by Alexander Osipovich at The Wall Street Journal
Get ready for legalized betting as soon as next week on whether Democrats will take back control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November.
A federal judge on Friday cleared the way for Americans to place bets on the outcome of congressional elections via a prediction-market startup, a victory that could potentially open the door to legalized wagers on U.S. elections.
Still, it remained uncertain over the weekend whether the political betting markets would go live, after regulators filed an emergency motion seeking a two-week delay while they considered an appeal.
In a one-page order, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb of the District of Columbia sided with the startup, Kalshi, and threw out a 2023 decision by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that had blocked Kalshi from listing its congressional-control contracts.
Kalshi will make its congressional-control contracts available to users for trading next week and will move quickly to list other kinds of political-event contracts, said Luana Lopes Lara, one of the co-founders of Kalshi, in an interview.
Hours after Cobb’s ruling,…
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