Polymarketaps Former Goldman Sachs Partner Prediction Markets Draw House Scrutiny

Polymarket has confirmed the appointment of Lisa Mantil, a former Goldman Sachs partner with a nearly three-decade tenure at the bank, as its head of institutional growth. The move amounts to a wager on Wall Street capital, and it lands as regulators, state attorneys general, and Washington lawmakers intensify their focus on prediction markets. Prediction markets let participants trade contracts tied to the outcomes of real-world events, and the dispute over who governs them — federal market regulators or state gambling authorities — now shadows the sector’s push for mainstream capital.

From the ETF accelerator to an “exploding asset class”

Mantil left Goldman Sachs as a partner and global head of the ETF accelerator, the firm’s internal program that helped clients bring new investment products to market.

Shayne Coplan, Polymarket’s founder and CEO, said in a statement that Mantil’s network across Wall Street makes her the right fit for the role. Mantil, for her part, framed the appointment as a chance to “help shape an exploding asset class at an inflection point in its development.”

The hire is the latest in a string of senior additions at Polymarket. The company previously brought on Warren Jenson, whose résumé includes Amazon, Delta Air Lines, and Nielsen, as its first chief financial officer. In May, Polymarket launched its US-regulated exchange and is currently valued at roughly $21 billion, having raised $1 billion from investors including 1789 Capital and Intercontinental Exchange.

Courting the block-trade crowd

Mantil has been tasked with drawing large traders to the platform — an achievement that has long eluded prediction markets. Institutional adoption remains in its early stages, in part because operators and state regulators continue to feud over who has the right to govern sports-related event contracts.

The supporting infrastructure is catching up. Polymarket’s competitor Kalshi executed the first block trade in the prediction market space in April, a privately negotiated transaction designed to move large positions without disturbing prices. Polymarket’s international platforms followed suit almost a month later. Mantil’s mandate ties directly into that buildout: her Goldman Sachs tenure was spent helping clients bring new investment products to market, experience pointed at the same institutional audience the block-trade plumbing is meant to unlock.

Investigators are already asking questions

Prediction markets have become a hot topic in Washington, with lawmakers raising questions amid whispers of insider trading. The House Oversight Committee and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that oversees US derivatives markets, are both examining the sector’s activities.

The CFTC has opened no fewer than three investigations into Polymarket’s trades this year: contracts tied to former President Joseph Biden’s pardons, “Iran event contracts,” and Google-themed contracts in July. Each order was approved by Chairman Michael Selig.

Polymarket has not been directly accused of wrongdoing, and the company says it keeps its markets under control. It has referred dozens of flagged accounts to the Department of Justice, and Coplan has pointed to proprietary surveillance software developed by a former FBI official.

Even so, the Anti-Corruption Data Collective identified 152 accounts that generated roughly $8 million in war-related markets with a 97% win rate. One case has already produced criminal charges: according to POGO, Special Forces soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke was accused of using classified information to earn more than $400,000 on a Polymarket trade. For markets whose prices are meant to reflect genuine probabilities of real-world events, suspected trading on inside information ranks among the most serious integrity concerns that can be raised.

States and Congress want a say

The disputes now extend well beyond the CFTC. New York Attorney General Letitia James and Governor Kathy Hochul have sued Polymarket, describing it as an unlicensed gambling operation. Polymarket responded with a countersuit in federal court, arguing that jurisdiction rests with the CFTC and that federal law shields its contracts from state gambling rules.

The New York State Assembly has two prediction-market bills before it, including the ORACLE Act sponsored by State Senator Joseph Addabbo Jr. The measure would bar users under the age of 21 from accessing prediction markets and would prohibit certain markets altogether.

In Washington, the Project On Government Oversight is urging the Senate Armed Services Committee to rewrite Section 1801 of the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act. POGO wants all Department of Defense trades on the platforms banned — not just those exceeding the $250 mark that rely on material nonpublic information. Taken together, the federal countersuit, the pending Albany bills, and the NDAA fight frame the sector’s unresolved question: whether event contracts are ultimately governed from Washington or state by state.