Daniel O’Boyle of InGame and I are still trying to process the fact that the prediction markets news cycle now includes George Santos, somehow. We break down all the recent news in the industry.
Plus I talk with Kindbridge Behavioral Health CEO Daniel Umfleet about prediction markets, addiction, and treatment.
📊 The Ticker
For Saturday, June 6, at Kalshi:
Volume: $658.8 million
Sports + parlays: 80.4% of volume
Crypto markets: 16.7% of volume
Trend line for daily volume:
Polymarket US volume on Saturday: $89.7 million
Prediction markets news roundup
🚨 The important stuff
Kalshi asks paid influencers to delete posts sowing doubts over LA mayoral election (Semafor): “Kalshi on Friday asked some of its paid political influencers to remove X posts that sowed doubt about the integrity of the Los Angeles mayoral election while promoting Kalshi odds, a spokesperson told Semafor.
Earlier this week X user Gunther Eagleman, a MAGA influencer with 1.7 million followers, wrote a series of posts claiming that the Los Angeles mayoral election was being stolen from Spencer Pratt.”
“Is CA cheating to get Spencer Pratt out?” he wrote in a post, quote tweeting Kalshi prediction market odds on who would advance in the LA mayoral election.
From the author on Twitter:
Max Tani@maxwelltaniNew: Kalshi and Polymarket have been sponsoring posts from users promoting viral LA election fraud conspiracy theories.
9:28 PM · Jun 5, 2026 · 282K Views53 Replies · 610 Reposts · 2.53K Likes🔍 It looks like most of these posts are now gone, although that Polymarket one above is still up.
More from Weekend Edition Sunday on NPR: On X, influencers are using prediction markets to sow distrust about election results
🤔 If you want to be called a “truth machine,” maybe you shouldn’t be working with influencers that spread conspiracy theories. Just saying.
Also, these tweets likely convinced people to trade on Pratt on mayoral markets, whether they were deleted or not. That is arguably a pretty big conflict of interest for prediction markets to be working with these sorts of people when they engage in this kind of posting, even if it might not run afoul of any laws or regulations.
And also related… ‘Unbelievable how accurate’: How paid influencers hype Polymarket’s odds (Politico): “When far-right influencer Nick Shirley posted a viral video in January alleging fraud at Minnesota daycares, he showed his 1.6 million followers on X something else too: a gray hoodie emblazoned with the Polymarket logo. Polymarket had made other appearances in the 24-year-old’s content, like in a series of man-on-the-street interviews about the “current state of America” posted in December.”
Why Susquehanna Is Building a Prediction Market Business | Odd Lots: “Prediction markets that enable you to bet on pretty much everything are everywhere nowadays. But there's still a big question over whether they can expand to include larger institutional investors like hedge funds. Part of the problem is that a lot of prediction market contracts are illiquid and trading volumes can sometimes be shallow. That's where trading firm Susquehanna International Group comes in. In this episode, recorded live at New York's City Winery, we talk to Jeremy Maletz, Susquehanna's head of macro trading and prediction markets, about the firm's market-making business with Kalshi. We talk about how big investors could use prediction markets, what Susquehanna is seeing in terms of flows, how a market-maker hedges risk on these contracts, and how it makes money from them.”
⚖️ Legal and regulatory news
Vault: Prediction markets don’t have a Congress problem — yet (Punchbowl): “Prediction markets have attracted a whole lot of scrutiny and angst since exploding in popularity under the Trump administration. For now, Republicans in Congress are keeping a distant eye on things. To be sure, plenty of GOP lawmakers have private concerns about the national rise of not-quite-gambling activities, where customers can trade on the outcomes of sports, elections, the weather and more. In public, Republicans are largely holding back.”
US Senator Warren prods prediction markets regulator over bias, interference reports (Reuters): “Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, prodded President Donald Trump's derivatives regulator on Friday over recent reporting in The New York Times that reported on outside interference and favoritism allegedly benefiting the crypto and prediction markets industries.”
Vault: Kalshi bulks up D.C. workforce (Punchbowl, paywall): “Kalshi is hiring more people for its Washington operation as it seeks to build political capital amid the uncertain future of prediction market legislation and regulation. In the last few months, the betting giant has hired ex-White House officials, former regulators and Hill veterans for its policy, communications and government relations teams.”
Korean Police Launch Gambling Probe Targeting Polymarket Users (Bloomberg): “South Korean police have launched an investigation into local users of Polymarket over alleged illegal gambling, as the prediction-market platform faces mounting regulatory scrutiny while expanding its presence in Asia. Gangwon Provincial Police recently opened the probe at the request of the Korean National Police Agency”…
Ohio Says Kalshi‘s Swap Interpretation Would Make Parts Of CEA Pointless (InGame): “In the latest brief filed by the state of Ohio in its case with Kalshi, the state took a zoomed-out view to argue that sports event contracts are not swaps, and therefore are illegal sports betting. If the definition of a swap is meant to be read broadly enough to include sports contracts, the state argues, then large parts of the definition serve no purpose. The brief was filed Thursday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.”
📣 Industry news
📖 Everything else you should know/read
A massive hiring wave reveals trading firms are no longer viewing Polymarket as a niche betting tool (CoinDesk): “Chicago-based trading giant DRW has spent decades profiting from mismatches between different asset classes, and now it’s building a dedicated prediction market desk targeting platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi. The move is one of the clearest signs yet that sophisticated ‘quantitative trading’ firms — traders that use complex math and analysis to set up strategies — are increasingly viewing prediction markets as a legitimate trading venue rather than a niche betting product.”
The World Cup Is Sports Betting’s Biggest Moment—and Maybe Its Last Hurrah (Barron’s): “The sports betting industry is also grappling with new competition in the form of prediction markets, which essentially allow sports wagers nationwide regardless of state law.”
CME’s Duffy Voices ‘Grave Concerns’ With New Perps Contracts (Bloomberg): “I have grave concerns with the way these contracts are set up,” Duffy said Thursday at the Piper Sandler Global Exchange & Fintech Conference. “I don’t like to see people that don’t understand products to potentially get blown out of a contract that they shouldn’t be in the first place.”
“Duffy’s comments came just days after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission signed off on the first perps tied to the price of cryptocurrencies.”
Prediction Markets Are Turning Sports Gambling Into a Systemic Financial Risk (The Well News, by Kevin Kimble, Founder, Financial Services Innovation Coalition): “Proponents argue these markets, where participants wager on the outcome of future events ranging from elections to sports, offer valuable price discovery and collective intelligence. But beneath this appealing narrative lies a growing threat to the stability and integrity of American financial markets, one that regulators, particularly the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, appear unwilling to confront.”
This seems like it will go sideways at some point:
Pump.fun@PumpfunIntroducing pump fun GO: Pay ANYONE to do ANYTHING Create & complete bounties for ANY task and leverage the power of humans & money across the globe The world is at your fingertips. It’s time to GO 👇3:28 PM · Jun 4, 2026 · 16.5M Views2.47K Replies · 1.02K Reposts · 12.5K LikesThe gamblification of everything (Webinar): Gambling is everywhere and everything is gambling. Over the last few years, gambling has become a rapidly normalized part of American life, and sports betting is just the tip of the iceberg. From online casino games to wagering on drone strikes via prediction markets to slot-machine mechanics built into video games, Americans can find gambling and gambling-like games everywhere. What is the spread of gambling doing to individuals and to society at large? How much further could gambling go?
Join the American Institute for Boys and Men for a webinar to reckon with the new place of gambling in American life. German Lopez (New York Times) will moderate a conversation featuring Kyla Scanlon (economic commentator), Matt King (Fanatics Betting and Gaming), and Jonathan Cohen (AIBM).
Register here.
Prediction markets offer the lure of fast money. Young men say they like their odds. (CBS News): “Young men like Owens say they are drawn to prediction markets in search of thrills, fast money and in some cases, financial security. Close to 40% of young men between 18 and 34 use prediction markets, according to an April survey from Navigator Research, a public opinion research organization. On Kalshi, one of the leading prediction markets in the U.S., roughly 3 million of the platform’s 4 million active users are male. Six in 10 of the platform’s total users are between the ages of 18 and 34.”
Prediction market stock offerings (Bloomberg, Money Stuff): “In that vein, let’s talk about prediction market prime brokerage. I wrote last month about Polymarket’s new offering of prediction markets on private company valuations. Those provide a way to, approximately, trade shares of private companies without any securities registration or disclosure. Not like Coinbase — not with perpetual futures — but with binary yes/no bets on whether a private company will exceed a given valuation by a given date. Again, this is not technically available to US users, though I’m not sure how much anyone cares.”
‘The Big Short’ investor Danny Moses unpacks how he’s using prediction markets to navigate the market (Business Insider): “When he spoke to Business Insider in December 2025, Wall Street trader Danny Moses of “The Big Short” said that he was fascinated by prediction markets. Now, he says he begun using them to inform his investing views. …”
“Often, prediction markets serve as better indicators of sentiment and potential outcomes than traditional data sources,” Moses said. “Several times a day, I peruse Kalshi to see if a new or trending contract sparks my interest or adds color to an ongoing investment thesis.”
On Substack:
