A proposal for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to regulate prediction markets such as Calci and Polymarket is being considered by the White House, according to Tuesday’s filing.
Details of the proposal are being reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget and are not included in the filing.
CNBC has reached out to the CFTC for comment on the filing, Bloomberg reported earlier Wednesday.
A Kalsi spokesperson had no comment on the filing. Polymarket did not respond to requests for comment.
On January 29, CFTC Chairman Michael Selig withdrew a proposed rule that would have prohibited trading on sports and politics in prediction markets, saying the agency plans to create rules to govern prediction markets.
Commodity Futures Trading Commission Headquarters in Washington, December 23, 2022.
Ting Sheng | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The agency has argued in public statements and in court that it has exclusive authority to regulate the growing prediction market sector, not individual states, and that some states are seeking to exercise that authority.
Tuesday’s filing came on the same day that President Donald Trump said in a social media post that it is “critically important that the CFTC’s exclusive authority over prediction markets is maintained and that prediction markets thrive.”
“Under my leadership, we are setting the state’s gold standard, the ‘Rules of the Road.’ We cannot set the rules for scum like Chris Christie, Letitia James, Tim Walz, and J.B. Pritzker!” Trump wrote. “Other countries are also looking for this new type of financial market, and we want to stay on top,” he said.
All elected officials have been the target of President Trump’s vitriolic attacks for other reasons.
Mr. Christie, a former New Jersey governor, is a strategic advisor to the American Gaming Association and opposes prediction markets being allowed to offer contracts on the outcome of sporting events.
Christie told CNBC’s Contessa Brewer in a December 2025 interview that prediction markets are “obviously illegal in the sports gaming space.”
He said it is up to each state to decide whether to allow sports betting on licensed platforms and regulate that business.
James, New York’s attorney general, sued Coinbase and Gemini in April, accusing his office of “illegally operating gambling operations in New York through so-called ‘prediction market’ platforms.” She is also part of a consortium of state attorneys general assisting in Massachusetts’ lawsuit against Carsi for allegedly offering sports contracts to residents in violation of state gaming law.
Last week, Minnesota’s Governor Walz became the first state in the nation to sign a ban on prediction markets. In April, Illinois Governor Pritzker signed an executive order banning state employees and employees from using confidential information to bet on prediction markets.
On Sunday, the New York Times published an article about the CFTC with the headline, “How prediction markets and crypto companies are pushing the watchdog into action.”
The article detailed how “three companies, each with ties to the Trump family’s business empire, needed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to bless their ambitions in the hotly contested field of prediction markets.” The companies mentioned by the New York Times are Crypto.com, Polymarket, and Gemini Titan, an offshoot of Gemini.
The article said that although career CFTC officials expressed concerns about various issues related to these companies, “then-Acting CFTC Chair Caroline D. Pham and her senior advisers stepped in to help the companies get what they wanted, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions.”
CNBC reached out to the CFTC for comment on this article.
Former CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” Wednesday that despite the CFTC’s current claims, the agency is not authorized to regulate prediction markets under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.
Gensler said states, not the CFTC, should regulate these markets.
“If Congress wants to change it, they can work it out, but I don’t think the CFTC has the ability to oversee prediction markets as it did in 2010 or as it does now in 2026,” he said. “Institutions are smaller now than they were 15 years ago, and capital markets have grown significantly.”
In this photo illustration, an online prediction market site’s app is displayed on an electronic device on February 25, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois.
Scott Olson | Getty Images
“And, lo and behold, would that be…regulating sports contracts or regulating game betting contracts as to whether a particular basketball player gets a 3-point play in the third quarter? I don’t think that’s the expertise.”
“Their expertise is impressive, but narrow in scope, covering institutional public hedging risks in agricultural products, energy products, and interest rate products,” Gensler said.
He predicted that the dispute over whether the CFTC or states have the authority to regulate prediction markets will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalsi have a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and minority ownership.
