Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour recently told Reason's Nick Gillespie there's a "big group" of lawmakers in both parties who are "actually" in favor of prediction market platforms. Utah Attorney General Derek Brown is not one of them. 

On Wednesday, Brown filed criminal charges in state court against Kalshi, Mansour, and fellow co-founder and chief operating officer Luana Lopes Lara. Mansour, Lopes Lara, and Kalshi are charged with one count of general gambling promotion, a class A misdemeanor; one count of pattern of unlawful activity, a second-degree felony; and 12 counts of online gambling promotion, a third-degree felony.

The feud between Kalshi and Utah has been brewing for quite some time. In August, U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Shelby found that federal law did not preempt Utah from enforcing its anti-gambling laws against Kalshi, meaning the platform could not legally operate in the Beehive State. Last week, Utah filed a civil suit against the prediction platform alleging it had continued to engage in a "brazen pattern of unlawful conduct." The criminal case comes a day after the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed its lawsuit to block Utah from enforcing its anti-gambling laws against Kalshi. 

Even though it's been illegal to use Kalshi in Utah since August, Special Agent Scott Eggerman of the Attorney General's Office was able to "create an undercover Kalshi account, using an undercover name and an undercover Visa Debit Card," according to Wednesday's complaint. 

All of Eggerman's personal user information identified him as a Utah resident with a local phone number and bank account through a "Utah-based banking establishment." Over two weeks, Eggerman spent $114.87 on a dozen wagers spread across the NFL, MLB, a local college football game, and a Major League Soccer match involving Utah-based Real Salt Lake. In one instance, he lost $20 on a wager that the Troy Trojans football team would upset the Utah State Aggies. 

Utah argues Eggerman should never have been able to set up an account, let alone place any wagers on the platform. When Kalshi challenged Shelby's ruling, it asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit for an injunction while the appeal proceeded. However, in September, the 10th Circuit denied Kalshi's request for an injunction pending appeal, meaning Shelby's order remained in effect while the court considered the case.

"A federal court has already ruled that Utah's gambling laws apply to Kalshi," Brown told Deseret News. "Kalshi kept taking bets from Utahns anyway. That is illegal, and we're putting a stop to it."

Utah joins Arizona as the only two states to pursue criminal charges against Kalshi. However, the prediction platform has more than 20 lawsuits and cease and desist actions pending across the country, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The issue might soon come before the Supreme Court. Earlier this month, the NFL, 39 states, and Washington, D.C., filed amicus briefs, arguing that conflicting decisions in the 6th and 9th Circuit Courts of Appeals left them unsure whether the states or the CFTC has regulatory authority over prediction markets. 

Kalshi is a supporter of Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason. In a statement to the Deseret News, a Kalshi spokesperson called the criminal charges a "crazy overreach" and said Brown was "playing politics." With Shelby's ruling still in effect, so long as Utah considers Kalshi a gambling platform, its continued operation violates state law. Still, the criminal charges are an attempt to strong-arm Kalshi into acquiescing to his demands instead of letting the pending court case play out. 

Utah acknowledges that there's been a "rapid increase in volume on the Kalshi platform" from users in the Beehive State. Yet its attorney general seems intent on restricting adults in the state from spending their money as they see fit.

The post Utah Files Criminal Charges Against Kalshi Co-Founders appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Can an AI have a soul or personhood? Religious responses continue to add fascinating perspectives.

On Monday, a group of students from the University of Chicago stood outside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange—one of the world's largest and most diverse derivatives marketplaces—and called for the repeal of an obscure 1958 law that bans onions as futures products traded on U.S. exchanges. 

Attracting an audience with a humorous jingle and amusing signs that included "Onions Deserve a Future," "Honk If You Want Free Onions," "Hot Girls Hedge Onions," and "Free Markets Feed Families," the student group, named For Our Futures, has a simple platform: a repeal of the 1958 Onion Futures Act, which prohibits anyone from trading in onion futures on commodity exchanges. (The law was amended in 2010 to ban motion picture box office receipts from being traded on commodity exchanges.) The viral campaign drew enough attention that Mike Selig—chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and a proponent of expanding the list of commodities traded on futures markets—was asked about the law in a media appearance. 

American farmers produce about 6.75 billion pounds of onions a year, according to the National Onion Association, an industry trade group. While peers who grow cotton, wheat, corn, and soybeans can hedge against price swings by trading futures contracts, onion farmers have no such recourse under federal law. But, as the Agriculture Department's daily National Potato and Onion Report shows, onion prices are highly volatile and subject to wild swings, making them an ideal market for futures trading. 

In its latest report, released Monday, the agency shows that onion prices have roughly doubled since this time last year. If onion futures contracts were legal, farmers could rely on market expectations instead of planting crops based on last year's prices. It would also let buyers potentially cut costs by locking in lower prices to protect against spikes. Trading onion futures contracts would give the industry a useful price-discovery tool, one that the student group aptly notes is "crucial for price stability and for hedging risks associated with weather and market fluctuations."

It's not For Our Futures' first time trying this gambit. The student group staged similar protests at college campuses in April and May, armed with bags of raw onions to entice passersby into signing their petition to legalize onion futures. The students' crusade might be comical, but after a recent Gallup poll found that 57 percent of Americans age 18–34 have a positive image of socialism, it's encouraging to see college-age students stand up for free markets.

A protest over onions sounds absurd, but it's a viral reminder to others in that age cohort of how far governments can go when given the slightest leeway to regulate an industry.

Instead of relying on outdated price points when planning future harvests, American onion producers could use resources like futures contracts that offer real-time market signals. All that would require—as the college kids state—is for federal lawmakers to "let the free market reign supreme."

The post You Can Trade Contracts on Elections, but Not on Onions. These College Students Want To Fix That. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

by Michael Snyder, End Of The American Dream: What I am about to share with you is extremely shocking information. I realize that not everyone will believe it, and that is okay. A lot of people are determined to believe that supernatural events do not happen in our day and time, and if that is […]