an offer for Commodity Futures Trading Commission A Tuesday filing shows that a plan to regulate prediction markets like Kalshi and PolyMarkets is under review by the White House.
Description of the proposal that is being reviewed Office of Management and BudgetNot visible on filing.
CNBC has requested comment from the CFTC, Kalshi and Polymarket on the filing. bloomberg This was reported earlier on Wednesday.
CFTC Chairman michael selig On January 29, the agency said it planned to write rules to regulate prediction markets as it scrapped a proposed rule that would have banned trading on sports and politics on those platforms.
Commodity Futures Trading Commission headquarters in Washington, December 23, 2022.
Ting Shen | Bloomberg | getty images
The agency has argued in public statements and in courts that it has exclusive authority to regulate the growing forecasting markets sector rather than individual states, some of which seek to exercise such authority.
Tuesday’s filing came on the same day that President Donald Trump social media postSaid, “It is extremely important that the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction over prediction markets remains, and that they flourish.”
“Under my leadership, we are setting the ‘rules of the road’ that are the gold standard for the states. We cannot have SCUMs like Chris Christie, Letitia James, Tim Walz, and JB Pritzker setting the rules!” Trump wrote. “Other countries are following this new form of financial markets and we want to stay on top,” he wrote.
All of the elected officials named have previously been the targets of Trump’s sharp attacks for other reasons.
Christie, a former governor of New Jersey, is a strategic advisor to the American Gaming Association, which opposes allowing prediction markets to offer contracts on the outcomes of sporting events.
“Prediction markets are clearly illegal in the sports gaming arena,” Christie told CNBC’s Contessa Brewer in an interview in December 2025.
He said it is up to individual states to decide whether to allow sports betting on authorized platforms and regulate their business.
James, who is New York’s attorney general, filed the lawsuit in April coinbase And GeminiBecause what his office said he was “running illegal gambling operations in New York through his so-called ‘prediction market’ platforms.” He is also part of a consortium supporting state attorneys general. Massachusetts lawsuit Against Kalushi for offering sports contracts to its residents in alleged violation of state gambling laws.
Minnesota Governor Walz signed the nation’s first last week Ban on prediction markets By an individual state. In April Illinois Governor Pritzker signed an executive order banning state officials and employees from betting on prediction markets with confidential information.
on sunday, the new York Times Published an article about the CFTC with the title “How Prediction Markets and Crypto Firms Steamrolled a Watchdog Agency.”
The article detailed that, “The three companies – each with ties to the Trump family business empire – needed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to pursue their ambitions in the white-hot sector.” prediction market.” The companies mentioned by the New York Times are Crypto.com, Polymarket and Gemini Titan, an offshoot of Gemini.
The article said that despite concerns from senior career officials at the CFTC about various issues related to those firms, “Caroline D. Pham, then acting chair of the commission, and her senior counsel intervened to help the firms get what they wanted, according to people familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of repercussions.”
CNBC has asked the CFTC for comment on the article.
Gary Gensler, former chairman of both the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission, told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Wednesday that despite the CFTC’s current claims, the agency is not authorized under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act to regulate prediction markets.
Gensler said states, not the CFTC, should regulate those markets.
“If Congress wants to change it, it can fix it, but I will say that I don’t think the CFTC has the ability to oversee prediction markets now in 2010 or in 2026,” he said. “It’s a smaller agency now than it was 15 years ago, and the capital markets have grown significantly.”
In this photo illustration, apps for online prediction market sites are shown on an electronic device in Chicago, Illinois, on February 25, 2026.
Scott Olson | getty images
“And, oh my God, it’s going to be … regulating sports contracts, gaming betting contracts on whether or not a particular basketball player gets a three-point play in the third quarter? I don’t think that’s its expertise.”
“Its expertise is amazing, but it is narrow and targets institutional public hedging exposure in agricultural products, energy products and interest rate products,” Gensler said.
He predicted that the dispute over whether the CFTC or individual states have the power to regulate prediction markets would ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes client acquisition and minority investment.