If there’s one thing the internet never tires of, it’s watching a golden boy stumble.

Recently, the YouTube colossus Jimmy Donaldson — better known to millions as MrBeast — found himself splashed across headlines not for giving away a private island or building a chocolate empire, but for a different kind of high-stakes gamble.

One of the YouTube star’s key team members, editor and friend Artem Kaptur, was suspended over activity on Kalshi, a regulated online prediction market that lets users bet on the outcomes of real-world events — from elections to celebrity news.

According to The Independent, Kaptur is accused of betting on results tied to upcoming MrBeast videos. His almost perfect track record raised serious red flags at Kalshi that he may have used insider knowledge to profit.

It’s the same old story of insider information, just wearing sneakers instead of Gucci loafers.

MrBeast’s massive operation — known for elaborate projects and enormous budgets — has become a micro-economy of its own, and where there’s an economy, there’s temptation.

For its part, Kalshi moved quickly last week to suspend Kaptur and distance the brand from any impropriety. And the internet did what it always does — half outrage, half memes — but the story raises deeper questions.

Your Rundown for Friday, February 27, 2026...

Wisdom of Crowd? Only If You're in the Right Crowd

So who better to make sense of this brave new world than Jim Rickards — former advisor to the White House and one of Wall Street's sharpest minds. He's been watching the rise of prediction markets closely.

For Jim, one of the central questions about prediction markets is “whether these bets are futures contracts subject to regulation by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).”

The answer matters enormously — because futures contracts fall under federal jurisdiction, not state gambling law.

The CFTC has been playing, in Jim’s words, “a very cagey game.” The agency claims bets on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket aren’t gambles because “when you bet on a prediction market you’re not betting against the house (gambling) but against other market participants (futures).”

The CFTC is “promising a very light form of regulation.” The trade-off is calculated: claim authority, promise restraint and quietly push state gambling regulators out of the picture entirely.

It’s a federal power grab, in Jim’s opinion, and it “seems to have the support of the Trump White House,” says Jim.

But don’t mistake light regulation for a free-for-all. The Kaptur case might just prove that. Federal law still prohibits misusing confidential information in these markets.

Keep in mind, prediction markets are built on “the wisdom of crowd” — the idea that a thousand random guesses, averaged together, will outperform any single expert.

Jim uses a vivid example: “a contest to ‘guess the weight of a cow' at a country fair.” The crowd beats the expert veterinarian every time. It’s a fascinating model. It’s also not the whole story.

“There is an inverse relationship between the accuracy of a crowd guess and the technical expertise to make the guess in the first place,” Jim writes. Anyone can eyeball a single cow. But complexity kills the crowd’s advantage — and most people betting on geopolitical outcomes, for example, aren’t experts.

Jim’s verdict is succinct: “Buyer beware.”

Then there’s the skew problem, and this one is under-the-radar. High fees and minimum bets mean participants “will skew toward higher-income individuals.”

Jim points to Brexit as the cautionary tale: Prediction markets gave 72% probability to ‘remain’ — because “participants in the betting were largely London bankers and lawyers with a big, vested interest in remaining.”

Everyday British workers — “taxi drivers, chambermaids and bartenders” — were barely represented in the pool. (Jim, by the way, called the Brexit vote correctly in 2016. The markets didn’t.)

At their core, prediction markets deal in binary outcomes — win or lose, yes or no, happen or not happen. There is no partial credit. That binary nature is what makes the percentage figures so easy to misread.

When a prediction market shows 75% odds in favor of a candidate during election season, it simply “means there's a 75% probability that the candidate will get 51% of the vote or higher” — not that they'll win 75% of the vote.

Confuse the two and you'll be blindsided when “a candidate who slips from 52% to 48% in the polls might see her prediction market odds drop from 75% to 25% overnight.”

What Kaptur understood — and exploited — is that prediction markets are only as wise as the crowd is disinterestedly informed. The regulators are catching up. The CFTC is watching. And as Jim would remind you, these markets — flaws, skews, binary cliffs and all — “are here to stay.”

Market Rundown for Friday, February 27, 2026

S&P 500 futures are down 0.80% to 6,820.

Oil is up 3.75% to $67.68 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is up 0.70% to $5,232.10 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s down 1.85% to $66,245.