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About Durak
Polymarket and other prediction markets that ventured into sports trading last year maintain that they’re financial platforms governed by federal law.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) agrees, continuing to defend its claimed “exclusive jurisdiction” over sports prediction markets in federal and state courts across the nation.
The legal wrangling extends to Michigan, where Attorney General Dana Nessel has rejected Polymarket and the CFTC’s arguments that the Michigan Gaming Control Board has no regulatory authority over prediction markets, even the ones allowing traders to buy and sell shares of sports outcomes.
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Sponsorship activities involving children and adolescents, schools, and youth sports categories are also prohibited. Betting companies will also be banned from associating their brand with campaigns or projects related to mental health, suicide prevention, financial education, treatment of gambling disorders, social assistance, prevention of over-indebtedness or protection of vulnerable families.
Operators may not use data from individuals who have self-excluded, are undergoing treatment, or have requested to block marketing in order to attempt to reactivate them. Repeated or intrusive messages and offers directed at users who have reduced their gaming frequency, registered significant losses, triggered limits or shown signs of risky behaviour are also prohibited.
The text also bans exploiting situations of economic crisis, unemployment, debt, emotional distress, grief, anxiety, depression, loneliness, or other conditions of vulnerability to attract, retain or reactivate gamblers.
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Its failure also leaves unresolved disputes over prediction markets and state and tribal gaming authorities, outside a comprehensive congressional framework. Those issues took on new significance during Senate floor debate over the bill, as concerns about federal commodities oversight extended to markets typically regulated at the state or tribal level.
The latest filing is an early step in filling some of that regulatory gap for the CFTC. The agency can issue regulations under its current statutory authority, but those regulations would not necessarily be as permanent as legislation passed by Congress.
For now, the important news is that the CFTC has officially started the administrative process. Only once the rulemaking progresses and the underlying proposal is available for public review will the extent of its eventual crypto framework become clear.