Sponsors (5)
The bill prioritizes reducing speculative, gambling-like prediction markets and protecting market integrity—at the cost of restricting certain event-linked trading instruments, which may reduce liquidity, raise hedging and compliance costs, and create regulatory uncertainty for market participants.
Financial markets and the public are protected from gambling-like, speculative prediction contracts—reducing systemic risk and preserving market integrity by directing clearinghouses/venues to exclude contracts that are purely speculative (consolidates Sections 2 and 3).
Firms and small businesses with bona fide commercial exposures retain an exemption pathway to use derivatives for risk management, preserving legitimate hedging tools.
State authority to regulate or ban gambling is preserved, maintaining state-level consumer protections and legal control over gambling-related activity.
Traders, exchanges, investors, and businesses will lose access to political-event and other non-hedging derivatives—reducing market completeness, trading opportunities, liquidity, and potential revenue for financial firms, and limiting risk-transfer options for businesses (consolidates Sections 2 and 3).
Barring non-hedging contracts from clearing/trading and tightening exemptions could raise hedging costs and overall trading costs for legitimate market participants.
Nonbinding 'sense of Congress' language plus a rapid 60-day study timeline may create regulatory uncertainty and prompt cautious behavior by exchanges/clearinghouses or lead to policy decisions based on preliminary/incomplete evidence.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Bars registered U.S. trading and clearing venues from listing or clearing contracts tied to elections, government actions (except hedges), sports, or military actions, and orders a GAO study on prediction markets.
Introduced March 26, 2026 by Jeff Merkley · Last progress March 26, 2026
Prohibits registered exchanges and clearinghouses from listing, clearing, or making available for trading any contract, agreement, or swap tied to specified event outcomes: political elections or contests; actions by the U.S. executive, legislative, or judicial branches (with a narrow hedging exception); sporting events; and military actions by the U.S. or foreign countries. It also directs the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to complete and publish a study within 60 days on prediction markets, including insider trading risks, effects on 18–20-year-old traders, other prediction markets not covered by the prohibition, and how to address illegal foreign markets or firms operating across borders. The bill expresses a nonbinding sense of Congress that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) should bar non-hedging contracts that resemble gambling from registered markets and that federal law should not preempt state gambling laws. The CFTC may issue rules to exempt certain commercial hedging tied to government actions; no new funding or tax changes are specified.