A senator who once fought against the proliferation of prediction markets before they took off in popularity has done a complete U-turn by becoming a lobbyist for gambling platform Kalshi.
As Ars Technica reports, former senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) perfectly predicted the rise of prediction markets in 2010, years before companies like Kalshi and Polymarket took off.
“It would be quite easy to construct an event contract around sporting events such as the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby, and Masters golf tournament,” Lincoln warned her fellow lawmakers at the time. “These types of contracts would not serve any real commercial purpose. Rather, they would be used solely for gambling.”
She even helped write the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a law allowing the US government to ban sports gambling on prediction markets in 2010, arguing it was in the public interest to grant the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) the authority to do so.
