---
type: source
title: "CFTC Enforcement Director Miller's Five Priorities: Insider Trading in Prediction Markets Is #1, Zero Mention of Governance Markets"
author: "Sullivan & Cromwell / Skadden / Morrison Foerster / Davis Polk (multiple law firm alerts)"
url: https://www.sullcrom.com/insights/memo/2026/April/CFTC-Updates-Enforcement-Priorities-Cooperation-Policy-Prediction-Markets-Insider-Trading
date: 2026-04-01
domain: internet-finance
secondary_domains: []
format: news-synthesis
status: processed
processed_by: rio
processed_date: 2026-05-08
priority: medium
tags: [cftc, enforcement, insider-trading, prediction-markets, david-miller, priorities, governance]
intake_tier: research-task
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

**Event:** David Miller, CFTC Director of Enforcement (former Greenberg Traurig shareholder, appointed March 2026), delivered remarks at NYU Law School on March 31, 2026 announcing enforcement priorities. The talk was hosted by Princeton's Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement (PCCE).

**The Five Priorities:**
1. **Insider trading** (including in prediction markets)
2. **Market manipulation** (particularly energy markets)
3. **Market abuse/disruptive trading**
4. **Retail fraud** (including Ponzi schemes)
5. **AML/KYC violations**

**On insider trading in prediction markets (detailed):**
- Miller: "There is a myth in the mainstream media and social media that insider trading law doesn't apply in the prediction markets. That view is flatly wrong."
- The CFTC's theory: event contracts are swaps under the CEA → anti-fraud provisions apply → insider trading is prohibited
- DCMs are "first line of defense" against insider trading and manipulation
- Focus on traders with material non-public information about event outcomes
- Cooperation policy: self-report + cooperate + remediate = path to declination

**Coordination with SEC:** The March 11, 2026 CFTC-SEC MOU covers six areas including product definitions, clearing/margin frameworks, and cross-market oversight.

**Zero mention of:**
- Governance markets
- Decision markets
- Futarchy
- On-chain protocols
- Decentralized prediction market infrastructure
- TWAP settlement or endogenous pricing
- MetaDAO

**Additional law firm alert sources:**
- Skadden: "CFTC Enforcement Director Discusses Top Priorities, Insider Trading on Prediction Markets and New Cooperation Policy" (April 2026)
- Morrison Foerster: "CFTC Enforcement Director Miller Announces Enforcement Priorities" (April 9, 2026)
- Davis Polk: "CFTC announces enforcement priorities" (April 2026)
- Latham & Watkins: "New CFTC Enforcement Director Speaks on Priorities" (April 2026)
- Paul Weiss: "CFTC Director of Enforcement Outlines Enforcement Priorities" (April 2026)

All law firm alerts cover the same five priorities. Zero mention of governance markets in any of them.

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** The CFTC Enforcement Director's stated priorities define the enforcement perimeter. Insider trading at DCM-registered platforms is the specific focus. The enforcement framework is entirely bounded to (1) DCM-registered platforms and (2) trading on material non-public information about external event outcomes. MetaDAO's governance markets are outside this perimeter on both dimensions: not a DCM, and settles against endogenous TWAP not external event outcomes.

**What surprised me:** The sheer number of major law firms that published alerts about these priorities — Sullivan & Cromwell, Skadden, Morrison Foerster, Davis Polk, Latham, Paul Weiss, Greenberg Traurig. This is the full Am Law 100 prediction market practice responding to Miller's remarks. And zero mention of governance markets across all of them. This is not because they didn't look — these are comprehensive analyses.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Any mention of governance markets, MetaDAO, or the event contract/governance market distinction in any of the law firm alerts. If a major firm had made this distinction, I would have found it by now.

**KB connections:**
- [[futarchy-based fundraising creates regulatory separation because there are no beneficial owners and investment decisions emerge from market forces not centralized control]] — enforcement priorities confirm structural separation
- [[the DAO Reports rejection of voting as active management is the central legal hurdle for futarchy because prediction market trading must prove fundamentally more meaningful than token voting]] — SEC, not CFTC, is the relevant agency for this concern; CFTC enforcement is focused on different issues

**Extraction hints:**
1. "CFTC Enforcement Director Miller's five priorities (March 2026) focus exclusively on DCM-registered platform conduct — insider trading on external event outcomes is the specific concern — confirming that on-chain governance markets settling against endogenous TWAP are outside the stated enforcement perimeter" [confidence: likely — direct statement of priorities from primary source]
2. "31 consecutive research sessions of monitoring have found zero mention of 'governance markets,' 'decision markets,' or 'futarchy' across all major law firm prediction market practice group alerts — confirming that the regulatory discourse gap is stable, not an artifact of limited searching" [confidence: likely — this is an archival pattern observation, documented across sessions]

**Context:** Miller was appointed by the Trump-appointed CFTC chair Selig. His priorities reflect the political direction: markets-friendly, focused on fraud/manipulation, not expansion of regulatory reach. This makes governance market enforcement even less likely in the current political environment.

## Curator Notes
PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[futarchy-based fundraising creates regulatory separation because there are no beneficial owners and investment decisions emerge from market forces not centralized control]]
WHY ARCHIVED: The enforcement priorities framework is the most authoritative available statement of where the CFTC will direct its (already depleted) enforcement capacity — governance markets are outside it on every dimension
EXTRACTION HINT: Focus on the "zero mention" observation as a positive claim about where the enforcement perimeter ends, not just as an absence — the law firm alert count (6+ major firms, zero governance market mentions) converts an absence into a positive structural observation
