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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.
Last week we published It's a Longshot, on Bloomberg's analysis of more than a billion Kalshi and Polymarket trades and what our own parlay data shows about the bets that are getting longer and longer.
Four more tribes have launched prediction market apps built on Kalshi, taking Kalshi's tribe partners to five.
Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town in Oklahoma, with PokkeTrades
Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation in California, with Sovereign Edge
Greenville Rancheria in California, with Greenville
Alturas Indian Rancheria in California, with AIR Markets
Each tribe owns its app and its brand, and handles its own marketing and customer relationships.
Kalshi do the rest (trading underneath, matching buyers and sellers, clearing trades, holding funds, monitoring for manipulation), and every app shares Kalshi's pool of traders.
If you've been following along, this is the same model the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana started with SaltTrade on 18th September 2026, two days after the Ninth Circuit ruled that Kalshi's sports contracts count as Class III gaming on tribal land.
Tribes took $46.2 billion in gross gaming revenue in the 2025 financial year.
All four are small tribes, three of which are in California. If you read our piece on the tribes fighting Kalshi, you'll remember California's tribes led the campaign against Proposition 27 in 2022, which 82% of voters rejected, and retail and online sports betting are still illegal there.
Three tribes are still suing Kalshi, though:
Blue Lake Rancheria
Ho-Chunk Nation
Mescalero Apache Tribe
Blockchain.com have applied to the CFTC for two licences, one to run an exchange (a designated contract market, or DCM) and one to act as a broker (a futures commission merchant, or FCM), so they can offer event contracts and crypto derivatives to US customers.
They already offer both outside the US, prediction markets through a partnership with Polymarket and perpetual futures through Hyperliquid.
"Users should be able to manage their digital assets, trade derivatives, and take positions on real-world events easily, without jumping between different apps," said Peter Smith, chief executive and co-founder.
They are the 12th company to file for a DCM licence in 2026, and the CFTC have approved six new DCMs this year.
Source: CFTC. Exchange (DCM) licences approved and applied for in 2026, to 12th October 2026. Greyed-out exchanges plan to list other futures, like crypto or AI compute, rather than prediction market products, based on their CFTC filings and announcements
Blockchain.com are also heading for the public markets. They filed confidentially for an IPO in May 2026, and are reported to be targeting about $500 million at a valuation of $4 billion to $6 billion before the end of 2026, well under the $14 billion they were valued at in 2022.
Crypto exchanges are coming at prediction markets from every direction. Crypto[dot]com and Gemini ($GEMI ( ▼ 5.61% )) run their own event contract exchanges, and Coinbase ($COIN ( ▼ 4.9% )) offer Kalshi's markets to their users. Gemini, for example, traded $9 million in the week to 10th October 2026.
Polymarket are rebuilding the plumbing under every market on their platform, replacing the code they've run on since 2019.
It comes as their international platform loses ground. We reported last month that their US exchange had overtaken it for the first time, and the international platform traded $913 million in the week to 10th October 2026, down 13% on the week before.
Traders have also had a rough few months on the platform itself. During the World Cup in June 2026, users posted #PolymarketDown complaints about failed trades and pages that wouldn't load. And on 31st August 2026, trading stopped twice in one day because the system couldn't load open orders, the second time for more than four hours.
The new version, Protocol V2, keeps everything a trader holds in one place instead of a patchwork of older systems.
Trades settle in pUSD, Polymarket's own dollar-pegged stablecoin, and markets can be resolved using results from several data providers rather than just one.
It also makes combos, Polymarket's parlay-style bundled bets, one of the core market types. Polymarket's US exchange only added them in August 2026, and they made up 45% of all contracts traded there in September 2026, rising to 51% so far in October 2026. That's catching up with Kalshi's 58% in September 2026, as we covered in It's a Longshot last week.
Testing runs until 30th October 2026, and new markets should switch over on 2nd November 2026.
It's Polymarket's second big rebuild this year. In April 2026 they overhauled their order book and switched to pUSD, which cancelled every open order on the platform.
New Jersey's petition asking the Supreme Court to hear its case against Kalshi picked up a wave of support this week.
39 states plus Washington, D.C.
The NFL
145 tribal nations and organisations
Christopher Dodd, co-author of Dodd-Frank, and Gary Gensler, former chair of the CFTC
All of them want the Court to settle the question at the centre of every Kalshi case. Kalshi's argument is that their sports contracts are swaps, which answer to the CFTC alone and sit outside state gambling laws.
The NFL broke with other leagues to back New Jersey, telling the Court that integrity protections only work if operators like Kalshi coordinate with leagues on their banned-bettor lists.
On 9th October 2026 the CFTC published both of the rules we covered last week, when they went to the White House for review.
A proposed rule folding event contracts on sports, politics, culture and weather into the swaps rules, open for 30 days of comment
An interim final rule saying casino-style gambling is not a swap
The second one goes straight at the states' main argument in court, that the CFTC's definition of a swap would make every bet at a state or tribal casino federally illegal.
The Supreme Court could decide whether to take New Jersey's case before the end of 2026.
Source: The Prediction. Notional volume on US-regulated venues, week to 10th 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 10th October 2026 versus the week before
🗞 General
Bloomberg finds longshots that lose 98% of the time dominate Kalshi and Polymarket trading (Read more here)
Verifact Markets launch a prediction market on disputed facts, letting traders wager true or false on past events like the origins of Covid-19 (Read more here)
Kalshi investigate three bets on Trump's new press secretary placed before the announcement, about $173 staked to win roughly $9,600 (Read more here)
Kalshi hire former FBI agent Sean Fern to lead their anti-money laundering team (Read more here)
A watchdog finds $20.5 million traded on 725 midterm markets whose outcomes insiders could know in advance (Read more here)
Kalshi survey their most profitable non-sports traders, finding 82% have never worked full-time in finance (Read more here)
Bank of America upgrade DraftKings to Buy ($DKNG ( ▼ 4.16% )), calling them the third-largest prediction market player through DKeX (Read more here)
The head of a prominent gambling addiction nonprofit resigns over a $2 million donation from Kalshi (Read more here)
Event contract bundles are boosting volume on prediction markets (Read more here)
Prediction markets' NFL boom tests sports betting rules (Read more here)
The FT on the wisdom of prediction markets (Read more here)
A prediction markets conference where Wall Street broke out (Read more here)
🤝 Announcements & Partnerships
Kalshi launch the US500, a perpetual future on a large-cap US stock index (Read more here)
Kalshi file with the CFTC for a never-expiring oil contract on WTI crude (Read more here)
Kalshi add low-volume tags, Brier scores and live trade feeds to their midterm election markets (Read more here)
Kalshi add an early-exit payout to some NFL player markets (Read more here)
Ronald Acuña Jr. become the first MLB player to partner with a prediction market, signing with Kalshi (Read more here)
Edge Markets build a tool to cover prediction market margin calls when banks are closed (Read more here)
Liquid launch 15-minute and one-day prediction contracts inside their perps accounts (Read more here)
⚖️ Regulation & Legal
The CFTC ask Kalshi, Polymarket, Rothera, Novig and others for details of their incentive programmes, due by 28th October 2026 (Read more here)
Kalshi ask the full Sixth Circuit to rehear their Ohio and Tennessee loss (Read more here)
Atlantic City's casinos file the 11th brief backing New Jersey at the Supreme Court (Read more here)
Ohio send cease-and-desist notices to 10 prediction market companies (Read more here)
An Illinois federal judge hands Kalshi a partial win (Read more here)
The Seminole Tribe sue DraftKings in Florida, saying their sports predictions and Pick6 are illegal sports betting (Read more here)
Kalshi offer to cap their own trading desk at 5% of quarterly volume in response to the CFTC's affiliate rules (Read more here)
Rep. Don Davis introduce a bill to stop federal candidates trading on their own races (Read more here)
Kalshi's random bonus of up to $2,000 outlasts a CFTC warning on chance-based rewards (Read more here)
State pressure forces prediction market pullbacks in Connecticut and Missouri (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.
The contents of this newsletter should not be used in any public or private domain without the express permission of the author.
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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.
