As we already posted exactly one month ago, the CFTC is looking into whether and how to regulate prediction markets in the United States. It is still DumbAgent.com’s position that the less regulation, the better, and that prediction markets will thrive if left as much as possible to market forces.

Jed Christiansen, however, thinks it would be a good idea for prediction markets to fall under CFTC jurisdiction. Please check out his post at Mercury’s Blog. It is a five part series, and so far 3 parts have been posted. It seems, however, that he is in favor of the CFTC being a controlling body, but only in order to avoid further controls, restrictions, legal incidences due the the fact that prediction markets (event markets) are not being controlled by anyone.

This might make sense as a form of inoculation, in that preventive CFTC supervision would stop other bodies, like trial lawyers, district courts, and congress, from making a worse mess of it. Although it does ring a bit of choosing between the lesser of two evils.

We await the rest of Jed’s posts with anticipation.

The original CFTC release can be found here.
The comments in response to the release can be found here.
If you would like to comment, you can do so electronically to secretary@cftc.gov. All comments received will be posted on the CFTC’s website.