CFTC Commissioner: Election prediction markets on platforms like Kalshi “will continue to exist”

Odaily News Contracts for election campaigns on platforms like Kalshi “are here to stay,” U.S. CFTC Commissioner Summer K. Mersinger said Tuesday during a webinar for the conservative legal group The Federalist Society.
“Congress can always tell us differently. We’ll adjust, of course, to do what they ask us to do,” Mersinger said during the cryptocurrency-focused webinar. “But in terms of how the commission handles things going forward, unless there’s rulemaking that changes the status quo, election contracts are going to continue to exist and we’re going to have to adapt to that environment and that market. And I think that’s a good thing.”
Mersinger discussed whether election prediction markets could affect the integrity of elections, saying, "There are a lot of safeguards on these contracts to ensure that certain manipulations don't happen. I think we have to look carefully at these contracts as they go live, but the days of being able to unilaterally say 'no' and say everything is a game are gone, and the Commission is going to have to take a new approach, and we have to be more supportive of innovation and understand that some things may look different than what we know or what we're used to, but different is not bad." She noted that these platforms have utility. (The Block)