Press Coverage April 27, 2026

The Dangerous Trade of State Secrets

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Stephen C. Piepgrass

Stephen Piepgrass, leader of Troutman Pepper Locke’s Regulatory Investigations, Strategy + Enforcement Practice Group, was quoted in the April 27, 2026 The Cipher Brief article, “The Dangerous Trade of State Secrets.“

  • Stephen Piepgrass, a regulatory attorney at Troutman Pepper Locke focused on financial
    enforcement, tells The Cipher Brief that the platform’s design features are precisely what make it so
    difficult to police.
  • “The prediction markets are thriving in part because they permit the use of anonymous accounts,
    allow trading using cryptocurrency, and do not require geofencing,” he explains. “To date, these have
    been features, not bugs, of this growing market. But these same factors make policing the markets
    challenging, if not impossible.”
  • …
  • Piepgrass offers a concrete example.
  • “An adversary could create a new account and place a large bet around, for example, a major regional
    power grid going down,” he notes. “If U.S. intelligence monitors the markets and believes an attack
    on the grid is imminent, it could divert resources and focus to that area, leaving the actual target
    more vulnerable.”
  • …
  • The definitional problem compounds the enforcement gap. Piepgrass notes that the Commodity
    Exchange Act prohibits prediction contracts related to terrorism, assassination, and war — yet those
    concepts resist precise legal definition.
  • “The last time Congress formally declared war was during World War II,” he points out. “Is removing a
    head of state, like Maduro, a form of war? How about the action in Iran?”
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