US House Committee Expands Prediction-Market Probe to Hyperliquid

A House committee is asking Hyperliquid Labs, Crypto.com and the company that owns PredictIt for records on user identities, suspicious trades and their controls against insider trading.

The request from House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer turns a prediction-market inquiry into a broader look at how several popular platforms identify users, flag unusual activity and refer possible wrongdoing to authorities. It is still an inquiry, not a finding that any company or trader broke the law.

What Hyperliquid is being asked

The letters address each company's chief executive and seek an explanation of how platforms verify customers. They also ask what systems are used to catch and report trades that may reflect nonpublic information.

For Hyperliquid, the committee is seeking records on:

• Identity-verification procedures
• Geographic controls
• Systems for flagging anomalous trading
• Suspicious activity connected to Federal Reserve decisions, elections and geopolitical events
• Internal restrictions that would stop employees with confidential information from trading on related contracts

That last point is a useful distinction. Prediction markets are meant to let people trade on future events, but an employee who already knows part of the answer sits in a different position from an ordinary participant. A credible platform needs a way to block that person, or at least make the attempt visible to regulators.

The records requests cover the period from January 2024. Companies have until October 13 to respond.

The short position at the centre of the inquiry

Comer's letter cites a leveraged short linked to an October 2025 presidential tariff announcement that had not been made public when the position was opened. Public blockchain data, showed roughly $1.1 billion in leveraged Bitcoin and Ether shorts opened about 30 hours before the announcement. The trader later closed the positions for more than $150 million.

Unchained Crypto's account described a different reported profit and timing, saying a Hyperliquid trader made about $192 million after President Donald Trump announced 100% tariffs on Chinese imports. It also reported that a pseudonymous onchain investigator linked former BitForex CEO Garrett Jin to the position. Jin denied any ties to Trump or insider trading.

The figures and timing do not fully line up across the reports, so the safest conclusion is narrower: the committee has cited the suspiciously timed trade as a transaction it wants Hyperliquid to explain. It has not established that the trader possessed nonpublic government information.

Why Hyperliquid now sits inside a larger inquiry

Hyperliquid launched its own event contracts in May through the HIP-4 upgrade. Later that month, it extended them to offchain events such as inflation data and Federal Reserve decisions. That put the platform into the same wider debate as established prediction venues, even though its market structure is different.

Comer opened the broader probe on May 22 with letters to Kalshi and Polymarket. Those inquiries cited a New York Times investigation that found more than 80 Polymarket users had placed suspiciously timed bets, including wagers before U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. The sources reviewed for this article did not include the original New York Times report.

The Kalshi and Polymarket inquiries remain active. The companies have supplied the committee with nearly 1,000 documents and given five briefings.

The next test is disclosure, not a verdict

Comer has not alleged that the October short was insider trading as an established fact. The committee is instead asking whether prediction platforms have enough information and controls to identify suspicious activity before it happens.

The responses due by October 13 should clarify how Hyperliquid verifies users, what it can see about customers, and what happens when trades cluster shortly before a major announcement. Those answers will matter more than the committee's choice of examples. A prompt that sounds obvious to everyone else can carry extra weight when the platform lets people stake money on it.

The separate requests to Crypto.com and PredictIt's owner Aristotle Exchange show that lawmakers are not treating insider-trading controls as a problem unique to one crypto platform. They are asking the same basic question across prediction markets: can these businesses know who is trading, recognise a pattern that deserves scrutiny, and hand the right information to the authorities?