> EFFECTIVE DATE This section is effective August 1, 2026, and applies to crimes committed on or after that date.
They charge trading fees.
That alone seems like a good thing.
Each market is a community with a financial incentive to think outside of the bubble.
If you cross your eyes hard enough, you could claim that roulette gambling provides economic pressure to ensure that roulette wheels are balanced evenly. But when the roulette wheel is Vanah White’s dress color, what does that mean? Charitably, it’s a fun pass time. Through a dystopian lens, prediction markets pressure all public figures to play a kind of Keynsian Beauty Contest with their own behavior. Like social cooling for the celebrity/owning class.
- Most traditional Islamic scholars view general prediction markets as non-compliant (Haram) due to their resemblance to gambling (maisir) and excessive uncertainty (gharar).
- Somalia’s 1962 Penal Code (still the active basis for criminal law) explicitly criminalizes gambling and "games of chance" involving money. Because traditional prediction markets are structurally viewed as betting, they fall under these criminal prohibitions.
"horse racing, a card club at Canterbury Park, Indian tribal casinos, charitable gambling, and a state lottery."
/s
Now yes, people bet on the derivative value of those ownership shares... but that also happens to basically every asset. If a stock is a prediction market, then so is corn, and gold, and your home.
We've seen a couple other states that allow sports betting go after prediction markets. Personally, I feel that any state that allows sports betting is going to struggle to argue a case to ban prediction markets because you're essentially arguing over implementation details. Even arguments that certain prediction markets are ripe for insider trading or morally wrong fall a bit flat when you realize that traditional sportsbooks let you bet on things like college basketball player props and the little league world series.
I'm still not sure Minnesota will win their case, but it feels like that detail gives them a lot better chance of winning compared to many other states.