It's kind of hard to take Kalshi out of this, since the whole premise for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's authority here is that Kalshi is a commodity futures trading exchange, not a gambling site.
I’m not sure that interstate commerce should apply here—it seems correct that a state can ban gambling, even if it is on the Internet against out-of-state US nationals—but if the CFTC is asserting its pre-emption under existing law, it needs to assert it (as it is doing so here.)
It’s pretty clear that this is (a) gambling and (b) explicitly excluded from the CFTC’s legal mandate (“gaming”), but obviously this is about corruption and not a good faith interpretation.
I expect this to go to the Supreme Court and for the Court to side with the corruption.
It provides another source off information, and there’s much less insider trading risk.
“”Event outcome prediction contracts”” on sports, clinical trials, is late stage capitalism, and yes, bullshit.
You see another source of information. I see another point of potential corruption. Statistics is already hard enough to do right without the extremely perverse incentives that gambling brings.
That said, gambling is still legal. Put it under its proper regulations and there's not really much I can say against it. Unless there is in fact regulations around gambling with election races.
Like, why would the same agency regulating wheat futures also be responsible for regulating event contracts? I know the simple answer is that Congress said they should be, but conceptually it's a bit odd.