Sponsors (5)
The bill aims to curb speculative, gambling‑like event contracts and protect consumers and state gambling authority, but in doing so it raises hedging costs, market and regulatory uncertainty, potential revenue and liquidity impacts for exchanges, and risks of overbroad limits on legitimate forecasting and research.
Financial-market participants and ordinary investors face fewer manipulative or gambling-like event‑based contracts (e.g., tied to elections, military actions, sports), reducing speculative activity and improving overall market integrity.
Firms retain a narrow hedging pathway for genuine commercial risk tied to government actions, allowing businesses to mitigate some regulatory or legislative exposures.
States keep authority over gambling laws (federal law does not preempt state gambling rules), preserving state-level consumer protections and local control over event‑linked wagering.
Firms and counterparties that relied on event‑linked contracts will have fewer legal hedging venues, likely raising hedging costs and risk exposure and potentially driving activity into less regulated OTC markets with lower transparency.
The bill creates regulatory and legal uncertainty — a nonbinding 'sense of Congress' plus potentially hurried analysis — so firms and courts may face unclear standards about what trading/clearing is allowed.
Regulatory responses prompted by the amendment or the GAO study could increase compliance burdens and operating costs for prediction‑market operators, dual‑jurisdiction companies, and exchanges.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Bars listing, clearing, or trading on registered U.S. exchanges of contracts tied to certain event-based prediction markets and requires a GAO study on prediction-market integrity.
Official title: To amend the Commodity Exchange Act to prohibit certain event contracts on prediction markets, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 26, 2026 by Jamie Ben Raskin · Last progress March 26, 2026
Prohibits listing, clearing, or trading on registered U.S. exchanges any agreement, contract, transaction, or swap tied to certain “event contracts,” including political elections, government-branch actions (with a hedging exception), sporting events, and military actions by the U.S. or foreign countries. It also directs the CFTC to consider limited exemptions for hedging tied to government-branch actions, expresses Congress' nonbinding view that such non-hedging event contracts should not be permitted, and preserves State authority over gambling laws. Requires the Government Accountability Office to study prediction markets and report to Congress within 60 days on market integrity issues, insider trading risks, impacts on 18–20-year-old traders, foreign prediction markets, and options for curbing illegal activity and protecting market integrity, including recommended actions for Congress and regulators.