Odaily Planet Daily report: On Monday, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour rebutted New York State’s lawsuit against the company in an interview with CNBC, stating that the case is not merely about sports-related contracts but is challenging the entire prediction market business model.
Mansour stated that if the logic of New York State’s lawsuit were valid, it “could be copied and pasted to sue Nasdaq.” He noted that Kalshi operates more like Nasdaq—matching buyers and sellers and charging a transaction fee of approximately 1%—rather than acting as a bookmaker, like traditional sports betting companies such as DraftKings, which directly bet against users.
Last week, New York State Attorney General Letitia James sued Kalshi, alleging that its event contracts constitute illegal gambling and seeking at least $36 billion in damages, with the final amount pending full calculation.
Mansour also compared Kalshi’s regulatory and legal challenges to the regulatory resistance faced by Uber and Airbnb in their early days, suggesting that prediction markets, like these new platform economies, are easily misunderstood or overregulated under existing legal frameworks.