Prediction markets will let you bet on just about anything, from how many tweets Elon Musk will post this week to the next president of the United States, with predictions sometimes showing shockingly (or suspiciously) spot-on accuracy. Polymarket’s CEO Shayne Copland has even claimed that prediction markets are “the most accurate thing we have as mankind right now.”
However, these platforms blur the lines — in terms of both function and regulation — between gambling and stock trading. As Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal said on The Vergecast, “All of the lines between trading, speculating, [and] gambling are just being completely torn apart.”
There are also ethical concerns surfacing around prediction markets, like whether it’s acceptable to be able to place a bet on virtually everything, along with concerns about insider trading. For instance, a newly-created Polymarket account made over $400,000 in January betting on the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
- The Athletic reportedly drops sports betting deal with Kalshi.
The union representing The New York Times staffers rallied against the deal, but a source tells Front Office Sports that the opposition “did not prompt or play any role” in the decision to abandon it. Kalshi and The Athletic continue to explore advertising and “other commercial opportunities,” Front Office Sports reports.
New York Times Union Demands Company Abandon Kalshi Talks[Front Office Sports]
- George Santos is the first person banned from Kalshi for life.
Kalshi says that in February, the former Republican congressman “placed a series of large trades in a market where the underlying contracts depended upon his own attendance” at the State of the Union. He’s now permanently banned and penalized $71,356.
In other news about everything being gambling now:
- Trump’s teleprompter operator fined $172,000 for betting on speeches.
In July, Gabriel Perez was accused of insider trading on Kalshi and became the target of a federal investigation for placing bets on what words would be mentioned in the president’s speeches. Now the invesitgation has come to a close. The CFTC issued a release on Friday saying:
Perez must disgorge the profits he made from his unlawful trading totaling $107,539.02 and pay a civil monetary penalty of $65,000 … Under the order, a three-year trading ban is imposed on Perez.
- Kalshi is partnering with The Weather Company for climate-based bets.
The prediction market platform will use The Weather Company’s data to verify weather-related market outcomes, such as how high the daily temperature might get in New York or Los Angeles. At the same time, The Weather Company will add Kalshi’s weather probabilities to “select experiences” on its app and website.
Kalshi and the Weather Co. Join Forces on Climate Trades[The Wall Street Journal]
- Judge orders Kalshi to shut down most of its bets in Washington.
A preliminary injunction issued Wednesday finds the prediction market has likely broken state laws against running an illegal gambling operation.
The order requires Kalshi to stop offering, accepting, or facilitating wagers on sports, elections, politics, entertainment, culture, tech and science, or mentions in Washington. Kalshi must implement an IP address and residency based geofence by August 19 and a multi-source geofencing solution by September 2.
This does not include all the wagers offered on Kalshi, but it includes a substantial part of their business, which in recent years has been increasingly driven by sports wagers.
- Chess.com’s new project is a poker site.
Gambit offers similar features for playing and learning poker online, like bot matches, live play, and tournaments, but without any real gambling. Like Chess.com, it also has an “Elo-style rating system.”
Image: Gambit - FlightAware drops its Kalshi lawsuit one day after filing it.
On Monday, FlightAware filed a lawsuit claiming Kalshi used its flight-tracking data without permission to “run gambling markets on flight cancellations.” FlightAware has since dismissed its lawsuit without prejudice, though it’s unclear why.
- FlightAware is suing Kalshi for using its flight data for bets.
The flight-tracking site claims Kalshi is using its data to “run gambling markets on flight cancellations” even after it asked the prediction market platform to stop. “Kalshi instead accessed FlightAware’s data without authorization and then represented to customers that market outcomes were ‘verified from FlightAware,’” the lawsuit states.
New York sues Kalshi for allegedly running an ‘illegal gambling operation’
Image: The VergeNew York is suing Kalshi over claims the prediction market is running “an illegal gambling operation.” In the lawsuit, New York Attorney General Letitia James accuses Kalshi of violating state laws by accepting wagers without a license from the state’s gaming commission, as reported earlier by CNBC.
An investigation from the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) found Kalshi exposes New York residents “to serious personal and financial risk,” including people under the legal gambling age of 21, the lawsuit alleges. The state asks the court to block Kalshi — which is headquartered in New York — from operating in the state and to pay restitution to customers who placed bets on the platform.
Read Article >- Minnesota’s prediction markets ban has been derailed.
A preliminary injunction has been granted to halt the Minnesota law that was due to go into effect on Saturday. Siding with a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration, Kalshi, and Polymarket, federal judge Katherine Menendez said the plaintiffs would be harmed by enforcement and that federal law supersedes the ban.
- Sports traders were the most active on Polymarket, Pew finds.
A typical account on the prediction market platform also tended to primarily bet on a single topic, according to research from Pew. Sports are huge categories for both Polymarket and its competitor, Kalshi.
Over the last few years, the two companies have sought to differentiate themselves from traditional sports betting — and have tried to undercut one another as they fight for market share in the US.
What we know about the typical Polymarket user[Pew Research Center]
- Washington state blocks Kalshi.
A state court has granted a preliminary injunction against Kalshi, ruling its sports-related “event contracts” likely violate state online gambling bans. The judge rejected Kalshi’s defense that federal CFTC regulation shields it from state enforcement. Kalshi will likely have to geoblock Washington residents, marking yet another legal setback for prediction markets.
- Polymarket is being blocked in France.
The country’s gambling regulator ordered local internet service providers to block access to the Polymarket website on Friday, citing noncompliance concerns with rules for gambling and gaming services. The regulator also said that some bets on the platform “appeared to be rigged.”
Kalshi says it caught Trump’s teleprompter operator insider trading
Image: The VergeKalshi users betting on what President Donald Trump would say during his speeches were reportedly up against tough competition: the president’s teleprompter operator.
ABC News reports that federal investigators believe Gabriel Perez — Trump’s teleprompter operator since 2016 — used inside information to make bets on Kalshi, a major prediction market platform that allows users to bet on just about everything. One category that Kalshi offers is “mentions” markets, in which users try to predict what an individual will say during high-profile events.
Read Article >- ChatGPT is now citing Kalshi data.
OpenAI and the prediction market have a deal, The New York Times reports, that pulls in Kalshi data for World Cup-related queries. A prompt for “France and Spain,” for example, included a win forecast attributed to Kalshi.
Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket are everywhere right now, and that’s by design. The companies have inked deals with news outlets, newsletter writers, and random X accounts — and now Kalshi will reach potential customers via chatbots.
Image: OpenAI - Kalshi “Pro” adds a terminal-style interface to make gambling more like trading.
The latest evolution in prediction market technology is Kalshi’s “professional-grade desktop trading workstation,” a web UI now available publicly in a beta test that takes its styling cues from stock trading terminals instead of sportsbooks.
According to the company, Kalshi Pro is part of its “transformation from a retail app for prediction market trading into a full-service financial exchange for all types of investors.”
Image: Kalshi - Should we bet on when we get the first Polymarket-related wildfire?
Forget for a moment that it’s morally disgusting to let people bet on wildfires; people have already spent $1.2 million doing it. The real question is when someone will commit financially-motivated arson in order to win their bet — because unlike other major environmental events, massive fires are easy to create.
People are betting on wildfires. Should they? - High Country News[High Country News]
- Meta + Kalshi and Polymarket?
In addition to tasking staffers at Meta to develop a prediction markets app, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also asked executives to look into partnerships with Kalshi and Polymarket, The New York Times reports. Meta wants to get “at least 100 million monthly active ‘predictors’ for the app,” which is set to be targeted toward 18- to 34-year-olds, the NYT says.
Zuckerberg Urges Meta to Explore Working With Polymarket and Kalshi[The New York Times]
Zuckerberg reportedly wants a Polymarket clone — but without real money
Mark Zuckerberg. Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty ImagesMeta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has tasked a small team at the company with making an app that works like the prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi, according to The New York Times. The app, internally called “Arena” won’t let users wager real money, but instead will “probably rely” on allowing users to bet with points, the NYT says — though Meta apparently hasn’t ruled out eventually allowing people to bet with real money.
Should Meta’s app launch publicly, it would be just the latest example of Meta taking a popular idea from another company and building its own version, like it did when it cloned Snapchat’s Stories format and TikTok’s vertical video feed. However, prediction markets have also been rife with controversy, including users being arrested for placing suspicious bets. The Wall Street Journal also recently reported that Polymarket paid people to post fake videos of themselves placing bets.
Read Article >- Of course campaign workers are making money on Polymarket using insider information.
Politicians have been caught betting on their races, and a Google employee was charged with insider trading. So it makes sense that campaign workers are looking to make a little extra cash based on what they know about the candidates they work for. Watch the clip from NPR below.
Polymarket reportedly paid people to post fake videos of themselves placing bets
Image: The VergeAccording to a Wall Street Journal investigation, Polymarket has been paying people to film themselves placing fake bets and celebrating fake wins on social media. WSJ identified over 1,100 deceptive clips and talked to creators who, despite not stating as such in their videos, confirmed the company paid them to create the clips.
The videos posted on social media look legit at first, but there are subtle clues that betray them as fraudulent. For instance, when examined closely, one clip shows someone visiting “poiymarket.com” rather than polymarket.com. According to the Journal’s investigation, none of the bets placed in the over 1,100 videos it reviewed were real. In 118 videos, the creators were shown reacting to winning bets totaling almost $900,000. But in reality, those bets would have lost $166,000.
Read Article >Kalshi adds required employment verification for some prediction market bets
Image: The VergeThe CFTC is considering its first regulation for prediction markets, as arrests over “insider trading” on everything from military operations to Google Search data continue to stack up. As CoinDesk reports, a notice of proposed rulemaking says “the proposal would establish a structured framework for evaluating whether such contracts involve an activity enumerated in Section 5c(c)(5)(C) of the Commodity Exchange Act —activity that involves terrorism, assassination, war, gaming, or conduct that is unlawful under federal or state law—and, if so, whether that contract is contrary to the public interest.”
Separately, Kalshi announced on Wednesday that it’s introducing new market integrity measures following the release of an “independent” audit committee report it commissioned a few months ago.
Read Article >- Kalshi will reportedly ask for employment info for bets in “sensitive” markets.
The Wall Street Journal reports that it’s Kalshi’s latest effort to address insider trading:
Users seeking to make bets in some markets linked to material nonpublic information will be required to submit an online form disclosing where they work, Kalshi said. The changes are set to be rolled out in the coming weeks. Sensitive betting markets related to issues such as company performance and national security, including the war in Iran, are expected to require employment disclosure, according to a Kalshi official.
- NPR reports the feds are investigating George Santos for allegedly betting on his own SOTU attendance.
The former Republican congressman claimed in a video on X that he would be at the State of the Union in February, but didn’t show up. Now, according to NPR reporter Bobby Allyn’s sources, the DOJ and CFTC are investigating whether Santos made tens of thousands of dollars betting on Kalshi that he wouldn’t be there.
- Minnesota is battling the Trump administration over prediction markets.
The state became the first to enact a ban on prediction markets, but a lawsuit from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is trying to keep it from taking effect, arguing it’s the domain of the federal government, NPR reports.
