Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has signed the nation’s first law banning prediction market sites from operating in the state, the most far-reaching crackdown on massively popular services like Kalshi and Polymarket.
It comes as states confront a growing standoff with the Trump administration over how to regulate the industry, which allows people to bet on virtually anything.
The new state law makes it a crime to host or advertise a prediction market, which it defines as a system that lets consumers place a wager on a future outcome, like sports, elections, weather, live entertainment, someone’s word choice and world affairs.
The prohibition extends to services supporting prediction markets, like virtual private networks, that could allow consumers to disguise their location and get around the ban.
It would force prediction market sites like Kalshi and Polymarket to leave the state, or face possible felony charges. The law takes effect in August.
Like laws against sex and drugs, gambling laws are in themselves a failure of government. We know criminalization is not needed, because societies that don’t criminalize imprison and murder many less of their own people.
Kidnapping and murder is bad
Well, the probably imprison less people because they are functioning much better as a society. The question is if imprisoning people is better than not imprisoning them in this fucked up society.
I’m in the US, but we generally lock up and/or deport way too many people; incarceration causes more problems than it solves, and serving white supremacy is the main social goal and outcoe.
But I think this is a separate conversation. The anti-gambling laws I’m talking about are the ones that would prevent constant Draft Kings advertisements and all the money that gets fed back into our political system. We’ve got so far away from acknowledging the damage that gambling causes, and gambling, as far as I’m concerned, is just a mugging with extra steps, yet paid propaganda has papered over the victims.
Yes, making insider trading easy, legal and profitable instead of risky, illegal and prosecuted, certainly does not fuel insider trading in whatever shape or form.