There are two main reasons prediction markets have blown up in the past couple of years. One is that they offer a large group of people something they want: the chance to put money on a wide range of outcomes, from sporting events to elections to how many times Mr. Beast will say the word dollar in his next video.

The other is that, until quite recently, they weren’t really legal. Things opened up for Kalshi, which had been seeking full regulatory clearance for years, in 2024. Polymarket, which had withdrawn from the U.S. in 2022 after an enforcement action by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, only got the go-ahead to come back last year. The first big prediction market election came in 2024, and the first fully predictified Super Bowl was the Seahawks versus the Patriots.

In January, Michael Selig, the chair of Donald Trump’s CFTC, further clarified the situation. “Under my leadership, the CFTC is charting a new course,” Selig wrote. “Prediction markets have exploded in popularity as broad swaths of market participants seek to hedge portfolio risks and test their abilities to forecast truth,” he argued, and in “order to achieve the golden age of American financial markets,” regulators must “must break with the rigid and restrictive regulatory practices of the past.” For prediction markets, and crypto, it was all systems go.

the CFTC jut released its list of new advisory committee members. really quite something— Kate Knibbs (@knibbs.bsky.social) 2026-02-12T21:47:21.265Z

the CFTC jut released its list of new advisory committee members. really quite something

Selig........

© Daily Intelligencer