Key Republican Senator Says Prediction Markets Are 'The Wild West': Semafor
Roundup: Novig raises $75 million; the Netherlands fines Polymarket; Federal Reserve says Kalshi data is useful; Polymarket partners with Substack.
A new report from Semafor indicated that at least one important senator may want to take action on prediction markets, calling the industry “the Wild West.”
Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.) spoke at length with Semafor before Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig went on a PR offensive this week. Selig made it clear he thinks prediction markets should be under federal jurisdiction, and that the states’ concerns be damned.
More from Semafor:
"[Boozman] told Semafor before the chair’s announcement that his panel “will be visiting with Selig” as Congress tries “to figure out what the path forward is.”
“This is an area that just caught fire; I don’t think anybody expected it to grow at the rate that it has,” Boozman said. “But there is concern; it’s the Wild West. There’s not much regulation.”
“Probably at some point, either from a regulatory standpoint or Congress stepping in and passing some sort of law, it does need to be cleaned up,” Boozman added. …
But Boozman made clear that lawmakers aren’t just listening to Kalshi and Polymarket, saying they’ve talked “to everyone involved — the tribes, the rest of the gambling world.”
Senate Ag is the committee that has legislative oversight over the CFTC and held a hearing on Selig’s nomination.
High-ranking Republicans breaking ranks with the Trump administration is not an everyday occurrence. The comments from Boozman here also don’t seem like throwaway lines…it sounds like an issue to which he has given some thought.
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Meanwhile, Punchbowl News was more bearish on Congressional involvement:
Don’t expect much activity from Congress here in the near term. The Senate Agriculture and Banking Committees have had their hands full trying to implement the crypto sector’s legislative agenda via market structure legislation. There’s not much appetite to touch events contracts.
Whether you believe anything material will happen or not, Selig clearly stirred up a hornet’s nest this week. Heavy hitters in Congress, politics and beyond weighed in on prediction markets and the CFTC in a way they weren’t even just a few weeks ago. That included Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox.
There were also senators applauding Selig:
Is it all a bunch of noise, or is there actually a chance that Congress will do something? The smart money is usually on Congress doing nothing, but there’s a non-zero chance of prediction markets staying in the conversation on Capitol Hill.
And a few more nuggets:
Prediction markets raise new tests for CFTC (Axios): “CFTC chairman Mike Selig came out swinging in the fight against state regulations of prediction markets, declaring they aren’t gambling, and that his agency has “exclusive jurisdiction” to regulate the space.”
“The big question: Is the CFTC prepared or equipped to take on the full scope of prediction markets in the age of retail trading?”
And finally, sort of related to all of this:
Prediction markets roundup
Novig Raises $75M Series B to Build a Trader-First Sports Prediction Market (press release): Novig, the fastest growing sports trading platform in America, today announced the close of a $75 million Series B round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Multicoin Capital, Makers Fund, Edge Equity, and existing investors Forerunner, Perceptive Ventures, and NFX. The round brings Novig’s total capital raised to more than $105 million.
The funding follows a period of growth for the platform, which reported a 10x increase in trading volume during 2025. Novig’s annualized trading volume currently exceeds $4 billion.
Although sports account for the majority of activity on most prediction market platforms, those products are not built with sports traders in mind. Novig, by contrast, is built for sports fans, delivering a fair, transparent, and commission-free trading experience.
Since launch, the platform has rapidly emerged as the leading sports trading platform in the U.S., proving strong demand for a trader-first alternative to traditional sportsbooks. Novig has officially submitted its application to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to become a licensed Designated Contract Market (DCM), a critical milestone in its transition toward becoming a federally regulated exchange available in all 50 states.
Unlike sportsbooks that operate an against-the-house model, Novig operates a commission-free, peer-to-peer exchange where traders compete against one another on a level playing field. By eliminating the hidden “vig,” unfair odds, and punitive limits on winning players, Novig has built the industry’s most equitable sports prediction platform.
“Our mission is to democratize and financialize sports markets, and we’re proud of the fact that Novig users are 10 times more likely to win than on traditional sportsbooks,” said Jacob Fortinsky, Co-Founder and CEO of Novig. “We chose to partner with the best crypto venture firms in the world to further accelerate our plans to make Novig the most efficient and liquid sports prediction market in the world. Others are using prediction market technology to financialize new markets with unproven demand. We leverage it to fix broken markets where demand already exists.”
“Novig is proving that prediction markets can fundamentally reshape sports betting by removing the exploitative middleman,” says Paul Veradittakit, Managing Partner at Pantera Capital. “Their peer-to-peer exchange delivers what traditional sportsbooks can’t: better odds, fairer market structure, and alignment between platform success and user profitability. When 23% of users are profitable compared to 2% on traditional platforms, it’s clear this is a foundational change to the industry. We’re excited to lead this round and support Jacob, Kelechi, and the team as they build a sports prediction market that actually puts bettors first.”
“Novig combines the cultural heartbeat of sports with the transparency and efficiency of prediction markets. Most prediction market volume today is on sports, yet those platforms weren’t built with sports or sports bettors in mind. We are delivering a better exchange that is built by sports traders, for sports traders,” said Co-Founder and CTO Kelechi Ukah.
The new capital accelerates Novig’s next phase of growth, including onboarding more institutional liquidity. Novig will utilize the investment to deepen product innovation and growth loops, launching first-of-its-kind functionality that combines the best innovation of financial markets with the excitement of live sports.
To support its next phase of growth, Novig has expanded its team to more than 50 personnel, including operators, engineers, and traders focused on developing the platform’s prediction market infrastructure and transparency features.
My piece at The Closing Line on Wednesday is partially about prediction markets:
Netherlands fines Polymarket over illegal gambling (Next.io): “The Netherlands Gambling Authority (KSA) has instructed Polymarket to pull its online offering from the Dutch market for offering sports betting without a licence. The formal decision, dated 20 January 2026 and updated on 17 February, sets out the finding. According to the KSA, Polymarket enabled users in the Netherlands to access games of chance without authorisation under the Betting and Gaming Act. … Following the investigation, Polymarket has been ordered to cease offering unlicensed remote gambling to Dutch residents within four weeks. Failure to comply will trigger a penalty payment of €420,000 per week, up to a maximum of €840,000.”
Polymarket courts Chinese users despite strict online gambling ban (Rest of World): “Cryptocurrency prediction site Polymarket is trying to tap into the Chinese market by hiring Mandarin-speaking staff and listing bets related to the Lunar New Year, even though it has little chance of being officially allowed into China. Justin Yang, who works on Polymarket’s go-to-market strategy in Asia, said he dropped out of Stanford University to join the company in October.”
“China is becoming a very important geography for Polymarket,” Yang told Rest of World. “They’ve just brought me in to do everything we can to serve our Chinese users better.”
CFTC’s Ninth Circuit Amicus Overshadowed As Nevada Regulator Sues Kalshi In State Court (InGame): “The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) hotly anticipated amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit was arguably overshadowed Tuesday as the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) took the opportunity to sue Kalshi in state court after the prediction market was denied an administrative stay.”
Kalshi and the Rise of Macro Markets (Federal Reserve): “Prediction markets offer a new market-based approach to measuring macroeconomic expectations in real-time. We evaluate the accuracy of prediction market-implied forecasts from Kalshi, the largest federally regulated prediction market overseen by the CFTC. We compare Kalshi with more traditional survey and market-implied forecasts, examine how expectations respond to macroeconomic and financial news, and how policy signals are interpreted by market participants. Our results suggest that Kalshi markets provide a high-frequency, continuously updated, distributionally rich benchmark that is valuable to both researchers and policymakers.”
The economics of the Kalshi prediction market (The Centre for Economic Policy Research): “Kalshi has operated as a federally licensed prediction market in the US since 2021, free from the strict stake limits placed on previous legal prediction markets. This column analyses over 300,000 contracts and their outcomes to demonstrate that Kalshi’s contract prices are informative and improve in accuracy as markets approach closing, but they display a clear favourite-longshot bias. Low-price contracts win far less often than required to break even, while high-price contracts win more often and yield small positive returns. …”
“These findings have implications for the use of prediction markets in policy and business contexts. While they are clearly a useful tool for aggregating information, our results suggest that Kalshi’s prices should not be interpreted as unbiased probability estimates.”
Wall Street Pushes Deeper Into Prediction Markets With New ETF Filings (Decrypt): “Wall Street’s latest push into political prediction markets is drawing both strong liquidity expectations and warnings of manipulation from industry experts, as major ETF issuers race to launch election-linked funds ahead of the U.S. midterms.”
“Fund managers Bitwise Asset Management, Roundhill Investments, and GraniteShares are seeking to launch prediction-market ETFs, with Bitwise products falling under a new platform brand, PredictionShares, offering exposure to contracts tied to the 2028 U.S. presidential race and the 2026 House and Senate midterms.”
“The listed funds cover the 2028 U.S. presidential election and the 2026 congressional midterms, including separate products for whether Democrats or Republicans win the presidency in 2028, and whether Democrats or Republicans control the Senate and the House in 2026.”
Polymarket + Substack:
Polymarket@PolymarketPolymarket 🤝 Substack We are excited to announce our exclusive partnership with Substack. Starting today Substack authors can natively integrate data from the world's largest prediction market. Journalism is better when it’s backed by live markets.
8:19 PM · Feb 18, 2026 · 543K Views132 Replies · 81 Reposts · 816 LikesAnd more from… the Polymarket Substack!
And let’s see if it works?: It does!
New markets to trade, according to CFTC filings:
At Kalshi, you will be able to trade on when the WNBA season will start, and how many games will be played. The league and the players association are working on a collective bargaining agreement.
This is, of course, a potentially useful hedging instrument. In theory, teams, players and the league shouldn’t be trading on them, however.
CME Group, the partner of FanDuel and DraftKings, self-certified markets on college basketball as the postseason nears:
The Polymarket grocery store teeters between publicity and philanthropy (Washington Square News): “Polymarket beat Mayor Zohran Mamdani to the finish line for affordable groceries this past weekend. Thousands of New Yorkers flocked to the West Village to shop at The Polymarket — New York City’s first free grocery store, founded and funded by the eponymous prediction market. Lines at the pop-up, which ran from Thursday to Monday, reflected a wide cross section of the city: families, students and older residents from across neighborhoods and backgrounds — waiting in line for hours on Seventh Avenue in front of a temporarily constructed boutique storefront, drawn by the allure of free groceries.”
Connecticut lawmakers looking to crack down on prediction markets (WTNH): “The fact that you can go in and place money on what the content of someone’s speech is or the actions they may take as a government official or the result of a free throw in the college basketball game is deeply problematic,” state Rep. Roland Lemar, a Democratic legislator who co-chairs the General Law Committee, said.”
“It was Lemar’s General Law Committee — with its vast jurisdiction over gaming, liquor, recreational marijuana and an array of consumer protection issues — that heard public testimony on Wednesday regarding the age restriction bill.”
Prediction Market Issue Complicates South Carolina Sports Betting Legalization Effort (InGame): “South Carolina’s Senate Labor, Commerce, and Industry Committee Wednesday amended a bill that would legalize online sports betting, but laid the proposal over after an instructive and lengthy discussion about prediction markets. SB 444 got its first hearing since being introduced March 12, 2025, and it was clear that lawmakers still have much homework to do.”
