House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) sent letters on September 29 to Hyperliquid Labs, Crypto.com and Aristotle Exchange, the company behind PredictIt, requesting documents on how each platform verifies users and detects trades placed on nonpublic information. The three companies have until October 13 to respond, widening a probe that began in May with Polymarket and Kalshi.
What the committee wants
The letters seek know-your-customer and geographic-restriction policies, procedures for flagging and reporting suspicious trades, and records tied to event contracts on Federal Reserve decisions, elections and geopolitical outcomes. Comer framed the requests as a question of legal obligation, saying that “some bad actors have exploited the platforms to make thousands of dollars by placing bets based on nonpublic information,” and that the committee is examining whether the platforms are doing enough to prevent insider trading before it happens.
The $1.1 billion short
The Hyperliquid letter centers on a trade Comer described as “precisely timed to a nonpublic government decision.” Citing an Investing.com analysis, the committee points to a leveraged short of about $1.1 billion across Bitcoin and Ether perpetual contracts opened roughly 30 hours before President Donald Trump announced China tariffs in October 2025, then closed shortly after for more than $150 million in profit. Comer wrote that the position was executed on a platform with “apparently no identity verification or mechanism to refer the responsible party to U.S. law enforcement,” and that it “mirrors a pattern of insider trading the Committee is investigating,” stopping short of alleging the trader held nonpublic information. Hyperliquid, which added HYPE staking earlier this year, had not publicly responded to the request.
A widening inquiry
The expansion follows the committee’s May 22 letters to Polymarket and Kalshi, which have so far yielded nearly 1,000 documents and five briefings. The investigation gained urgency after the April indictment of Army Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who prosecutors say used classified information about Operation Absolute Resolve, the U.S. operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, to place Polymarket bets that returned more than $409,000. Comer’s letter to Crypto.com separately asks about trading by employees with access to confidential information and about the company’s North American derivatives business.
The requests do not allege wrongdoing by any platform. They mark the broadest congressional demand to date for prediction markets and crypto derivatives exchanges to document how they police traders who may act on inside knowledge, with the October 13 deadline giving the three companies roughly two weeks to respond.
