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You are here: Home / Bitcoin Industry News / Trump’s CFTC Head Slams Prediction Markets Resistance Under Predecessor

February 6, 2025

Trump’s CFTC Head Slams Prediction Markets Resistance Under Predecessor

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s legal campaign against prediction market platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi can’t just be shut down, according to Caroline Pham, the acting agency chairman put in place by President Donald Trump.

Pham said the agency will gather experts for a roundtable meeting, probably next month, that can build a case for how the commission ought to approach regulation and oversight of firms that offer betting on event contracts. She noted that despite her continued objections in recent years to former Chairman Rostin Behnam’s enforcement stance against prediction markets — including wagers made on sporting events and U.S. political outcomes — the agency moved too far on its path to easily reverse it.

“Unfortunately, the undue delay and anti-innovation policies of the past several years have severely restricted the CFTC’s ability to pivot to common-sense regulation of prediction markets,” Pham said. “The current commission interpretations regarding event contracts are a sinkhole of legal uncertainty and an inappropriate constraint on the new administration.”

Setting up the roundtable is a “necessary first step in order to establish a holistic regulatory framework that will both foster thriving prediction markets and protect retail customers from binary options fraud such as deceptive and abusive marketing and sales practices,” Pham said.

The CFTC lost an initial court case against Kalshi when a U.S. federal judge ruled late last year that the agency couldn’t stop the firm from listing election contracts. However, the agency pursued an appeal with a higher court, and Kalshi argued in that new legal dispute that only Congress can halt election betting.

Read More: CFTC Fines Crypto Betting Service Polymarket $1.4M for Unregistered Swaps

The CFTC had taken a position through rules, orders and enforcement work that such political betting isn’t permitted under derivatives laws and that the agency doesn’t have the ability to police manipulation of those markets — basically arguing that it would have to be an elections cop. With only days remaining in his chairmanship, Behnam’s agency was seeking information about Polymarket’s customers from crypto exchange Coinbase. 

In language that’s a sharp contrast from Behnam’s resistance, Pham called prediction markets “an important new frontier in harnessing the power of markets to assess sentiment to determine probabilities that can bring truth to the Information Age.” She added the agency needs to “break with its past hostility.”

Read More: Polymarket’s Customer Data Sought by CFTC Subpoena of Coinbase, Source Says

Pham is running the agency in the absence of Trump naming a permanent nominee to seek Senate confirmation to take over. So far, the president has only picked a head for its cousin regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission. Such confirmations can take months, so whether or not Pham becomes a frontrunner for the permanent job, she’ll have time to accomplish some policy goals at the CFTC.

Author: Jesse Hamilton

Filed Under: Bitcoin Industry News

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Ty Sagalow head shotTy Sagalow's unique background in legal, underwriting, policy drafting and claims – and his designation as a “qualified insurance expert” by the United States District Court for the Southern District of California – offers attorneys an unparalleled resource in D&O, E&O and Cyber insurance coverage disputes. He was also named "Most Helpful Expert" in a recent $8.7M coverage decision.

Mr. Sagalow served as Chief Underwriting Officer and General Counsel for AIG Executive Liability (formerly National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh, PA), the world’s largest carrier of Directors and Officers Liability and Professional Liability Insurance. As General Counsel, Mr. Sagalow personally wrote or led teams that wrote all the D&O policies and many of the professional liability policies that AIG produced between 1988 and 2000 – policies which continue to serve as the foundational wording for the D&O and professional liability policies in the market today. As AIG Executive Liability’s Chief Underwriting Officer, Mr. Sagalow was charged with all underwriting interpretations and decisions for AIG D&O/E&O policies. In 2009, Mr. Sagalow headed up the team that rewrote all D&O policies for Zurich North America.

Ty is a cum laude graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and holds a LLM from New York University School of Law.

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Combining his talents as a network security insurance expert and an insurance product development expert, Ty Sagalow is the leading expert on the unique risk and insurance needs of the bitcoin industry.

With the successful sale of BitSecure(tm), the first bitcoin theft insurance policy in February of 2015, he is the first to create a sustainable, robust insurance policy to cover the theft of bitcoins and other virtual currency backed by an A-Rated, global “top 10” Property and Casualty insurance company.

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Innovation Insurance Group is an insurance consulting firm and insurance brokerage founded by 30-year insurance executive, Ty R. Sagalow, former Chief Underwriting Officer, General Counsel and Chief Innovation Officer at AIG, and former Chief Innovation Officer at Zurich, NA and Tower Group. IIG focuses on three core practice groups: product development, expert witness services (primarily in the Management and Professional Liability areas), and bitcoin industry brokerage services.

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