An editor for MrBeast has been referred to federal regulators for allegedly making insider bets on prediction market Kalshi.
The company announced on Wednesday that Artem Kaptur, the MrBeast employee, traded roughly $4,000 on markets related to Jimmy Donaldson’s videos. He had “near-perfect trading success” on bets with low odds by leveraging access to nonpublic information, Kalshi said.
The disclosure of the investigation’s results — a first for the company — comes amid prediction markets looking to gain a foothold in Hollywood. It’s largely viewed as an untapped source of monetization to drive engagement, and dealmakers are happy to take the money. The Golden Globes became the first program this year to feature real-time odds for each award when it partnered with Polymarket. “By pairing cultural debate with market-based probabilities, we’re giving fans a new, more interactive way to follow the show as it unfolds,” said Polymarket founder and CEO Shayne Coplan in a statement.
Wagers on MrBeast are among several obscure bets people can make on the platform. They include what Donaldson will say in his next video (billion? car? Saudi Arabia?), the duration of his next upload and if he’ll donate to East Carolina University athletics programs. The nature of these kinds of trades, critics say, make Kalshi highly vulnerable to insider trading and manipulation.
Kalshi said its surveillance systems flagged Artem’s statistically anomalous wins. At the same time, a number of users sent the company tips about unusual trading volume for those bets since the trading data is publicly available.
“We investigated and found that the trader was employed as an editor for the streamer’s show and likely had access to material non-public information connected to his trading,” the company said.
Artem was fined over $20,000 and suspended from Kalshi for over two years. The case was reported to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the regulatory agency that oversees prediction markets.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Beast Industries said the company has “no tolerance for this behavior” and that it has a “longstanding policy in place against employees using proprietary company information.” It added, “We’ve already initiated an independent investigation as part of our overall ongoing efforts to ensure the integrity of our workplace and trust with our global audiences.”
