Comment Text:
Prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi are being dressed up as something smarter and more helpful to the public good than gambling, but it’s just the same old game with a shinier, more intellectual mask, and not even the decency to be transparent about actual odds or offer additional services.
First off, they encourage people to bet on literally anything: elections, disasters, economic outcomes, and even human suffering. Commodifying real-world consequences and disasters, potentially encouraging such disasters to occur, or at least for people to cheer them on. I don't want to live in a world where people can bet on the death toll of a hurricane. When people start rooting for outcomes because they have money on them, that distorts incentives in a pretty uncomfortable way.
Then there’s the illusion of “wisdom of the crowd.” In theory, markets aggregate information. In practice, most participants aren’t experts, just people speculating, guessing, and in logical cases the group can be more correct than not. But that isn't a magical machine that predicts the future. It's not even useful like a survey, because people's opinions are biased by cash. It focuses more on herd behavior, hype cycles, and the manipulation by people in authority or with wealth. A few whales or coordinated groups can move prices, and suddenly it looks like “the market thinks X,” when really, it’s just a handful of people pushing odds. Unhelpful!
And let’s talk about accessibility. These platforms lower the barrier to entry; you can download them on your phone from your couch, and they don't even ask for ID. These factors make it so easy that people who would never walk into a casino suddenly find themselves wagering on geopolitical events from their phone. It doesn’t feel like gambling, which is exactly the problem; it IS gambling, just wrapped in charts, probabilities, and pseudo-analysis to make it feel more like an investment or something.
Regulation is another mess. And this is really where the root of my comment comes in for the CFTC. These prediction market companies exist in this gray zone, claiming to be financial tools, hedge protections, or forecasting mechanisms, yet behaving like betting platforms. That ambiguity makes it harder to enforce consumer protections and easier for users to get burned without fully understanding the risks. There needs to be immediate regulation implemented with severe consequences for breaking regulations, otherwise people will get hurt. It is not too late to keep people safe, so you must do something now.
Otherwise, our daily lives will become a constant stream of markets turning everything into a spectacle. Elections become horse races, crises become odds boards, and nuance disappears. Complex issues get reduced to binary outcomes you can bet on, which is a terrible way to engage with the world. I urge the Commission to act now to clarify rules, close regulatory gaps, and implement safeguards before this model becomes more deeply embedded. The longer this ambiguity persists, the greater the risk to the public.
Thank you for your consideration.
