Kalshi and its co-founders face felony charges for violating Utah gambling laws

superxpro12

kalshi and polymarket are quite obvious gambling sites. any pedantic arguments to the contrary are strictly financial chaff to enhance their operating margins until the regulations finally catch up. they were never an innovating marketing play... it was the culmination of a gambling company committing to regulatory capture as evinced by Donald Trump Jr (totally not) sitting on BOTH BOARDS as a "paid strategic advisor" or whatever lie they want to spin.

10111001

This is outrageous! They're tech founders! Penny-ante things like "the law" don't apply to them! Somebody needs to tell Utah it needs to change its laws to adapt to their business plan, ASAP.

yowayb

i feel like there's some provable equivalency between gambling and pyramid schemes

a13n

Personally I’m a fan of the non sports side of these apps, Polymarket in particular. They are putting a financial incentive behind accurately predicting the future, which makes these apps basically the most accurate predictor of the future. Available to anyone to view, for free. It makes sense why they went towards sports gambling, because the market is so big.

mahboi

Wonder how proxies/VPNs play into this, since Utah was recently in the news about an age verification law that basically said you're liable if anyone physically in Utah accesses a restricted site.

paxy

There’s a reason both Kalshi and Polymarket were quick to make political connections (aka pay bribes). They know what they are doing is illegal, and waiting for legislation like sports betting apps did would take too long. So they bought get out of jail free cards instead.

pr337h4m

Nobody should ever be threatened with prison time because of a jurisdictional dispute between federal and state governments. That's antithetical to the rule of law, regardless of the specifics of the law or the jurisdictional dispute.

jawiggins

As much as I am a fan of being able to see the current probability of a future event by checking prediction markets - the argument that there is a meaningful difference between predicting the outcome of a sports game and betting on the outcome of a sports game strains credulity.

tfrancisl

When will we start holding the people who found and operate companies whose sole purpose is to break the law accountable, rather than letting them hide behind "limited liability"? These founders should be in prison for promoting illegal gambling. Same federal charges mafiosos get caught on for a "friendly card game".

timcobb

Just the day I saw a post in the Guardian referring to these things as prediction markets. It's so outrageous and undeserved

jsw97

I'm not sure specifically about the moral crusade against Kalshi and Polymarket, but I am glad to see that at least one state is serious about its sovereignty and is willing to go to the mat with criminal charges. Utah 100% has a right to enforce this and I hope they are successful. And taking on the feds too, that is a gutsy move. We need at least one state to do this when large corporations violate privacy laws.

tgsovlerkhgsel

Now do video game lootboxes.

shmde

> Let's confirm you are human Closes tab.

2OEH8eoCRo0

States rights!

jameson

I wonder if VCs should share responsibility or if their role should be purely to maximize monetary gains.

Miner49er

Options trading can be just as much gambling as Kalshi. Even insurance is similar, Kalshi markets can be used as a form of insurance. Yet AFAIK Utah doesn't ban either of those.

JaggerFoo

Kalshi is a trading platform. It's been more reliable than the stock market in my experience. In the times I traded sports contracts, I was able to reverse a trade during the event to prevent a total loss of contract investment, and buy back in if the momentum changed. But usually for the times I bought sports contracts and allowed it to complete, I was outperforming the stock market on a daily basis. The only stock market trade that outperformed was BWET at the start of the Iran War.

bentt

Kalshi ran a series of Youtube videos last year that were deepfakes of athletes saying really outrageous stuff. It was hilarious. It was also deeply provocative and exploitative. It showed exactly who they are... people who will test the edge of decency.

corford

Wasn't kalshi caught wash trading recently?

1-6

When I start seeing private party Nissan Sentras with big Kalshi advertisements, it starts to smell a lot like a pyramid scheme.