What's the difference between a Kalshi event contract and a COMEX futures option contract?
Prediction betting has an argument that truth discovery is economically valuable, but I don't buy it.
If prediction betting was banned, only two businesses would be affected, Kalshi and Polymarket. If futures markets were banned, many businesses would be massively affected, and almost every business would be indirectly affected.
The common language meaning of gambling is too broad and captures things that aren't legally regulated as gambling such as gambling (again common meaning of the word) with futures contracts. Sometimes gambling is dressed up a speculating, but one could argue that one can speculate as a participant in many card games since they allow room for analysis and aren't pure chance. This is what the legal dispute comes down too.
The other is the debate for the value of the truth discovery. Some folks buy it and others don't. SCOTUS will likely take the case to resolve the split between the circuits and we'll if the value of this even enters into the decision or it just comes down interpretation of the statutes.
Awfully rude.
>The common language meaning of gambling is too broad and captures things that aren't legally regulated as gambling such as gambling (again common meaning of the word) with futures contracts.
No it doesn't. No one argues that state gambling laws actually regulate the trade of securities, options, or anything actually covered by the CFTC, so this is a completely sham argument.
>The other is the debate for the value of the truth discovery. Some folks buy it and others don't. SCOTUS will likely take the case to resolve the split between the circuits and we'll if the value of this even enters into the decision or it just comes down interpretation of the statutes.
The value of truth discovery is completely irrelevant to these cases. Either congress intended to regulate sports gambling under the CFTC, or it didn't. The executive branch can't get around that.
This feels like a similar playbook to crypto. People make money through pump and dump schemes and/or luck/speculation. Then they justify their existence as some bastion of decentralized power/coordination.
I think a lot of folks here think I'm debating this because I support prediction markets, but I could have cared less which way SCOTUS comes down on this. Now I'm rooting for Kalshi when SCOTUS picks this up and not regretting the time I spent on this. I try to avoid commenting on anything political, but I had a moment of weakness while I was waiting for benchmarks to run. Thanks!
And this is what I've been trying to get at here... who can actually say with a straight face that congress intended to regulate sports gambling with the CFTC? It's a ridiculous proposition to which there are no actual facts that support it. Nothing in the congressional record, nothing in the statute. Just a broad reading of the language while keeping one's head in the sand.
The reference to bingo was something that New Jersey and the dissent brought up. Direct quote that covers both: 'Because Kalshi’s sports related event contracts are traded on a CFTC-licensed DCM and depend on event outcomes associated with economic consequences, they fit within the Act’s definition of “swaps” subject to the CFTC’s jurisdiction. See 7 U.S.C. §§ 2(a)(1)(A), 1a(47)(A)(ii).
New Jersey and the dissent “pile inference upon inference” and postulate that anything from bingo games to pingpong matches will fall under the CFTC’s jurisdiction.'
from: https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/ka...
That the holding opinion addresses, quoting the same exact section you did and then going on to say that "[i]n such far-fetched scenarios, Congress’s express delegation to the CTFC and the Securities and Exchange Commission to 'further define' swaps would prove useful." So yeah, that exact point stands.
>The 3rd circuit literally said they are '"swaps" subject to the CFTC's jusridiction' which is literally the opposite of what the 9th circuit said.
No, the 3rd circuit literally said that the CFTC designated Kalshi a DCM, so therefore it must be the case that its sports events contracts fall under DCM event contracts regulated by the CFTC. This is much more limited than my construction of the 9th circuit holding, which you insisted this is the opposite of it.It's literally not. The 9th Circuit's holding goes much further than to say they aren't a DCM. It says that a sports event can't be an event contract under the CFTC, so it does not even matter if it is a DCM or not.
You had me thinking you read the opinions when you came with the quotes, but it seems like at the same kind of superficial level the 3rd circuit is playing around at here. The 9th Circuit's holding is much broader and addresses the fact that the DCM designation is basically a sham, and clearly well beyond whatever congress could have intended with the statute.
And it's funny that you act informed about this but are playing ignorant the politics of the Trump admin's cronyism with Kalshi and its sudden and unprecedented designation of it as a DCM. Resting in the shallow depth of the 3rd circuit's opinion isn't a good place to be when you really think about what that court represents. And do you really think the supreme court is going to say that the executive branch can decide what congress intended by making designations like that? Fat chance. There's nothing in the congressional record that could ever indicate an intent to give the CFTC power to preempt state sports gambling laws on an individual corporate basis by special designation.
I feel like you're just interested in this for the culture war politics of it and take up the law as a barb. You're just being rude up and down this thread with your intuitive arguments which are really just legal non sequiturs but you don't get that because you don't do actual legal analysis (which is fine, I see all sorts of analyses on this site that I can't do, I just read in those circumstances).
Edit: 2nd circuit denied Kalshi's request for an injunction against NY's enforcement. So yeah... I think I'm within pretty good grounds to reasonably disagree with the 3rd circuit. You really just come off like a buffoon.
2) The CME copper futures contract (/HG) is also physically settled.
/ES futures are used to hedge an SPX position or speculate on SPX. SPX options are also cash settled.
I’m not going to allow you to depose me, if you want to know more about futures contracts, CME and CBOE publish information on all of their futures contracts.
Then I won't ask you what the difference is between speculation and gambling. Instead I'll just declare myself the winner of this debate.
The event contract isn't tied to the delivery of a good or service.