Comment Text:
Prediction markets pose a great harm to the United States. Firstly, they allow people to bet on events, even events including disasters, violence or crimes, and then participate in the event. Therefore financially incentivizing socially-negative and evil behavior.
Secondly, without age or user regulation this allows children or people with known gambling problems to take part in potentially financially-ruinous activity. This is an obvious harm - especially with legal sports betting. This acts as an easy gateway for young people to begin gambling and, statistically, lose money they don't have.
Lastly, allowing prediction markets where anyone can place a bet on (nearly) anything creates a world where people are focused on outcomes of events not because of the actual repercussions they will have on their lives but rather whether they hit a bet. This can easily lead to a doomer-ism where people fall into a trap of betting on a worst-case scenario then, consciously or subconsciously, working to bring about more and more negative scenarios. I don't see this happening in the opposite because in nearly every case it is far easier, whether using a metric of effort or finance, to cause bad things to happen rather than good.
In closing, I believe the CFTC should look closely and either broadly and harshly regulate or outright ban prediction markets - especially those that allow betting on any real-world event.
