Kalshi has gotten many of the policies it wants from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) since chairman Mike Selig assumed his role in December. Selig supports Kalshi’s main goal of having sports prediction markets governed by the federal agency rather than states.
Selig’s approach has aided Kalshi’s valuation run-up—last month, the firm said its most recent funding round came at a $22 billion valuation—and starkly contrasts how the CFTC worked when Joe Biden was president. Before 2025, the CFTC didn’t want to oversee exchange betting on sports (or elections) at all.
Selig, however, did not meet one recent request made by Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara.
In a letter to the CFTC dated April 30 regarding prediction market rulemaking, Lopes Lara asked Selig to crack down on Kalshi’s main competitor Polymarket for not doing enough to block U.S. citizens from accessing its unregistered international exchange. The CFTC’s much-anticipated rule proposal for exchange betting, released on Wednesday, makes no mention of that issue. It remains possible the CFTC will take on Polymarket separate from this round of rulemaking, but the agency has not indicated any plan to do so.
Kalshi declined to comment beyond its letter, but on Thursday morning, a study backed by the prediction market lobbying group Kalshi belongs to released a research paper claiming Polymarket’s international exchange has accepted billions of dollars in bets from people in the U.S.
