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This is our roundup newsletter. A weekly curated list of the biggest things happening in prediction markets.
This edition was written and researched by Omar El Safy and edited by Pet Berisha.
Our Q2 2026 report is still up. Prediction markets traded $111 billion in the quarter, more than 2024 and 2025 combined, across 70 pages of charts, and it is free. Read below 👇
Last week we published Polymarket's IPO Conundrum, on whether Polymarket list or launch their own token as Kalshi raises at $40 billion and the courts split on sports contracts.
Every one of this week's lawsuits rests on the same unsettled question: Does a CFTC licence override a state's gambling law?
That hasn't been decided yet, so instead of one ruling, every state is testing it on its own.
Missouri's attorney general gave eight operators 30 days to get licensed and pay the state's 10% wagering tax or stop offering sports contracts to Missourians, a deadline that ran out the week of 12 October 2026.
The response has split:
Crypto.com filed in Missouri's Western District on 16 October 2026.
Novig filed in the Eastern District the same day, through its exchange operator Ludlow Exchange LLC. Both argue the Commodity Exchange Act gives the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over their contracts, pre-empting Missouri's gambling law.
Kalshi, Polymarket and Robinhood held off. Kalshi are said to be in ongoing discussions with Missouri's AG.
Underdog sued Tennessee instead, over a separate 9 October 2026 cease-and-desist that can carry fines up to $25,000 per offence.
That argument lost ground twice this week. A federal magistrate in Kentucky recommended on 14 October 2026 that a similar case against Kalshi and Polymarket be sent back to state court, where federal preemption carries no weight.
Senate Commerce chairman Ted Cruz, usually read as the industry's ally, plans legislation after the midterms that would bar federally regulated prediction markets from sports contracts unless a state or tribe authorises them, Bloomberg Law reported.
Kalshi's Tarek Mansour argues state-led oversight would just push demand offshore.
New York skipped the jurisdiction fight and went straight for the money, suing Polymarket on 8 October 2026 for at least $4.6 billion. Polymarket asked a federal judge for an injunction four days later.
The SEC approved Cboe ($CBOE ( ▼ 2.12% )) on 14 October 2026 to list a new kind of bet on whether a public company hits a performance number, like Tesla's ($TSLA ( ▲ 3.34% )) car deliveries or Coinbase's ($COIN ( ▼ 2.37% )) trading volume.
These are binary options, contracts that pay out $1 or nothing depending on whether the number lands above or below a line Cboe sets, and the first batch covers more than 100 metrics across 23 companies. Robinhood ($HOOD ( ▼ 1.32% )) will be the first retail broker to offer them.
A different regulator's lane. These are securities options regulated by the SEC. Kalshi's and Polymarket's event contracts answer to the CFTC instead, and the order leaves that side of the business alone, preserving the CFTC's claim to the same company metrics.
Free to start. Cboe is waiving its exchange fees through the end of 2026, and Robinhood says it will not charge for the contracts either over the same period.
Not live yet. Cboe Clear U.S. still needs a clearing registration before trading can start.
A Los Angeles restaurant and bar group placed a $60,000 trade on Kalshi betting the Dodgers would not reach the World Series, hedging against lost foot traffic from games that never happened.
The group runs 25 bars near Dodger Stadium, though Reuters does not say whether the trade covered all of them, or name the group.
The Dodgers were swept in the NLCS, and Kalshi said the position returned nearly twice the stake.
Kalshi is also the Dodgers' own sponsor, under a multi-year partnership signed in August 2026 that put the exchange's branding on stadium signage and renamed the Gold Glove Bar the Kalshi 435 Club. Polymarket holds the equivalent deal with MLB at league level, as the league's exclusive prediction market partner since March 2026.
We have covered hedging a few times in Predicted. A bar on the Upper East Side collected about $8,000 on a $5,000 Knicks hedge, and a La Liga club paid €1.2 million for relegation cover on Kalshi, in A Bar in New York and a Spanish Football Club Hedge Their Future. An LA ice cream shop's weather positions cleared up to $1,500 a month against a $600 stake, in The Ice Cream Hedge, prompting one trader to argue a profitable hedge is just a disguised trade. A position that nearly doubles its stake, like this week's, sits on that same line.
Three venues were asked how much of their volume is real this week.
Kalshi. Six trade sizes, all between $4,000 and $5,500, made up 55.9% of the $17.56 billion traded on Kalshi’s ether perpetual (a bet on ether’s price with no expiry) in August and September 2026, Gambling Insider found.
On Binance and Hyperliquid, the most common size is under 4% of volume. Kalshi blame fast traders for picking off a market maker’s stale orders. If so, those traders should win most of the time. They won 39% of trades, against 36% for someone guessing at random.Polymarket. Its Ethiopia election market stayed open 123 days after the vote and traded $285 million, almost all of it on candidates who had already lost. $284 million came from pairs of accounts trading with each other, holding for a median of 9 seconds. The actual winner drew $173,000.
ADI Predictstreet. FIFA’s prediction market partner paid close to $150 million for World Cup advertising. $108 million of its $167 million volume came from wallets linked to the company, funded by the same wallet that collects its fees, the Wall Street Journal reported.
📊 This Week's Volumes
Source: The Prediction. Notional volume on US-regulated venues, week to 17th October 2026 versus the week before. † Novig is US-based but not CFTC-cleared
Source: The Prediction, Artemis. Volume on offshore and on-chain venues, week to 17th October 2026 versus the week before
🗞 General
Reuters/Ipsos poll finds most Americans oppose election betting, with 69% of Democrats and 61% of Republicans against using prediction markets to bet on election results, and three-quarters calling it gambling outright. The finding landed days after prediction markets posted a record $10.4 billion trading weekend, per Gambling Insider. (Read more here)
Midterm election trading is closing in on $1 billion, with more than $750 million wagered on 2026 House and Senate races on Kalshi and Polymarket as of 15 October 2026, nearly eight times 2024's $92.4 million, per the Anti-Corruption Data Collective. (Read more here)
CNN reports a fan backlash against prediction-market tie-ins with athletes and teams, after Novig's Sydney Sweeney campaign and a wave of similar sponsorships. WNBA all-star Nneka Ogwumike says players are facing safety threats from prediction-market users, Fortune reported. (Read more here)
Kalshi tell a Hawaii TV station they have 100,000 users in a state with no legal casinos, lottery or sports betting, and state lawmakers say they will weigh banning or taxing prediction markets next session. (Read more here)
Kalshi's top inflation trader is a former theatre director working from his garage, and he is beating Wall Street banks on monthly inflation prints, with more than $2 million in profit on Kalshi's economic contracts, Bloomberg reported. (Read more here)
🤝 Announcements & Partnerships
The NBA bans certain player prop bets and parlays, but the rules do not touch prediction markets, since no formal partnership gives it contractual reach over Kalshi's or Polymarket's sports contracts. (Read more here)
Kalshi partners with Signify on anti-harassment protections for athletes, which could include fines for abusive traders, Sportico reported. (Read more here)
StarkWare launches OffMarket, letting Polymarket users trade more privately. (Read more here)
Hacksaw Group launches a B2B prediction-markets platform, after Malta's Gaming Authority extended the company's licence to cover it. CEO Ana Vrabic Verdir called it a "compelling new opportunity," citing a Bernstein estimate that the industry could trade close to $1 trillion a year by 2030. (Read more here)
Lumina Markets launches a prediction-market app for US customers, giving retail traders access to ForecastEx contracts, the CFTC-registered exchange affiliated with Interactive Brokers ($IBKR ( ▼ 1.22% )). The company is personally backed by IBKR chairman Thomas Peterffy, and says it will not offer sports contracts or gamification mechanics. (Read more here)
💰 Funding & M&A
Furnace raises a $3.5 million seed round for a shared reference layer letting trading firms compare exposure across prediction-market exchanges, led by North Island Ventures. (Read more here)
⚖️ Regulation & Legal
CFTC Chair Michael Selig calls manipulation "the biggest issue" in sports event contracts, in his first interview since the Commission's 9 October 2026 proposal to classify event contracts as swaps. (Read more here)
Vanderbilt law professor Yesha Yadav says the Supreme Court will take up prediction markets, pointing to sports "fuelling an attention economy" around the industry. (Read more here)
Taiwan blocks Coinbase and Kalshi over suspected election bets, after a New Taipei court authorised the country's communications regulator to cut domestic access, with local elections six weeks away on 28 November 2026. (Read more here)
Oklahoma tribal chief denies a Kalshi partnership announced days earlier, telling PokerNewsDaily any suggestion of a deal is false. CNN reports the tribe's internal factions disagree on who has authority to sign for it. (Read more here)
Predicted is written by Pet Berisha and Omar El Safy. Every edition, our quarterly State of Prediction Markets reports and more at predicted.co.
Disclaimers
This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not financial, business or legal advice. These are the author's thoughts & opinions and do not represent the opinions of any other person, business, entity or sponsor. Any companies, platforms, markets or projects mentioned are for illustrative purposes unless specified.
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When you trade on prediction markets (including event contracts, opinion markets and other speculative instruments) your capital is at risk. Risks include price volatility, loss of capital, illiquidity, complexity, evolving regulation and lack of protection. Many prediction market operators do not currently operate in a fully regulated industry, and availability varies by jurisdiction. You may not be protected under financial compensation schemes typically afforded to investors dealing with regulated entities. Nothing in this newsletter constitutes a recommendation to place, hold, or close any position on any market.
