House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer sent letters on September 29, 2026 to the chief executives of Crypto.com, Hyperliquid Labs, and Aristotle Exchange, the owner of PredictIt, demanding documents on how each platform verifies user identities and catches insider trading. The letters were confirmed by the committee's own release and reported by CoinMarketCap, which flagged the escalation the same day.
This is the second wave of a probe that started in May 2026 with Kalshi and Polymarket. The committee says those two platforms have already turned over nearly 1,000 documents across five briefings. Comer is now widening the same questions to venues where crypto and event contracts overlap.
The core allegation
The committee's stated concern is that government employees, contractors, and other insiders may have placed bets using nonpublic or classified information. In the release, Comer put it plainly: "some bad actors have exploited the platforms to make thousands of dollars by placing bets based on nonpublic information."
The letters are not identical. According to The Block, each company got a tailored set of questions:
- Crypto.com was asked whether its own employees traded on contracts tied to corporate decisions before those decisions became public, such as token listings or custody changes. Comer also requested records on any government officials who may have traded on contracts linked to crypto regulation or to the exchange's own regulatory standing.
- Hyperliquid faced questions centered on a large leveraged short opened ahead of a major U.S. tariff announcement last October. CNBC reported the position was roughly $1.1 billion. The committee wants the platform's account-holder identification process and its protocol for reporting suspicious trades.
- PredictIt, run by Aristotle Exchange, was asked about trades by current or former officials involving elections, nominations, and other government actions.
All three were told to hand over the tools they use to flag trades that may involve nonpublic information, plus any referrals they made to regulators or law enforcement over the past two and a half years. CNBC reported a response deadline of October 13.
Identity checks sit at the center
The through-line across all three letters is know-your-customer machinery. The committee is not only asking who traded. It is asking whether each platform could even tell who traded, and whether it flagged anything when the pattern looked wrong.
That matters because the platforms sit at different points on the custody and verification spectrum. Crypto.com runs full identity verification as a licensed exchange and card issuer. Hyperliquid operates as an on-chain derivatives venue where wallet-level activity is pseudonymous by default, which is exactly the gap a congressional investigator would press on when a nine-figure directional bet lands right before a market-moving government action.
The card-issuer angle
Crypto.com is not just an exchange in this story. It is one of the larger crypto card issuers on the market, and the same identity-verification stack that Congress is now scrutinizing is the plumbing that underpins card onboarding, spending limits, and suspicious-activity reporting. A records demand of this kind rarely stays contained to one product line. It tends to surface how a company handles user data across everything it runs.
For everyday users, nothing about card functionality changes today. There is no service disruption tied to the letters, and receiving a congressional inquiry is not a finding of wrongdoing. The relevant signal is directional: U.S. lawmakers are treating crypto-adjacent trading venues as targets for the same insider-trading standards applied to traditional markets, and they are asking for the receipts.
The bigger pattern
Prediction markets have had a strong run of legal wins and mainstream adoption over the past year. This probe is the counterweight. Congress is testing whether the surveillance and identity controls at these venues can withstand the same questions that public equity markets have faced for decades.
The companies have until October 13 to respond. Their answers, and how much they are willing to disclose about their internal monitoring, will show how prepared the newer crypto-native venues are for the compliance expectations that come with size.
Overview
Comer's House Oversight Committee demanded records from Crypto.com, Hyperliquid, and PredictIt owner Aristotle Exchange on September 29, 2026, expanding a prediction-market insider-trading probe that began in May with Kalshi and Polymarket. Each letter targets identity verification and suspicious-trade monitoring, with Hyperliquid facing specific questions about a reported $1.1 billion short ahead of a tariff announcement. Responses are due October 13.
