You could argue, and I am arguing, that the current prediction market chaos starts with one man: President Donald Trump. And now he’s sounding like he’s not a big prediction market guy at all.
“The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino,” the former casino owner said on Thursday.
- Donald Trump’s recent negative comments about prediction markets signal potential political risk for the industry.
- Because regulators like the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are influenced by presidential appointees, the president's comments about them should carry serious weight.
- Without strong backing from the president, prediction markets could face stricter rules or setbacks regardless of legal arguments.
It sounded like Trump's comments were in response to being asked about alleged insider trading on prediction markets in connection with war. And I think his answer is pretty terrifying if you’re a prediction market operator.
“You look at what’s going on all over the world in Europe and every place, they’re doing these betting things,” he said. “I was never much in favor of it. I don’t like it, conceptually. But, it is what it is. I’m not happy with any of that stuff. They have all these different sites, they have predictive markets. It’s a crazy world. It’s a much different world than it was.”
Now, it’s very possible the president will say something different about prediction markets soon. It’s also possible he’s more worried about matters abroad or betting on war stuff, which is something U.S.-regulated prediction markets can be prohibited from offering. This could be an apples-to-oranges situation. It could be nothing.
But if you take what Trump said yesterday seriously, it is, in my humble opinion, kinda ominous for the federally regulated exchanges we call prediction markets.
NEWS: Pres. Trump says he "was never much in favor of" prediction markets. pic.twitter.com/GurAug74fM
— Gambling is Not Investing (@EndBackdoorBets) April 23, 2026
Because, really, it all starts with Trump. This current prediction market boom (which, it bears repeating, is driven largely by the trading of sports event contracts) begins booming in earnest when Trump moves back into the White House.
Yes, I know there are many lawyers and judges and court staffers who are very busy dealing with a ton of prediction market-related litigation that aims to divine whether sports-related event contracts are legal, among many other complicated things.
The buck stops at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
However, I’ve always believed that this issue, at base, is more political than legal. And if THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES isn’t on board with prediction markets, I think they have a problem.
You don’t even need to go back all that far for the political proof.
Prediction markets in the U.S. are overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the commissioners of which are appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate. In other words, the people who drive the bus at the CFTC are political appointees.
When Joe Biden was president, the CFTC was pushing back on prediction markets. The CFTC fought Kalshi over election-related event contracts, commissioners proposed a rule that would ban betting markets for politics and sports, and, in the closing days of the Biden administration, the commission said it would review Super Bowl-related event contracts.
Then the second Trump administration began. The CFTC dropped the election betting case, withdrew the anti-politics and sports betting proposal, and began actively fighting on behalf of prediction markets in court. Crypto.com withdrew its first batch of sports-related event contracts, the ones the Biden-era CFTC sought to review, and replaced them with new ones that haven’t been reviewed by the Trump-era CFTC.
You could blame prediction markets for making prediction markets happen. But the first obstacle to prediction markets doing anything is the CFTC, and the CFTC is made up of people appointed by a president who suddenly seems lukewarm about prediction markets.
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It's that easy
And if the president decides the CFTC needs to further restrict what prediction markets are doing, that could happen. That president could be a Democratic one who wins the 2028 election. It could also be the current one.
A president could appoint new CFTC commissioners who see the world in a much less favorable way for prediction markets. A president could also try to "bully pulpit" stricter regulations into existence.
“I don’t think it would be very difficult for the regulator to issue a rule making the case that the costs of this outweigh any potential benefit,” former CFTC general counsel Rob Schwartz said at a NEXT conference earlier this year.
So, yes, I think what President Trump said yesterday could be a scary thing for prediction markets and the people who are invested in them. Which, it is worth nothing, includes a firm backed by his own son.
Sure, maybe I’m overreacting. The president’s comments came amid some news that was pretty unflattering for prediction markets. This column could self-destruct the next time the president gets in front of a microphone.
But I think it's safe to say that if the president (this one, the next one, whoever is president a decade from now) isn’t a fan of prediction markets (and Trump really was when they were predicting his reelection), that’s trouble.
