Comer presses Crypto.com, Hyperliquid and PredictIt on identity checks and suspicious trades

The Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer, is widening his net on a probe into trading on prediction market platforms.He is now asking Crypto.com, Hyperliquid and PredictIt for records on how they verify users and detect suspicious activity.In letters sent Tuesday, Comer asked the companies to provide more details on the tools they use to flag trades that could involve nonpublic information and to list referrals they've made to regulators or law enforcement over the past two and a half years.Each letter was slightly different and went beyond just general policies. Comer asked Crypto.com whether employees of any of its affiliates traded on contracts involving corporate decisions they knew about before becoming public information, like token listings or custody decisions.He also asked the exchange to provide records on any government officials who may have traded on contracts linked to crypto regulations or the exchange's own regulatory status.The Hyperliquid letter focuses more on reports of a large leveraged short position placed before a major U.S. announcement on tariffs last October. Comer wanted to know how the platform identifies account holders and what its protocols are for referring suspicious trades to U.S. authorities.For PredictIt, a prediction market platform owned by Aristotle Exchange, Comer also sought information on trades tied to elections, nominations, and other government actions involving any current or former officials."As online prediction platforms grow and become more mainstream, some bad actors have exploited the platforms to make thousands of dollars by placing bets based on nonpublic information," Comer said in a statement.The Block reached out to the three companies listed above for comment but did not receive a reply by the time of publication.The latest requests extend a probe Comer launched back in May with letters to top prediction market players Kalshi and Polymarket. The committee said it has since received nearly 1,000 documents and multiple briefings from those companies' representatives.Comer said the goal of the campaign is to assess the extent of insider trading to potentially enact legislation that would bar prediction market trading by government officials.