Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, is signaling a potential congressional probe into the relationship between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and prediction market platforms including Kalshi and Polymarket.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, Kalshi allegedly pressured CFTC officials over delayed approvals for cryptocurrency perpetual futures. The report claims Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour called CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig to complain after the regulator did not move quickly enough to announce the platform's approval, forcing Kalshi to cancel a planned event at a Brooklyn luxury penthouse.
Blumenthal characterized the arrangement as problematic. "More strong signs that the CFTC is in prediction market pockets—as it approves sweeping new gambling on stock prices, cryptocurrencies, & more," Blumenthal stated on social media. "It puts the public in deep peril, setting consumer protection way below industry profits in priority. Time for Congress to act."
Kalshi's cryptocurrency perpetual futures, which allow users to bet on price movements without owning underlying assets and without expiration dates, generated $5.5 billion in trading volume within two weeks of their May launch.
The CFTC's expansion of perpetual futures to include U.S. stocks has drawn opposition from traditional finance exchanges. Under the Capital Markets Alliance umbrella, several exchange giants have filed a lawsuit arguing these products should fall under Securities and Exchange Commission oversight rather than CFTC regulation, contending they function more like security swaps than commodity futures due to their lack of fixed expiry dates.
