Yesterday in prediction markets
- Kalshi: April volume crossed $1.95B by Sunday night, putting the CFTC-regulated exchange within striking distance of its first $2B month. NBA playoff contracts and Fed rate markets led the surge, with the 2026 Senate control contract adding meaningful late-week volume.
- Polymarket: “Will the Fed cut rates in June?” topped $88M in weekend trading volume, the biggest non-political market of the year so far. The “Bitcoin above $120K on June 30” contract came in second at roughly $54M.
- PredictIt: Opened a fresh slate of 2026 gubernatorial contracts for Texas, Florida, and Georgia. It is the first meaningful listing expansion since the platform’s February reorganization and a quiet signal that academic usage is holding.
- Smarkets: Q1 trading update from the UK exchange noted that exchange-style event contracts now account for 18% of UK volume, up from 11% a year ago, as operators continue to shift weight into non-sports categories.
- Zeitgeist: Governance passed a proposal to allocate 4M ZTG to a market-maker incentive pool, with the incentive program scheduled to go live this week.
Coming up
- Tuesday, 10am ET: Polymarket co-founder Shayne Coplan is scheduled to speak at the Milken Institute Global Conference on decentralized information markets. Expect on-stage questions about the CFTC enforcement dialogue.
- Wednesday: The CFTC staff letter on sports event contracts is expected to publish. This would be the first written guidance specifically addressing Kalshi‘s NCAA Tournament and NFL contract categories.
- This week: Q1 earnings from IG Group, Smarkets’s parent, with commentary expected on the UK event contract vertical. Watch the call transcript for any mention of US expansion.
One thing worth watching
The CFTC staff letter expected Wednesday is the single most important document this industry has been waiting on since Kalshi’s 2024 appellate win. It will not, on its own, resolve the legal question of whether federally regulated sports event contracts are permissible at full scale. What it will do is frame the terms of that fight for the next twelve months, and every operator in the category has been positioning their public messaging around what they think the letter will say.
The stakes are concrete. Kalshi has roughly $400M in open interest across sports contract categories as of Sunday night. Polymarket has a larger offshore sports book it has signaled would come onshore if and when US rules allow. The state attorneys general who filed amicus briefs against Kalshi’s NCAA contracts in January are watching the same letter, and at least two have telegraphed they would escalate to injunction motions if CFTC staff signals tolerance.
What to look for in the text itself: Does staff address state preemption directly, or dodge it? Does it carve between outcome-of-game and prop-style contracts, or treat sports as a single regulated category? And does it reference the Brookings Institution working paper on market integrity circulated to commissioners in March? A footnote citation there would tell you more about staff’s direction than most of the body text.
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Sources and further reading: Platform blogs and public communications from Kalshi, Polymarket, PredictIt, Smarkets, and Zeitgeist. CFTC Commissioner speeches, March 2026. Brookings Institution working paper on event contract market integrity. IG Group investor relations calendar. For full platform rankings and reviews, visit the best prediction markets guide or the individual Kalshi, Polymarket, and PredictIt reviews.
About this article: Written and reviewed by The PredictWire Research Team under our Editorial Standards. Platform rankings follow our public Methodology. Prediction market contracts carry risk of total loss. Nothing here is financial advice. Corrections: corrections@predictwire.io.