounded budgets and buy-only securities. Finally, we provide an introductory analysis of an approach to facilitate adaptive liquidity using the Smooth Quadratic Prediction Market. Our results suggest future designs where the price update rule is separate from the fee structure, yet guarantees are preserved.

When agents trade in a Duality-based Cost Function prediction market, they collectively implement the learning algorithm Follow-The-Regularized-Leader [Abernethy et al., 2013]. We ask whether other learning algorithms could be used to inspire the design of prediction markets. By decomposing and modifying the Duality-based Cost Function Market Maker's (DCFMM) pricing mechanism, we propose a new prediction market, called the Smooth Quadratic Prediction Market, the incentivizes agents to collectively implement general steepest gradient descent. Relative to the DCFMM, the Smooth Quadratic Prediction Market has a better worst-case monetary loss for AD securities while preserving axiom guarantees such as the existence of instantaneous price, information incorporation, expressiveness, no arbitrage, and a form of incentive compatibility. To motivate the application of the Smooth Quadratic Prediction Market, we independently examine agents' trading behavior under two realistic constraints: bounded budgets and buy-only securities. Finally, we provide an introductory analysis of an approach to facilitate adaptive liquidity using the Smooth Quadratic Prediction Market. Our results suggest future designs where the price update rule is separate from the fee structure, yet guarantees are preserved.

Americans Are Trading Billions of Dollars on Polymarket's Banned Offshore Platform It's the first estimate of how many Americans are sneaking onto Polymarket's banned crypto-based platform. Approximately 30 percent of the trading volume on Polymarket comes from the United States, according to a new study--an eye-popping number, considering that none of those people are legally allowed to use the crypto -based platform. The study, conducted by Rutgers University statistician Harry Crane, estimated that people in the US funneled between $10.6 to $26.7 billion through Polymarket. To track the platform's activity, Crane looked at what appeared to be US-based trades on offshore prediction market platforms from May 2025 to the end of April 2026. He found that many of the highest-volume markets on Polymarket were US-centric, including those covering US elections and sporting events.

According to federal prosecutors, Michele Spagnuolo made more than $1 million on the prediction market platform using confidential information about Google Search traffic. A Google security engineer has been charged with crimes stemming from allegedly placing trades on Polymarket using confidential internal information from the tech giant. Michele Spagnuolo, a 36-year-old Italian citizen, was arrested this morning in New York, as first reported by ABC News. Spagnuolo is charged with one count each of commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. He has worked at Google since 2014 and was based out of the company's Zurich, Switzerland, offices.

CFTC chairman Michael Selig sat down with WIRED to discuss how the agency scours Polymarket and other prediction markets for illegal activity. For most of the past year, it looked like prediction markets had kicked off a new golden age of fraud. On Polymarket, traders raked in fortunes from suspiciously timed bets on geopolitical events like the raid on Venezuela and the Iran War. It wasn't clear whether the US government would bother pursuing some of the most flagrant bad actors, since Polymarket's crypto-based platform was technically offshore and not regulated or licensed within the country. Now, however, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees prediction markets, wants you to know that it's watching very, very closely.

Truth Predict was supposed to be the Trump family's biggest leap yet into prediction markets. Now it's looking more like a tiptoe. The odds that the Trump family will launch a full-fledged prediction market product this year just plummeted. Last year, the Trump Media and Technology Group announced Truth Predict, a partnership with the cryptocurrency company Crypto.com. The initial announcement touted Truth Predict as a "new product" that would allow Truth Social users to make trades on sports, inflation, elections, and more through an "embedded" prediction market service.

A new executive order seen by WIRED prohibits New York state employees from using insider knowledge to enrich themselves with prediction market bets. New York has banned state employees from using insider information to trade on prediction markets . In an executive order signed today and viewed by WIRED, Governor Kathy Hochul forbade the state's government workforce from using "any nonpublic information obtained in the course of their official duties" to participate on prediction market platforms, or to help others profit using those services. "Getting rich by betting on inside information is corruption, plain and simple," Hochul said in a statement provided to WIRED. "Our actions will ensure that public servants work for the people they represent, not their own personal enrichment. While Donald Trump and DC Republicans turn a blind eye to the ethical Wild West they've created, New York is stepping up to lead by example and stamp out insider trading."

Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket are booming, and so is a fight among regulators, lawmakers, and advocates over their legality. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who currently serves as an advisor to the American Gaming Association, has criticized prediction markets. The political fight in the US over the future of prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi has escalated into a full-blown war, and battle lines aren't being neatly drawn along party lines. Instead, conservative Mormons have aligned themselves with Las Vegas bigwigs and MAGA royalty is siding with liberal Democrat lobbyists. One side argues that the platforms are breaking the law by operating as shadow casinos.