John Oliver, host of HBO’s Final Week Tonight, focused prediction market platforms on his present’s newest weekly deep dive.
In Sunday’s airing of the HBO present, Oliver mentioned a number of the trivial occasion contracts on platforms similar to Kalshi and Polymarket, together with betting whether or not members of the Trump administration would use sure phrases in public addresses, to the businesses’ controversial partnering with information organizations.
Particularly, the host questioned Donald Trump Jr.’s relationship with each platforms — an adviser to Kalshi and Polymarket — and the way the US Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee (CFTC) “doesn’t even appear to be attempting” to dam occasion contracts on terrorism, assassination and battle below Chair Michael Selig.
For a lot of the present, Oliver mentioned how it’s “extremely straightforward for people to govern the outcomes,” citing Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong rattling off an inventory of crypto-related phrases in his third-quarter 2025 earnings name to trigger many Kalshi and Polymarket customers to win their bets.
“I’m going to make you a promise tonight,” mentioned Oliver, echoing Armstrong’s assertion. “I’ll by no means do something as a result of somebody on-line positioned a guess on it. So that you might be assured that if I ever say Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain, staking and Web3, it received’t be as a result of I’m attempting to maneuver markets — it will likely be as a result of I’m having a stroke.”
Whereas person exercise and buying and selling quantity on prediction markets have elevated exponentially in current months — anticipated to achieve $1 trillion by 2030 — the platforms’ controversial bets and authorized standing in US states have raised eyebrows for some consultants. Gaming authorities in a number of states are suing corporations like Kalshi over alleged unlawful sports activities betting, with Coinbase chief authorized officer Paul Grewal and others anticipating the authorized combat to finish up earlier than the US Supreme Court docket.
Associated: Senate invoice to focus on sports activities betting ban on prediction markets: WSJ
Monetary giants trying to develop into prediction markets?
Along with beforehand introduced partnerships with media giants like CNN, CNBC, Fox Information and Dow Jones, conventional monetary corporations together with Charles Schwab and Citadel Securities just lately signaled plans to contemplate prediction markets.
Charles Schwab CEO Rick Wurster mentioned on a Thursday traders name that the corporate would “take a tough have a look at” prediction markets. In a separate occasion the identical day, Citadel Securities President Jim Esposito mentioned that the corporate was “completely maintaining a tally of developments” as a part of a possible transfer into the market.
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