Kalshi CEO says state-led oversight of U.S. prediction markets would push them out

"We feel pretty good about where we stand overall," Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said Wednesday at the DC Fintech Week event near Washington.

Mansour rejected arguments that sports betting — the explosively growing element of the event-contracts space — doesn't have significant economic consequences that justify the trades' status as federally regulated financial contracts.

"The notion that sports does not have economic consequence is ludicrous," he said.

A growing list of states have challenged Kalshi and other prediction markets firms in court, accusing them of engaging in illegal sports wagering that belongs under the authority of state gambling regulators. But Kalshi and the federal regulator of its exchange, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, have countered in courts that the federal agency is the appropriate sole watchdog of prediction markets.