Kalshi and Polymarket Face State Lawsuits Challenging Prediction Markets
Immediate Context
Two U.S.-focused event‑trading platforms, Kalshi and Polymarket, are the subject of a string of state and tribal enforcement actions that test whether outcome contracts are regulated gambling or fall under federal commodities/securities regimes. Courts in several jurisdictions have already issued stop‑gap measures: a Nevada court temporarily barred Polymarket from serving state residents for 14 days and set a Feb. 11, 2026 preliminary‑injunction hearing, while a Massachusetts judge ordered a 30‑day suspension of certain sports contracts. Other states have produced mixed rulings, leaving a patchwork of access for U.S. users and uneven judicial signals about preemption under the Commodity Exchange Act.
Federal Posture and Political Pressure
At the federal level the picture is unsettled. CFTC leadership has signaled a turn toward statute‑grounded rulemaking and rescinded a 2024 staff advisory and a prior rulemaking notice, framing some outcome contracts as economically akin to tradable derivatives. The SEC and CFTC appear to be coordinating on boundary issues, yet a bipartisan group of 23 senators has urged the CFTC to stand down from active participation in pending state and tribal suits and to consider prohibiting specific contract categories—adding political pressure that both complicates and contradicts the CFTC’s stated rulemaking path.
Operational and Market Effects
Operators are responding tactically: Kalshi has opened a Washington, D.C. office and hired senior policy staff while reporting heavy volumes (December monthly volume reported at roughly $6.58 billion, with sport‑season spikes including about $441 million transacted in the four days after an NFL kickoff). Firms are implementing geofencing, enhanced KYC, trade‑monitoring and, in some cases, delisting U.S. customers for contentious products. Liquidity providers and exchanges are weighing whether to ingest on‑chain probability feeds, productize them into derivatives, or avoid the space altogether until regulatory clarity emerges.
Integrity, Surveillance and On‑chain Signals
Regulators and market intermediaries cite market‑integrity concerns: several large, time‑sensitive trades have looked like potential insider wagers, and immutable on‑chain logs can make timing and coordination visible but not always attributable. That transparency is double‑edged—helpful for detection yet potentially accelerating exploitation where enforcement bandwidth is limited. Vendors are pitching wallet‑attribution, oracle‑validation and anomalous‑trade analytics as necessary infrastructure to distinguish legitimate forecasting from information‑driven betting.
Second‑Order Risks and Strategic Stakes
If courts validate state claims broadly, U.S. access to licensed prediction markets could shrink rapidly, shifting meaningful trading offshore or into crypto‑native venues and degrading the quality and usability of public probability signals. That migration would raise AML/CFT blind spots and complicate policymakers’ and traders’ ability to rely on transparent, auditable markets. At the same time, incumbents in regulated finance and new commercial entrants (including gambling companies and exchanges) see opportunities to build compliant, licensed alternatives—raising questions about concentration, disclosure and conflict management as institutional capital seeks to productize these feeds.
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