A New York Times investigation published Sunday found that CFTC career officials who raised concerns about Polymarket, Crypto.com and a Gemini affiliate were pushed out of the agency. The story, by reporters Sharon LaFraniere and David Yaffe-Bellany, draws on agency records and interviews with more than 30 former and current staff members and company officials. According to the NYT, three firms sit at the center of the reporting: Polymarket, Crypto.com and Gemini affiliate Gemini Titan, each needing CFTC sign-off for their prediction market ambitions and each having direct ties to the president's family.
Polymarket received an investment from 1789 Capital, the venture firm partly owned by Donald Trump Jr, who also serves as an unpaid adviser to the firm. Crypto.com is a business partner of Trump Media & Technology Group, with which it struck an exclusive deal last October to launch "Truth Predict" on Truth Social, President Trump's bespoke social media site. Gemini's founders, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, back American Bitcoin, the crypto firm co-founded by Eric Trump. Senior career officials told the NYT they worried about Crypto.com treating small bettors fairly, that Polymarket lacked adequate fraud protections, and that Gemini Titan had not completed the required review to open for business.
Then-acting CFTC Chair Caroline Pham and her senior counsel Brigitte Weyls intervened on each firm, according to the report. By Christmas, two officials who had raised questions were placed on leave, barred from the office and put under internal investigation. Three others who had enforced laws involving cryptocurrencies allegedly met the same fate, with none being told what they had done wrong. Staff "took away a clear message," current and former employees told the paper: "Don't cause trouble for those industries." Pham left the chair's office in December to join MoonPay, a crypto company whose own prediction market push runs through an "exclusive" partnership with Polymarket. Weyls started in March as general counsel for Gemini Titan, the same company whose application she had pushed through.
The agency's broader enforcement record has plummeted compared to earlier administrations. According to the NYT, the CFTC has announced just two cases involving digital assets under the second Trump administration, both against individual operators, compared with more than 80 during the Biden years and more than two dozen during Trump's first term. The commission has filed a single case on prediction markets, against the U.S. Special Forces soldier accused of using classified information to bet on Polymarket about the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The CFTC also dropped at least five other crypto investigations, including a late-stage probe of a major exchange.
The White House pushed back on the report's findings, with spokesman Davis Ingle telling the NYT that "President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public" and "there are no conflicts of interest." Chairman Glenn "GT" Thompson (R-Pa.) and Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-Minn.) wrote in a joint letter that the CFTC will be "best served by a full five-member commission," delivering "better regulations, more durable rules, and more sensitivity to the divergent views of key derivatives market stakeholders." Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called the report "bombshell reporting about a systemic culture of crypto and prediction market corruption at CFTC" and urged Congress to slow down on crypto legislation. Amanda Fischer of Better Markets argued the findings should reshape the debate over the CLARITY Act, the crypto market structure bill that would hand the CFTC sweeping new authority over spot digital commodity markets.
