US Senators Urge CFTC to Ban Betting on 2024 Presidential Election
A group of five United States Senators and three House representatives have demanded a ban on any betting activities that are connected with the 2024 presidential election that will be held soon.
The group of politicians is situated from both sides of the political spectrum and includes such significant members like Senators Jeff Merkley, Richard Blumenthal, Elizabeth Warren, and Representatives Jamie Raskin and John Sarbanes, etc, amongst others.
The letter addressed to Rostin Behnam, the Chair of the CFTC, by the members of the House, warned the betting markets of their potential negative impact on election results.
Betting Platforms Could Sway Election Outcomes
The assembly had concerns about the possibility of the vast assets owned by some people being invested in such bets that they could change the election and thus shake the trust of the people in the democratic process.
The lawgivers gave further emphasis to the fact that the electoral process should not be equated to a mere profit-making scheme, because such a practice would seriously compromise the electoral system.
“The Political wagers make the reasons that determine each vote to become different deviating from the political ideologies to financial reasoning”.
Moreover, they opined that even by allowing bidding and sponsored U.S. elections, the basis of democracy would be badly eroded.
Additionally, the politicians focused on the negative statistics received from websites like Polymarket, where millions of dollars have been wagered on the election-related markets.
Incidents of lack of compliance have occurred prior to that with Polymarket and they even had to pay a heavy fine to CFTC back in January 2022 so this adds on to the urgency of the issues being addressed.
The US presidential election will be held in three months.
Polymarket Sees Surge in Trading Volume
It was established in 2020 on the blockchain the prediction market’s nature which is decentralization and people can bet on events like bets on currencies using cryptocurrencies in the future
They put a bet on various events e.g.: an election would win in November 2024 or other issues.
The platform operates on the USDC stablecoin, which enables the participants to buy and sell shares reflecting the forecasts of future events of the price or percentage.
Further, Polymarket currently offers wagering services of cryptocurrencies where users are able to define the outcome. Additionally, they can bet on the price of Bitcoins and other digital assets.
A momentous record has been recently broken by Polymarket’s trading volumes.
With every new cent in US elections, the platform concluded a $1 billion monthly trading result for the first time, a total of $343 million was noted in the July period.
This entails a 200% rise from $111 million in June and a 440% expansion from the $63 million in May 2024.
These volumes of trade, despite being awe-inspiring, have been the chief source of the company’s inability to earn the required revenue to carry on.
Polymarket has experienced a successful round of funding in which it raised $70 million through two rounds, which later included a $45 million Series B round with Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders of Ethereum, as the co-investor, among the others.
Furthermore, the latest development to make the process of the clients’ onboarding to the nice easier and especially for the crypto nonexperienced was made on the 24th of July when Polymarket in cooperation with the payment platform – MoonPay – made possible to transfer money through debit cards and credit cards.
“Cryptocurrency markets allow us to witness a virtually unadulterated form of the ideal of representative democracy”, said Yuga Cohler, the head of development at Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange.
