No one can stop the next form of legalised gambling

IF YOU were a betting man, I would wager (hah) that there is no better time to be alive. Thanks to prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket, you can bet on everything under the sun now, from who will win the Nobel Peace Prize to when Jerome Powell will be out of a job. (You could bet on the sun too, if you think a solar flare is in the offing.)

Well, some of you could, anyway. Despite their soaring trading volumes, Polymarket and Kalshi face regulatory suspicion in multiple jurisdictions. Polymarket is blocked in Singapore, for instance, since it is considered to be a provider of illegal gambling. And just last week, Romania became the fourth European country to ban Polymarket, placing the platform on its blacklist of unlicensed gambling operators.

Even so, I reckon that the global regulatory tide will eventually turn in the favour of prediction markets, with the US providing the main undercurrent of permissiveness. Polymarket, banned in the US since 2022, will return to the market by month-end, having received a tacit regulatory go-ahead.