00:00Very interesting here that there is this company called Fair Predicts making comments about some
00:06of the prediction markets and their space. Very specifically, Calci sort of throwing out a
00:11derogatory comment toward this. Calci not really happy with the way that this is, but I guess I
00:16would ask you, Sam, and of course you could read the story at legalsportsreport.com. Tell me more
00:20about Fair Predicts and why what they say has such a big impact on what they're talking about.
00:27Yeah, it's a lot of finger pointing in this space right now amid one side saying you're lying,
00:33you're deceptive. The other side saying, no, actually you're lying, you're deceptive,
00:38which is kind of what you have happened when there's a new big industry or product that kind
00:43of begs regulation. Everyone scrambles to get a piece of it. And Calci certainly is the biggest
00:48prediction market right now operating. It has a ton of lawsuits where states are alleging what
00:53it's doing is sports betting. Calci says what it's doing is actually federally legal and permissible
00:58in all 50 states. That's the whole thing. And then you have this group called Fair Predicts,
01:03which calls itself a nonpartisan market watchdog group dedicated to exposing companies that it says
01:12are doing false advertising, insider trading, money laundering, and holding them accountable
01:17sort of in the public eye. It launched the six figure ad campaign just recently. It actually
01:23coincided with a Senate hearing on regulating prediction markets, but the campaign is called
01:28Calci lies. So it's no surprise that Calci is not happy with it. It basically says that Calci falsely
01:35advertised itself as, you know, being a platform where there's no house, where all the trading is peer to
01:41peer, you're, you know, you're betting against your friends and neighbors rather than a sports book
01:46itself. It's one of those kind of big marketing ploys that Calci has pushed out there as, you know,
01:53an alternative to sports books, which it calls predatory. But Calci lies, the campaign is saying
01:58that, you know, actually, that's not entirely true. Calci owns its own market maker on the exchange
02:04called Calci trading, which profits from every customer loss, wins. So it's essentially
02:10participating in the exchange that says is purely peer to peer. And also, on top of that, it has a
02:16lot of Wall Street firms trading on the exchange against casual bettors, taking advantage of them,
02:22you know, being predatory with their pricing. Those firms also own a big stake in Calci. So it's had
02:28this big advertising campaign trying to expose Calci for its lies, it says. And Calci hit back this week
02:34and sent it a letter, basically asking it to or telling it rather to stop immediately claiming
02:40that, you know, these were defamatory statements and lies, which could hurt Calci's business. This is
02:46something that could escalate into a lawsuit down the line if Calci or if the company doing the
02:53advertising fair predicts does not comply. Rather, Calci says it, in fact, is not a house. It says that
03:00this trading, you know, arm that exists on the exchange really functions just to provide liquidity
03:06and actually doesn't profit from exchanges, from trades at all, and actually operates at a loss.
03:11It says it's just one of those, you know, big market makers that has on there to make sure that
03:16there is the other side of that trade when people go to place a bet. It also asserts that a
03:21substantial
03:22amount of trading activity is not done by those Wall Street firms. So it is more peer to peer than
03:28this
03:29group is kind of accusing. So it's sort of a legal, a legal step right here before a potential lawsuit,
03:34but it is significant in the fact that you have Calci firing back at one group saying spending a lot
03:40of
03:40money trying to tell people that it's misleading people. So, you know, we have a ton of lawsuits
03:45that are left to play out. We have laws that may be made, may be not made. So we'll see
03:50where kind
03:50of everything ends up. But this is definitely is kind of just another, another crazy step in this
03:55process of prediction markets we've been talking about for over a year now, Craig.
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