Wolverhampton, UK - 30th September 2025 - A landmark joint summit between the United States' top two financial regulators, the SEC and the CFTC, which was
Wolverhampton, UK - 30th September 2025 - A landmark joint summit between the United States’ top two financial regulators, the SEC and the CFTC, which was billed as a critical session to address the future of prediction markets, has concluded with the controversial topic being conspicuously ignored.
Despite the founders of the two most prominent platforms, Kalshi’s Tarek Mansour and Polymarket’s Shayne Coplan, participating as panellists, the official post-event statement from the agencies made no mention of prediction markets or event contracts. Instead, the regulators focused their remarks on broad, less contentious themes such as blockchain, AI, and the oversight of digital assets, which SEC Chair Paul Atkins described as the agencies’ “job No. 1.”
The outcome is being seen as a major missed opportunity and a deep disappointment for an industry craving regulatory clarity. In their 5 September statement announcing the roundtable, the SEC and CFTC had explicitly flagged “novel products” like event contracts as a key priority, promising to work together to avoid a “regulatory no man’s land.”
However, the summit itself shied away from this core issue, with the discussion kept to high-level themes of “innovation exemptions” and the need for inter-agency cooperation. While the presence of Mansour and Coplan was symbolic, the failure to engage on the substantive legal questions plaguing their industry has left the market exactly where it was: in a state of profound uncertainty.
This regulatory inaction comes at a time of escalating legal chaos for the prediction markets sector. Kalshi and its distribution partner Robinhood are currently fighting a multi-front war against a coalition of state and tribal gaming regulators, who argue that their sports-related event contracts are a form of illegal sports betting.
With lawsuits ongoing in California, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Nevada, the central question of whether these products are a federally regulated financial instrument or a state-regulated gambling game remains completely unresolved.
The failure of the SEC and CFTC to even publicly address prediction markets at their own dedicated summit has effectively kicked the can down the road. The message to the US market is that, for the foreseeable future, there will be no clear federal framework for this innovative but controversial vertical. Its fate will continue to be decided in a chaotic, expensive, and unpredictable case-by-case battle in the nation’s courtrooms, rather than by clear and proactive regulation from Washington.
