According to Kalshi’s member agreement updated on June 17, 2026, the operator added India to its list of restricted jurisdictions and blocked local users’ access to event...
Former CFTC Chairman speaks out against prediction markets
Former Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler, spoke out against the rise of prediction markets during the Indian Gaming Association’s (IGA) June 24 webinar.
With the increasing popularity of event contracts, Gensler has criticized their expansion and the CFTC’s position of promoting the sector. According to the former commission head, it was never Congress’s goal to make the CFTC the country’s betting regulator after permitting trades on sports events.
Gensler stressed:
“I chose to speak up…as a friend of the court to say, ‘What were we all doing back then, and what were we not doing back then?’ And by the way, unambiguously, we were not trying to have a federal regulator regulate sports betting. Congress did not consider bets on outcomes of sporting events, how many points a player would score in a quarter, or sportsbook-style parlays to be swaps.”
As explained by Gensler, if sports contracts are classified as swaps, which is the justification of most prediction markets, then this would mean that state and tribal sports bets placed in the last 10 years have to be ruled as illegal.
To further address the concerns, Gensler filed an amicus brief with the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in a legal case against Kalshi, arguing that the current operations of prediction markets don’t reflect his or his colleagues’ ideas and work.
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