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Regulation 22 Aug 2026 Who Is Protected When a Regulator Declares an Emergency? The CFTC ordered a derivatives exchange to stay open on 11 August 2026, and much of the coverage read it as a federal shield. The order itself, and a Connecticut ruling four days later, say something narrower and far more useful to anyone running a venue. Read more →

Regulation 21 Aug 2026 When the Exchange Owns the Market Maker The CFTC has proposed to bar a firm from trading its own money on an exchange it shares an owner with, then hand back one narrow exception for an affiliate that does nothing but make markets. The structure it describes is the one most prediction market venues are built on. Comments close on 5 October 2026, which is why this is worth reading in August rather than after it is settled. Read more →

Industry News 20 Aug 2026 Bought Volume Is Not Demand: The CFTC Incentive Advisory On 12 August 2026 the CFTC's Division of Market Oversight issued an advisory on how exchanges self certify incentive programs. It reads as a filing manual, but the checklist it sets out is a design test, and a footnote gives exchanges until 14 September 2026 to review programs they have already certified. Here is what it asks, and why volume bought at a threshold is not the same thing as demand. Read more →

Industry News 19 Aug 2026 A Price Is Not an Odds Line: Display Is a Compliance Signal On 7 August 2026 the CFTC told regulated venues to stop showing event contract prices in the plus and minus shorthand used by sportsbooks. Read quickly, it is a note about styling. Read properly, it is an anti-fraud letter that treats the surface where the trade happens as part of the product, and it lands while the same platforms are telling courts that their sports contracts are not bets. Read more →

Regulation 18 Aug 2026 Two Courts, Two Answers: Operating While the Map Contradicts Itself A federal court in New York said states may enforce gambling laws against sports event contracts. Twenty days later a federal court in Minnesota said a state ban was likely preempted. Both read the same statute. Here is what that split, and the Utah, Washington and CFTC actions that followed it, actually means for anyone running a prediction market as of 18 August 2026. Read more →

Regulation 17 Aug 2026 The Gaming Definition Is a Measuring Stick, Not a Threat For years the fight over prediction markets turned on a word nobody had defined. The CFTC proposal published on 12 June 2026 defines it, and in doing so hands every operator something more useful than a warning: a written test they can run against their own order book before anyone runs it for them. Read more →

Industry News 2 Apr 2026 The Trust Layer: What a Responsible Prediction Market Must Prove Before It Scales Prediction markets have already built the speed layer: liquidity bursts, headlines, fast-moving contracts, and viral attention. What they still have to prove is the trust layer. A market that wants to scale responsibly must show not only that people want to trade it, but that the venue is governable, the contracts are defensible, the rules are visible, and ordinary users are not being asked to underprice hidden structural risk. Read more →

Regulation 1 Apr 2026 Prediction Markets Legal Tracker: March 2026 March 2026 may prove to be the month when prediction markets stopped looking like a fast-growing niche and started looking like a full legal category under pressure from every direction at once. Federal rulemaking, staff advisories, state lawsuits, criminal charges, and new legislative proposals are now converging on the same question: what kind of prediction market will be allowed to survive. Read more →

Education 31 Mar 2026 Margin and Leverage: The Next Big Fault Line in Prediction Markets Prediction markets today are generally fully collateralized, which naturally limits some of the worst retail risks. That may not remain true forever. Once margin and leverage enter the category, the entire risk profile changes, and so does the difference between a responsible market and a dangerous one. Read more →

Education 30 Mar 2026 Numbers That Matter: The 10 Metrics That Actually Describe a Prediction Market Prediction markets love headline numbers: total volume, number of listed contracts, users, and media mentions. But those metrics often say very little about whether a market is actually tradable, fair, resilient, or useful. A serious evaluation starts with the numbers that describe quality, not just activity. Read more →

Education 29 Mar 2026 Sports Contracts: The Growth Engine and the Weakest Legal Flank Sports contracts are helping prediction markets scale faster than any other category. They are easy to understand, easy to distribute, and easy to trade. But they are also where the industry looks most vulnerable to gambling comparisons, manipulation concerns, insider-risk, and direct conflict with state regulators. Read more →

Education 28 Mar 2026 Settlement Risk: Being Right Is Not Enough Prediction markets are not won only by forecasting the event correctly. They are also won or lost through contract wording, resolution sources, fallback rules, dispute procedures, and the venue's ability to turn a messy real-world event into a fair and final settlement. If you do not understand the settlement layer, you are not only trading the event. You are trading ambiguity. Read more →

Insights on responsible prediction markets.