Election Betting Site PredictIt Sues to Block CFTC-Ordered Shutdown

The CFTC’s August action calls for the site to be closed for U.S. users by February 15.

Sep 15, 2022 at 1:27 p.m. UTC

Updated Sep 15, 2022 at 4:54 p.m. UTC

PredictIt political betting site — PredictIt allows traders to wager on the outcome of political events. (Jesse Hamilton/CoinDesk)

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PredictIt, several of its traders and academic users, and technology provider Aristotle International have filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) from shutting down the popular election betting site.

The lawsuit was filed on Sept. 9 in U.S. Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas. It asks the CFTC to justify its August order to close the site for U.S. users by Feb. 15, which the CFTC said was because administrators hadn’t complied with the agency’s requirements for running the site.

“The CFTC action taken on Aug. 4, 2022, threatens to harm not only the value of modest investments of more than 80,000 PredictIt traders, but the quality of the anonymized data used by more than 200 academic researchers and university educators,” Aristotle wrote in an email to PredictIt traders. Aristotle is the contract service provider for PredictIt.

The CFTC declined to comment on the lawsuit.

UPDATE (Sept. 15, 16:43 UTC): Adding CFTC's decline to comment.

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