Prev: @YaleLawSch @PrincetonSPIA|| Ed Reform, Policy & Philanthropy|| Development & Communications|| @Cornell Univ Trustee
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Emphasis on #2, @evan7257.
And an opportunity for incoming #Texas AG to take more national leadership against #predictionmarkets, which have sidestepped Texas laws in offering sports betting within the state.
Eg, why are there “Kalshi’s are here” billboards on 610?!
Asa Craig retweeted
Sports prediction markets are sports bets. By effectively requiring prediction markets to offer contracts in all 50 states, even on Tribal lands, the CFTC is once again violating state law and Tribal sovereignty.
Despite ongoing litigation and court orders to cease offering contracts in several states and Tribal lands as recently as today, the CFTC and its rogue chairman now appear to be encouraging platforms to continue offering gambling products in contempt of these court orders.
This is the CFTC’s most egregious attempt yet to undermine state law, the Tribes, and now, the courts. The CFTC chairman has been captured by the industry and his actions reflect only their interests.
Derivatives markets must operate on a uniform basis on a national scale in order to achieve the purposes set out in the Commodity Exchange Act. Geographic access restrictions undermine the national uniformity and consistency that the Act is intended to facilitate.
Today's interpretative guidance ensures that exchanges provide competitive, open, fair, and impartial access to their members pursuant to @CFTC regulations.
Good @WALLACHLEGAL thread on the latest administrative #predictionmarkets chicanery
Asa Craig retweeted
"Prediction market" is what some overpaid consultant came up with. "Gambling" is the term you're looking for.
“Good idea, bad mass consumer product. And an insufferable communication strategy”
Emphasis on the last part @RyanJ_Heath
On the prediction markets vs. models vs. legacy institutions debate (talking about elections, but most of what I'm saying also applies to sports):
- The markets obviously tailed the high-quality models, and Kalshi trying to act like they knew "more than the experts" is embarrassing and dumb. PMs would have done much worse in the lead-up to Nov. 3rd if Nate Silver, Lakshya Jain, etc. didn't publicize their work. And to whatever extent they'd have been close, it would be because of market participants using similar private models.
- That said, on election night / as new information is rapidly coming in for hundreds of races, I found the PMs to be a useful snapshot of what we knew from people incentivized to be correct about the specific race they were putting action on. They weren't always right (NE Senate for the independent got up to 70% at one point, etc.), but as long as you know what a prediction market is actually saying, I found them useful as a spectator, alongside Kornacki on my screen.
- It is true that PMs correctly hit 99% or more for most outcomes 1-2 hours before any legacy media organizations called races, but the incentives here are very different. A 1% error rate for NYT, FOX, NBC, etc. in calling a race's result would be catastrophic and unacceptable. I think it's good that we have institutions whose incentive is to be right rather than fast.
I continue to think that prediction markets have practical uses, but the push (in their marketing and business practices) to get recreational bettors/"dumb money" onto them to provide liquidity to the sharks (at best) or literal insiders (at worst) as much as possible so they can make money is caustic and bad.
Good idea, bad mass consumer product. And an insufferable communication strategy.
Election markets a *SLIM* percentage of #predictionmarkets volume, but even here, we’re seeing growing backlash for the #gamblifyeverything mantra pushed by industry…
@NateSilver538 @chrislhayes @galendruke—sounds like someone needs to pen a longer critical piece on this!!
Well @NateSilver538 already has a piece up 😂
Still, more coverage and takes plz 🙏🏾
Asa Craig retweeted
I am 100% Team Nate in this beef. It’s *obvious* to anyone paying attention that the betting markets just moved over time towards the models. That’s the info they were working off of! They didn’t “discover” anything
Asa Craig retweeted
Give me a break, the polls and models provided the direction in contast to vibes and dumb insiders. And yes it's good that traders were smart enough to trust them. But the better election models were more confident about the outcome than the markets and got there more quickly.
Last night, the power to decide what America sees changed hands.
I have spent a ton of time in DC over the last few months. The elites were certain the markets were off. I heard many variants of “no chance markets are right about X” and “I’ve been in politics for a decade. ‘These people’ don’t really know much.”
Last night, ‘these people’ beat the elites.
Prediction market favorites won 479 of the first 487 races. That’s 98%.
The elites live in a bubble. They theorize, write, ideate, and mistake credentials for an understanding of lives they’ve never lived. They don’t see and feel what the everyday man, on the ground, sees and feels.
Knowledge is not exclusive to the elites but scattered across millions of people.
Someone knows their hometown better than any national pundit. Someone has followed a local race passionately for months. Someone has followed a local race dispassionately for months. Someone notices a shift in their community before it makes the headlines. Someone is shaped by an incident at work. Someone is shaped by what’s getting harder or easier for their families.
Each holds a piece of the picture that no expert can see in full.
And for the longest time, that knowledge had no way to reach the rest of the world.
For generations, election night meant turning on the TV and waiting for a handful of people to tell you what happened.
Prediction markets change that.
You don't need a title, a large following, or an editor to publish you. All you need is a perspective and the conviction to back it.
That changes who holds power over information.
Anyone can see the market. Anyone can contribute to it. Anyone can question it. No title gives you the final word. No gatekeepers can filter your view.
Sometimes the signal can be wrong. But anyone can challenge the consensus and improve it.
And when people consolidate their knowledge together, something remarkable happens: millions of individual perspectives become a signal that we all can learn from.
Over the last few months, the people showed up on Kalshi to tell the world what they were going to do.
Last night, the megaphone was passed to them.
Asa Craig retweeted
The CFTC is behaving like the Office of Thrift Supervision. Given the conflicts they’re creating with a bipartisan coalition of states, this isn’t sustainable and at a certain point it’s going to provoke a real rethinking of the agency by Congress.
Significant escalation via the @CFTC, which has ordered prediction markets to stop geofencing states within 30 days, or explain why they can’t.
Puts Kalshi in precarious spot, on a collision course with court orders in Michigan, Nevada & Washington, where its sports contracts are currently banned.
Asa Craig retweeted
“He was particularly critical of the Third Circuit’s reasoning, describing its approach as a ‘threadbare, plain-meaning analysis’ that largely separates statutory language from its broader context.”
More from @MikeBreen513:
nextpredict.io/market-news/l…
Sen. @robportmanOH kicking off @OhioChamber #ImpactOhio Luncheon w/ @Arnold_Ventures @johnarnold @LauraArnoldFdn. Re #Affordability & how #permittingreform can help country, his #Elections2026 reflection:
“… the country spoke & said they want us to work together on solutions”
All eyes indeed on #Nebraska 👀
Vote share against #sportsbetting legalization tracking broader public sentiment anti #predictionmarkets and “bet on anything” mantra—see eg @aibm_org’s public opinion analysis (aibm.org/research/most-ameri…)
Asa Craig retweeted
YOUNG VOTERS slam online sports betting in Nebraska?
The measure to legalize sports betting did far WORSE in Lancaster County (home to the University of Nebraska) than statewide.
58% in Lancaster vs 54.5% statewide
A historic defeat for the traditional online sports betting industry appears to be looming in the US state of Nebraska, the only state voting on the topic this election.
Despite $23 million to $0 in support of legalizing it (according to Nebraska Plains Ledger data), the measure appears to be in big trouble. Only 41% of votes have been counted as of this post, but the tally for legalizing online sports betting is down ~7 points (NYT/AP).
Nebraska would be just the second state after California in 2022 to reject legalizing online sports betting at the ballot box.
Legal online sports gambling isn't as controversial as AI data centers, but it's quite unpopular.
An Overton Insights poll from May found American voters opposed legalization 47% to 31%.
Prediction markets, which offer sports betting outside state regulation, are even more controversial, according to other polling.
Eight years after the Supreme Court overturned the federal prohibition, U.S. online sports betting has run amok, according to numerous public health experts and policymakers I've interviewed. The public appears to be turning on it. Even if Nebraskans narrowly approve it, the industry is losing favor with the American public.
As a result, public health reform related to online gambling is gaining momentum.
I pause general election commentary for some #sportsbetting elections commentary via @brianjpempus:
“#Nebraska would be just the second state after California in 2022 to reject legalizing online sports betting at the ballot box.”
A historic defeat for the traditional online sports betting industry appears to be looming in the US state of Nebraska, the only state voting on the topic this election.
Despite $23 million to $0 in support of legalizing it (according to Nebraska Plains Ledger data), the measure appears to be in big trouble. Only 41% of votes have been counted as of this post, but the tally for legalizing online sports betting is down ~7 points (NYT/AP).
Nebraska would be just the second state after California in 2022 to reject legalizing online sports betting at the ballot box.
Legal online sports gambling isn't as controversial as AI data centers, but it's quite unpopular.
An Overton Insights poll from May found American voters opposed legalization 47% to 31%.
Prediction markets, which offer sports betting outside state regulation, are even more controversial, according to other polling.
Eight years after the Supreme Court overturned the federal prohibition, U.S. online sports betting has run amok, according to numerous public health experts and policymakers I've interviewed. The public appears to be turning on it. Even if Nebraskans narrowly approve it, the industry is losing favor with the American public.
As a result, public health reform related to online gambling is gaining momentum.
Congrats @MannyRutinel!!!!
Legendary one for @OldTakesExposed
