The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) abandoned its appeal in its case against Kalshi, a prediction market based in New York, according to a judicial file on Monday, finally paving the way to the platform to offer contracts for political events.
Under the conditions of the request in voluntary dismissal, which is always subject to the approval of the court, the two parties will pay their own legal costs and Kalshi renounces any right to continue the CFTC for the dispute.
“Today is historic. We have always believed that doing things in the right way, no matter how much, whatever the pain, is useful. This result is proof,” Kalshi CEO, Tarek Mansour, said in a press release. “Kalshi’s approach has officially and definitively obtained the future of the prediction markets in America.”
Kalshi’s fight with the CFTC began in 2023, when the regulator refused Kalshi plan to let users bet on the Congress Chamber Control Party. At the time of denial, the CFTC – then under the direction of former President Rostin Behnam – said that such contracts involved illegal games and were “contrary to the public interest”.
In November, Kalshi continued the CFTC in Washington, DC, saying that the CFTC had survived its authority by trying to block the contracts and asking a judge to leave the decision. The court rose to the Kalshi side in September 2024, paving the way to the platform to list political contracts.
Immediately after losing the case, the CFTC rushed to cancel the decision of the district judge. He asked for a 14 -day stay of the prescription – basically, a two -week delay on Kalshi’s ability to list the contracts while the CFTC prepared for a call – and was refused. Then, he posted a call, reiterating many of the same arguments he had used in his original defense.
However, shortly after the oral arguments in early January, US President Donald Trump returned to work. His eldest son, Don Jr., joined Kalshi as a strategic advisor on January 13. Rob Schwartz, the lawyer general of the CFTC at the time of filing the call, left the agency in April after withdrawing the case in March.
Under the direction of the interim president Caroline Pham, the agency changed its approach to crypto, reducing several pieces of advice related to the crypto and shrinking its variety formerly on the scale of working groups for two, in an effort to simplify its regulation and the application of the cryptographic industry.
