The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is taking a hard look at how prediction markets should be regulated, and it wants the public’s help figuring it out. The agency issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on March 12, soliciting feedback on a framework that could reshape how event contracts are evaluated, approved, and monitored.
The timing is not accidental. Prediction market trading volumes have been surging, with Kalshi alone reporting weekly volumes that climbed from $300 million to $3 billion between September 2025 and March 2026. That kind of tenfold growth in six months tends to get regulators’ attention.
What the CFTC is actually asking
The ANPRM, published in the Federal Register on March 16, covers six key topic areas. These include core regulatory principles, public interest concerns, manipulation risks, insider trading vulnerabilities, and, notably, the integration of blockchain technologies into prediction market infrastructure.
For the uninitiated: event contracts are essentially yes/no bets on whether something specific will happen. You buy a contract, and if the event occurs, it pays out at a fixed value of $1. If it doesn’t, you get nothing.
