Polymarket Cleared by CFTC to Launch in U.S. for NFL Season

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Transcript

00:00and talk about the CFTC ruling that Polymarket is now back in the United States. I know that's

00:05not going to be ready for the weekend, and also probably a quick synopsis as to what

00:09Polymarket is, would I'm sure help our viewers and listeners. Yeah, of course. Polymarket is

00:15the latest prediction market that's going to launch the sports platform. Just in time for

00:19NFL season, they got a letter from the CFTC this week that cleared them to launch. They actually

00:26have been a company that's been around the globe internationally taking sports prediction

00:31wagers. This is, of course, the mechanism that looks a lot like gambling, but these companies

00:38are calling it a prediction market service and say it's commodities trading and contracts

00:42trading, so it falls under federal oversight instead of state laws. It's allowed these

00:46companies to have these NFL spreads in all 50 states, and there's a big fight going on

00:52with that, but Polymarket has kind of been in the background while this is going in in

00:56the U.S. They've been out of the U.S. since 2022. They got kicked out for taking unregistered

01:02contracts on the election at the time. This was before a court ruling that said that, no,

01:07that's actually okay, so they had to pay a fine and stay out of the U.S., but now they have

01:11acquired a Florida-based exchange called QXC. So after acquiring that exchange and after getting

01:18the screen light from the CFTC, they can now essentially take NFL spreads, NFL bets, maybe

01:24even player props, and other sports bets in the United States and all 50 states for the

01:29foreseeable future. So we're going to have our ear to the ground to see when they actually

01:32do end up launching. They can launch as soon as today. They might not get ahead for the

01:37weekend, though. I'm not sure how quickly they'll be able to get everything up and running,

01:40but they're a big rival of Kalshi. They just got valued at a billion dollars a couple of months

01:45ago. So that was kind of the breadcrumbs that maybe they're going to enter the U.S. market

01:49again if they're getting valued so high. Kalshi's valued at two billion. And the sides are very

01:54much kind of rivals with each other, and they've been rivals overseas. But now that they're in the

01:59U.S. doing sports, it's going to kind of turn up the heat a little bit more on how they can

02:03out-compete each other. So really interesting to see what Polymarket does, what the product

02:07actually ultimately looks like. And then, of course, what states and courts ultimately decide

02:13or say on the matter will be something that we'll have to decide or see about on a later

02:16date. But it certainly is quite a messy space right now.