Even Temporarily Blocking Election Contracts Risks ‘Irreparable’ Harm, Kalshi Argues

Prediction market company Kalshi should be allowed to list and trade its new political contracts while the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission appeals its court loss, the company said in a filing Friday.

Kalshi, which won a significant victory in court last week when a federal judge ruled its political prediction markets should be allowed to trade in the U.S., said the CFTC wouldn’t suffer any major harm if its new contracts were allowed to trade during the appeal process, but the company would “suffer substantial – indeed, irreparable – harm” if it’s blocked from letting people bet on the outcome of the 2024 elections.

“A stay will deny Kalshi significant revenue derived from trading these contracts. Indeed, a stay would strip the Congressional Control Contracts of any value derived from the current election cycle – which will be over long before this appeal concludes,” Kalshi said. “In effect, a stay would allow the CFTC to win in practice even though it lost in court.”

Kalshi filed to list the markets last year, but was blocked by the CFTC, which cited concerns about political prediction markets. The company sued and won last week. The CFTC filed for an emergency stay blocking Kalshi from immediately listing its contracts, but lost that fight too. The contracts went live Thursday afternoon, before being temporarily suspended by the D.C. Appeals Court while it considers the emergency stay.

Kalshi’s filing on Friday is an effort to convince the appeals court judges that it should be allowed to trade its contracts while the CFTC’s appeal of the overall case works its way through the court system.

The stay would block Kalshi from making back the “millions of dollars” it spent building and marketing its new products, the filing said, while also blocking it from “carv[ing] out a competitive niche” in a world where offshore platforms like Polymarket enjoy their own prediction markets.