Exchange stocks have been getting crushed since CFTC approved Kalshi perpetual futures on Friday.
Prediction markets knocked sportsbook stocks. Are exchanges next?
CEA § 1a(47)(A)(ii). A swap is an agreement “dependent on the occurrence, nonoccurrence, or the extent of the occurrence of an event or contingency associated with a potential financial, economic, or commercial consequence.”
The Nevada judge ruled against Kalshi on exactly this, reasoning that the financial or economic consequences must be direct consequences of the event itself, not “downstream” consequences such as the economic effects of a Super Bowl winner’s parade.
Not really. There's nothing to debate, according to the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. "The outcome of a sports event certainly can be associated with a potential financial, economic, or commercial consequence. The District Court did not clearly err when it identified numerous affected stakeholders, including sponsors, advertisers, television networks, franchises, and local and national communities. The analysis need not go further."
Last year, shortly after news broke that then-acting CFTC Chair Caroline Pham had ousted a top human resources official who had been investigating her, the Wall Street regulator issued a scathing press release.
That statement looks a whole lot different 15 months later.
NEW: Polymarket booked the first on-chain prediction market block trade, a six-figure transaction tied to an index tracking the price of Nvidia compute rental.
The counterparties were @FalconXGlobal, a digital asset brokerage, and @intheanera, an AI inference exchange.
According to a press release, "FalconX intends to serve as a dedicated market maker on Polymarket for Future block trades. AneraLabs, whose products span physical and financial derivatives for AI compute markets, worked with Polymarket to bring this trade to execution. Ornn AI Inc. provided the index infrastructure underpinning the transaction."
I asked Coinbase chief legal officer @iampaulgrewal in March if event contracts needed to be a hedge against direct economic consequence and he said “No.”
The reason for this Kalshi press release = evidence
To exist MUST HAVE sports contracts determined a hedging instrument not bet. “Is this a swap with a direct economic consequence?” is exact question in front of 3rd, 4th, 6th & 9th Circuit right now & ~25 more active litigation
Hedge funds are trying and failing to hire prediction market sharps.
"We are just getting crushed by these sharps," said Susquehanna's Jeff Yass.
@iscoe tells the story of a guy who's made 7 figures trading Rotten Tomatoes betting markets, and rejected an offer from SIG:
"He said, 'Not only am I just making a killing, but I can do things that a big institutional fund can't do.'"
"He's a Rotten Tomatoes trader. He trades how a film's going to do on Rotten Tomatoes. He's made 7 figures, easily. He's building models, scraping websites, and he's doing things that SIG, through their corporate policies, maybe wouldn't allow."
"And he asked in the interview, 'Could I do this technique?' And they said, 'Yeah, probably not.'"
"And this guy, he self-describes as a 'dips**t from the Midwest.' He's like, 'I didn't go to an Ivy League school, and I'm able to outcompete Wall Street with a $600 Lenovo laptop.'"
NEW: Kalshi launches perpetual futures.
“Instead of tracking prices pegged to a specific date, which introduces additional complexity, perpetuals are a form of futures contract that simply tracks whether or not the price of an asset goes up or down,” Kalshi said in a press release.
"This marks Kalshi’s evolution from prediction market leader to next-gen derivatives exchange," said Kalshi CEO @mansourtarek_
“Pending regulatory reviews, Kalshi aims to launch crypto perpetuals on more than a dozen currencies,” the press release said. “Perpetual futures on agricultural commodities will not be part of Kalshi’s product offerings.”
Proud to announce Polymarket's market integrity infrastructure flagged another trader who was arrested this morning in New York for insider trading.
With 2 out of 2 arrests in this industry resulting from our criminal referrals, Polymarket has emerged as the enforcement leader. Blockchain trading is transparent, traceable, and bad actors leave footprints
Exclusive: @Kalshi debuted event contracts today tied to the sale prices of art at auction, adding to its roster of collectibles prediction markets, which include contracts related to the value of timepieces and trading cards
“Art is one of the largest and least liquid asset classes on earth, and it has historically been one of the hardest to hedge. A collector sitting on ten million dollars in impressionist paintings has no efficient way to manage that exposure—until now,” Kalshi legal counsel Valeria Vouterakou said in a press release. “We’re giving the art world the same financial infrastructure the rest of the economy takes for granted.
.@shayne_coplan literally said that Polymarket is already working on replacing UMA and nobody noticed it
“No, it’s run by a 3rd party, but there are improvements coming soon”
Context: they were talking about the resolution system
Video link is below