AN ENCOURAGING UPDATE ON THE REGULATION OF PREDICTION MARKETS
WASHINGTON, DC – The Consumer Choice Center (CCC), an independent consumer advocacy group, welcomes today’s move by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), in filing a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Crypto.com in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. This is part a much broader legal dispute over the mainstreaming of federally regulated “event contracts,” also known as Prediction Markets.
Stephen Kent, Media Director for CCC, reacted to the announcement by CFTC Chair, Mike Selig:
“Event contracts are treated as derivatives under federal law and overseen by the CFTC for a reason: national markets work best with national rules. If states succeed in reclassifying CFTC-regulated contracts as gambling on a case-by-case basis, consumers lose access to transparent, regulated venues and face more confusion about what is legal and where. That’s not a tenable solution.”
This matters to consumers because widely used CFTC-registered platforms — including Kalshi, Polymarket, Coinbase, and Crypto.com — are rocketing in popularity, especially after Super Bowl LX, and facing an escalating wave of state lawsuits that could limit access and create a chaotic state-by-state patchwork.
“Congress passed the Commodity Exchange Act to accommodate financial innovation, and the CFTC’s role is to supervise these markets for contracts — and while no one may have foreseen those contracts being the lineup of Halftime Show performers or rainfall amounts, these are legitimate, knowledge-driven exchanges worthy of federal jurisdiction,” Kent added.
Markets are a living and ever-changing thing, and the United States established decades ago a legal framework for hanging event contracts that cover commodities of almost every kind besides Hollywood box-office receipts.
Kent concluded, “Futures markets like what we see on Kalshi and Polymarket make perfect sense if you consider how world events, whether important or petty, have material consequences downstream of them. We’re encouraged by the CFTC’s proactive posture in making sense of this evolving industry.”
MEDIA INQUIRES CAN BE DIRECTED TO:
Media Director, Stephen Kent
stephen@consumerchoicecenter.org
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The Consumer Choice Center is an independent, nonpartisan consumer advocacy group championing the benefits of freedom of choice, innovation, and abundance in everyday life for consumers in over 100 countries. We closely monitor regulatory trends in Brussels, Washington, Ottawa, Brasilia, London, and Geneva.
Find out more at consumerchoicecenter.org
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