Donald Trump is facing fresh accusations of using the power of the presidency to benefit his family business interests in online betting and digital assets, as a key US financial regulator in Washington sharply scales back oversight of crypto and prediction markets. The claims centre on Donald Trump's second term in the White House and his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, whose growing footprint in the sector coincides with a dramatic retreat in enforcement by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
For context, the scrutiny follows a period in which the Trump family has quietly entrenched itself in two of the fastest‑growing corners of finance: cryptocurrencies and online prediction markets, where users bet on everything from elections to sports results.
According to reporting by the New York Times, those ventures have generated billions in new wealth for the family, just as the federal agency responsible for policing much of that activity has been hollowed out from within. Nothing has been independently confirmed beyond what appears in those reports, so all specific allegations should still be treated with some caution.
The basic shape of the story is straightforward enough, even if the details are dizzying. Trump Media & Technology Group, the president's publicly traded media company, announced an 'exclusive prediction market venture' with Crypto.com last October. At the same time, Don Jr has emerged as both an investor in Polymarket through his investment firm 1789 Capital and an adviser to both Polymarket and Kalshi, another prediction market platform.
Against that backdrop, the CFTC's shift in posture is hard to miss. The agency, a relatively small but powerful regulator of derivatives, digital assets, and prediction markets, is now being run by a single commissioner, Michael S Selig, a 36‑year‑old former corporate lawyer with ties to crypto firms and prediction markets. Donald Trump appointed Selig as chair in December and has left all four other commissioner seats empty, effectively scrapping the traditional internal checks that normally constrain the chair's authority.
Former officials describe the change as unprecedented in modern memory. 'I've been through an almost equal number of Republican and Democratic administrations, and there was always a belief you had to have strong enforcement,' Gretchen Lowe, a veteran CFTC official who retired last year from a top enforcement post, told the Times. 'This is really the first time that politics have affected the C.F.T.C. in such a dramatic way.'
Donald Trump, Crypto Wealth And A Quiet Enforcement Retreat
The numbers help explain why this matters. In the 16 months since Donald Trump returned to the White House, the CFTC has brought just two cases involving digital currencies and one involving prediction markets, all of them targeting individual operators rather than major tech players. During that period, the agency has, according to former staff and internal documents cited by the Times, abandoned at least five investigations into crypto firms and pushed out senior career officials engaged in crypto enforcement.
Inside the building, those moves were not viewed as a bureaucratic reshuffle. 'There was a sustained effort to oust enforcement staff who worked on some of the agency's more significant cryptocurrency matters,' Andrew Rodgers, a former CFTC trial attorney who resigned last year, told the paper. His account, like others, paints a picture of professionals sidelined after clashing with leadership over how aggressively to police market abuses.
While Michael Selig now holds the reins, the transformation did not begin with him. His predecessor, Caroline Pham, is said to have undermined the CFTC's oversight role in ways that benefited powerful industry players linked to the Trump family. The Times reports that Pham intervened when staff raised concerns about Crypto.com, which has a close business partnership with Trump Media.
Officials had questioned whether large trading firms were being given an undisclosed edge over ordinary sports bettors. Instead of probing deeper, Pham allegedly pressed staff to drop the matter and later excluded them from meetings with the company.
Accusations Of Favouritism Around Polymarket And Prediction Markets
The most pointed allegations orbit Polymarket, the online betting platform that lets users wager on real‑world events. Under the Biden administration in 2022, Polymarket paid a $1.4 million fine to the CFTC for taking bets from Americans without the agency's permission. That appeared to set a tougher tone. Yet in recent months, the trajectory has been very different.
Polymarket has asked the CFTC to allow it to use intermediaries for bets, a technical change that experts say could make it easier to conceal insider trading. Less than two weeks after making that request, the company announced a 'strategic investment' from 1789 Capital, which is partly owned by Don Jr, and named him an unpaid adviser. Polymarket's value, the Times reports, has surged nearly tenfold in eight months to $9.6 billion after the 1789 investment.
Inside the CFTC, some officials tried to push back. During a meeting with Polymarket last November, Rahul Varma, the acting director of market oversight, and Rachel Berdansky, the deputy compliance director, challenged the strength of the company's anti‑fraud safeguards. Weeks later, Berdansky was placed on administrative leave and put under investigation. She has since retired, and Varma has also been forced out, according to people familiar with the matter.
Caroline Pham left the agency in January and promptly resurfaced at a crypto firm that works with Polymarket, underscoring the revolving‑door concerns that have haunted US regulators for years. Critics argue that, in this case, the door is spinning faster and closer to the Trump business orbit than usual.
For all the heat around Donald Trump, one thing is notably absent: a detailed public defence from those at the centre of the story. The CFTC, the White House, the Trump Organization, Polymarket, and Crypto.com have yet to comment on these fresh allegations.
Without those answers on the record, much of what is known still comes from former insiders and unnamed officials. Until more documents emerge or formal investigations begin, the suggestion that an entire regulatory agency has been bent to the financial priorities of a sitting president and his family remains, however plausible it may look, an allegation rather than a fact.
IBTimes UK has reached out to President Donald Trump's reps for comments.
