- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has signed the nation’s first law banning prediction market sites from operating in the state, the most far-reaching crackdown on massively popular services like Kalshi and Polymarket.
It comes as states confront a growing standoff with the Trump administration over how to regulate the industry, which allows people to bet on virtually anything.
The new state law makes it a crime to host or advertise a prediction market, which it defines as a system that lets consumers place a wager on a future outcome, like sports, elections, weather, live entertainment, someone’s word choice and world affairs.
The prohibition extends to services supporting prediction markets, like virtual private networks, that could allow consumers to disguise their location and get around the ban.
It would force prediction market sites like Kalshi and Polymarket to leave the state, or face possible felony charges. The law takes effect in August.
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The amount of people who can’t read past the headline and are missing that this is about banning VPNs and garnering public support for it is honestly horrifying.
Wait, so you read this
The prohibition extends to services supporting prediction markets, like virtual private networks, that could allow consumers to disguise their location and get around the ban.
and thought that it meant
Minnesota is banning VPNs, too.
Like, that would be a headline on its own. But it isn’t.
Doesn’t sound very private if they know what I’m doing and can ban it…
God I love my state sometimes.
Man USA should just be Minnesota.
The prohibition extends to services supporting prediction markets, like virtual private networks …
So they quietly just slipped a blanket VPN ban in there, too? Would be interested to read more about that part …
"This section is effective August 1, 2026. Sec. 3. [609.7615] PREDICTION MARKETS. (a) As used in this section, the following terms have the meanings given. (b) “Athletic event” means a sports game, match, or activity, or series of games, matches, activities, or tournaments involving the physical proficiency of one or more players or participants. Athletic event includes horse racing as defined in section 240.01, subdivision 8. © “Esports event” means a competition between individuals or teams using video games in a game, match, contest, or series of games, matches, or contests or a tournament, or by a person or team against a specified measure of performance which is hosted at a physical location or online. (d) “Game of skill” means a game, match, or tournament, or a series of games, matches, and tournaments involving the dexterity or mental skill of one or more players or participants. Game of skill includes an esports event. (e) “Prediction market” means a system that allows consumers to place a wager on the future outcome of a specified event that is not determined or affected by the performance of the parties to the contract, including but not limited to: (1) an athletic event or game of skill, or portions thereof or individual performance statistics therein; (2) any game played with cards, dice, equipment, or any mechanical or electronic device or machine; (3) war, state or national emergencies, natural or human-made disasters, mass shootings, acts of terrorism, or public health crises, or the ancillary effects thereof; (4) any event or events happening to a natural person or group of people; (5) a federal, state, or local election, or the actions or conduct of the federal, state, or local government and the government’s agencies, employees, and officers; (6) legal actions, including but not limited to a civil or criminal suit, grand jury action, jury trial, settlement, plea, or conviction; (7) the death, assassination, or attempted killing of a person or group of persons, or mass casualty events; (8) short-term weather events or conditions; (9) events in popular culture, including but not limited to awards and the date a piece of entertainment will be released; and (10) whether a person will make a particular statement. (f) “Wager” means a contract, including a prediction market contract, whereby the parties to the contract agree to a gain or loss by one to the other of money, property, or benefit. Subd. 2. Prediction markets; hosting prohibited. A person is guilty of a felony if the person, for consideration and as part of a business: (1) creates a prediction market; (2) operates, manages, or controls a platform or system intending that consumers will use the platform or system to make wagers in a prediction market; (3) intentionally facilitates the operation of a prediction market by: (i) identifying or listing events knowing the events will be used by consumers to make wagers; (ii) accepting, holding, or directing the disposition of money or other things of value for the purpose of allowing consumers to make wagers or to settle wagers made by consumers; (iii) determining, administering, or enforcing the terms, pricing, or settlement of wagers made by consumers; (iv) regularly or continuously acting as a counterparty to wagers made by consumers by entering into a wager, offering to enter into a wager, or taking a temporary position in a wager that may be replaced by a different consumer; or (v) setting or adjusting the prices, odds, or terms that apply to wagers entered into by consumers;
(4) provides data, information, or verification services, including the provision of event outcomes, directly to a prediction market knowing that the data, information, or verification services will be used to allow consumers to make wagers or to settle wagers made by consumers in violation of this section; or (5) provides supportive services to a prediction market or consumer knowing that the services will be used to identify a consumer’s location, transfer money, or make or process payments for the purpose of allowing consumers to make wagers or to settle wagers made by consumers in violation of this section.
Subd. 3. Prediction markets; advertising prohibited. Whoever advertises or markets financial or technological products that promote transactions prohibited under this section is guilty of a felony. Subd. 4. Exceptions. Subdivision 2 does not apply to: (1) activities that are not bets under section 609.75, subdivision 3; and (2) contracts authorized and regulated under chapters 59A to 79A."
The way I read it is a VPN provider should block users in this state from connecting to prediction betting sites to be safe.
like virtual private networks, that could allow consumers to disguise their location and get around the ban.
Seems to be the intention.
They should go further and ban people from leaving the state, since that could also be used to circumvent the ban.
Luckily due to the United States Constitution, the states can’t tell you where you can and cannot go. Obviously with the police they can do whatever the fuck they want but officially we can go over we want.
I mean you could make the argument that the commerce clause tells the state they can’t ban VPNs. Ultimately it will be up to the SC to dictate the laws as they have been lately.
You know what, you’re right one could make the argument that states don’t even have the authority to ban vpns.
They can totally ban VPNs in the state. They can’t ban VPNs out of the state.
These people have bank accounts. What not just pass a law saying banks can’t take payments from these sites instead of banning VPNs?
But what about the banks profits??
Because banks have a better lobby and pay better.
Prior to New Jersey amending their state constitution to allow online sports betting in 2011, and mostly leading to the opening of online gambling we’re experiencing now, enforcement was usually taken against the “casinos” rather than the handlers. Back then it was CEOs of the betting companies getting caught on their flight layovers and charged with the illegal gambling stuff.
Doubt the intention is to enforce against the gamblers for the reasons already implied here, like the difficulty of tracking and enforcing vpn monitoring.
So do they have a business exception or are they just saying fuck everyone including businesses? Which would be surprising.
All businesses are felons now.
Hey what the fuck, good eye
Here is the relevant text of the signed bill SF4760, make your judgement as you will:
81.23 Subd. 2. Prediction markets; hosting prohibited. A person is guilty of a felony if the 81.24 person, for consideration and as part of a business
…
82.14 (5) provides supportive services to a prediction market or consumer knowing that the 82.15 services will be used to identify a consumer’s location, transfer money, or make or process 82.16 payments for the purpose of allowing consumers to make wagers or to settle wagers made 82.17 by consumers in violation of this section.
So they’d have to prove that the VPN provider somehow knew the user’s intention? It will they just steamroll over the facts and claim that any provider should assume that?
Good questions. At a minimum any VPN marketing in MN would need to tiptoe around claims that you can watch region locked content as if you were there.
Personally, I think VPNs that don’t receive or keep customers’ info and logs could have a credible argument that they don’t know whether their customers use it for prediction markets or not.
What if they use a foreign VPN?
Cue laws that VPNs monitor their clients’ traffic
My guess is they’re shooting for VPNs that operate in the state to DNS block the big markets.
darnit I did not assimilate that well enough. ugh.
You could always use tor browser to access the sites.
You’re relying on Air Bud rules to get around that.
“Ain’t nothin in the rules that says
a dog can’t play basketballa tor relay ain’t a VPN.”SSH tunnels and SOCKS proxies also apply.
Yeah the same rules that the ruling class uses to get around paying taxes.
Yes but we don’t have MONEY
Don’t need money if we flood it. Can’t catch all the speeders.
How else are they going to ban prediction markets if people can pretend they aren’t in Minnesota?
VPNs have many legitimate use cases though, unlike prediction markets.
I think the ban is on using VPNs to circumvent the prediction market prohibition, not on using VPNs whatsoever.
This is how I read it.
I would think VPN usage in this case could be proven without the VPN giving anything up, depending on what the poly market logs. If they log that a bet occured with X person at Y time from an IP that’s from another state or known to be a VPN IP address… And all proof shows they were 100% at home in MN. Then a case could be made they used a VPN to trick the poly market into accepting the bet. Then, boom, another charge added on.
Or if the poly market itself teaches people how to vpn to get around the ban… they would see more charges.
Trace the financial transactions, which can’t fully be hidden by a VPN.
Sure, a Minnesota resident could use a VPN to go to a prediction market gambling site … but when they pay money to make their bet or receive money from a bet that pays out, those financial transactions should be traceable to and from Minnesota.
Don’t they often take crypto currency though?
I’ll start off by saying I’m not sure if prediction markets take crypto or not. However, even if they did, there’s not really any crypto brokers that don’t follow KYC (know your customer) policies. It would require a subpoena to get the information about a specific customer, but the ledger is public, so you can see everyone’s transactions.
Some do, sure, and those will probably remain as ways to avoid the law. Though, at least in theory, it will still be illegal and people doing it could at least in theory be caught and prosecuted for it.
Shutting down the main ones, while leaving crypto-based ones as a legally risky alternative will still greatly hamper and slow down these prediction markets’ business in Minnesota.
Kalshi and Polymarket split the market almost 50/50. Kalshi has KYC and legally serves US markets and Polymarket doesn’t and uses crypto for their US customers.
Its literally around half the market, not some fringe thing.
It’s against hosting or advertising those markets. I think if they leave that out of the ad campaign they’ll be fine.
No, it specifically says “provide supportive services.”
Which would require a specific relationship with one of those markets.
If I use a VPN to access Google, does that mean I have a “special relationship” with Google?
I believe the point is if google was illegal where you live, it would be illegal if Google said "hey you can still reach us without the big man knowing by using our partners ‘borgVPN’ ". BorgVPN could be in trouble for the partnership, even if they aren’t the actual banned service.
Sure, but that’s not really explicitly laid out in the law.
Laws typically are not that explicitly laid out. There needs to be some flexibility and generality to them or they become worthless.
Just FYI, sufficiently liquid prediction markets are also assassin markets by their nature.
It’s a really easy way to facilitate payments for killings by “predicting” that someone will be dead by a certain date, and making a big bet against it
That isn’t really a new thing entirely, companies have our entire lives been able to take out life insurance on their employees without them knowing it. Which you know…
This was reported, so I looked it up. Apparently, it’s true. I also think it’s your opinion that corporations might use for their own financial gain, so I won’t remove it.
Corporate ownership of life insurance (COLI), or corporate-owned life insurance, refers to insurance policies taken out by companies on their employees, typically senior-level executives.
The company is responsible for making the premium payments, and if the person dies, the company, not the insured person’s family or other heirs, receives the death benefit. Such policies came to be called “dead peasant insurance” after some companies purchased life insurance on low-level workers without their knowledge.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/corporate-ownership-of-life-insurance.asp
Oh right the dead peasants’ insurance thing this is like well after the fact, in like the 00s by walmart.
I guess I should have just looked it all up how hard could have been.
From what I understand they would take them out on technical employees fairly often as well, like scientists types that could not be easily replaced. But who knows what dirty dealings have gone on.
Is that why they hire elderly people as greeters? Wow, they’re pure evil.
Huh, I wonder if there’s a way we could subpoena the books of the life insurance companies they deal with. Or somehow obtain that information by whatever means.
Walmart was a very bad company, they still are but I think they were one of the first retail Giants to become totally morally bankrupt.
If a Walmart employee dies on Walmart property the family gets a $1,000,000 payout. Source: am spouse of Walmart manager. This applies to all employees as far as I know.
What does Walmart get if you die* on or off the property?
That I do not know. If they get anything, it isn’t handled at the store level.
His opinion? Walmart was notorious for taking out life insurance policies on its rank and file workers. It happened for decades, there were even lawsuits, settlements, the whole 9 yards…
This is the first I’m hearing anything about it. I meant it as a good thing, so he doesn’t have to provide proof and all that.
Sure?
Yeah that’s been common knowledge for decades and decades. Like Wall Street level they can sell life insurance policies on any of us without us knowing it, all they need is our social security number. It’s very unfair.
I don’t have any ready sources this is from like the 90s and 2000s I mean I could look but whatever.
It’s why we aren’t allowed to do “dead pools.”
Note that a dead pool can also mean when the water in a dam is so low that it can’t flow downhill through the outlet (because the outlet isn’t at the exact bottom).
It can also refer to a large room full of acid and hanging skeletal corpses
“Dats real acid…?”
Whaaaa?
Hey, I bet you a million dollars a guy I don’t like will still be alive tomorrow.
If you take that bet. You have a significant financial interest in ensuring that guy I don’t like isn’t still alive tomorrow
I know everyone else is pretending that they understood your original comment, but I actually really appreciate how much you clear it up with this response.
Like there is no downside for the person making the bet, they actually accrue interest until it happens if there is any market volume on the bet.
I get what you were saying, I just have never heard of this happening. Are there court cases or articles on it?
No confirmed cases, but sci fi novels and commentators have been talking about it since the 90s - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market
We are proud to announce that we have created the Torment Nexus from the famous SciFi show “Don’t create the Torment Nexus”!
No idea about court cases but my great grandfather had stories of soilders betting on which commanding officer would be killed next by his own men. He was in the German military. My grandfather had similar stories from Vietnam.
Dead pools or how ever you call them are a decently well known concept.
I’m pretty sure that legal wide scale prediction markets have been around for like 2 years so maybe give it time
I honestly wonder if there isn’t a deeper history. Gambling is a part of human culture and the only recent thing that’s happened is our society has become so corrupt that gambling is being allowed to legally flourish.
Like bank deposit insurance, vaccines, and clean water standards, anti-gambling laws are something society is reminded it needs only after they are gone.
Like bank deposit insurance, vaccines, and clean water standards, anti-gambling laws are something society is reminded it needs only after they are gone.
Like laws against sex and drugs, gambling laws are in themselves a failure of government. We know criminalization is not needed, because societies that don’t criminalize imprison and murder less of their own people.
Kidnapping and murder is bad
You can’t legislate morality. If you make gambling and drugs illegal they just go underground and become worse problems and foster a criminal underclass/organized crime that becomes a much bigger problem.
Better to keep them legal and put sensible controls on them, emphasis on sensible obviously that’s not what we have going on here. Outside of our freedom on marijuana in some states now at least when you don’t consider how anybody that drives a car can be arrested for impaired driving even if they’re totally sober from the marijuana. If they have smoked in the past week or two. That’s another story though.
Well, the probably imprison less people because they are functioning much better as a society. The question is if imprisoning people is better than not imprisoning them in this fucked up society.
I’m in the US, but we generally lock up and/or deport way too many people; incarceration causes more problems than it solves, and serving white supremacy is the main social goal and outcoe.
But I think this is a separate conversation. The anti-gambling laws I’m talking about are the ones that would prevent constant Draft Kings advertisements and all the money that gets fed back into our political system. We’ve got so far away from acknowledging the damage that gambling causes, and gambling, as far as I’m concerned, is just a mugging with extra steps, yet paid propaganda has papered over the criminality.
Yes, making insider trading easy, legal and profitable instead of risky, illegal and prosecuted, certainly does not fuel insider trading in whatever shape or form.
Fuck that guy, bro. No one likes him.
So kind of like in John Wick, but less direct
It’s basically, if there is a profit motive for something, it WILL happen. It’s a matter of when not if once these things are out there in the wild
Every day I regret leaving Minnesota for Texas, they keep doing what we need to do here and the damn state regime stomps down any progressive or practical solutions the blue cities try. I vote angry in every election.
Something stopping you from going back?
Can’t afford moving anywhere now. Have to work and save before I can get back north again.
Silver lining is that your vote goes further there
Not after redistricting.
So you want to live in a state that is actively banning VPNs? How does that boot taste?
The prohibition extends to services supporting prediction markets, like virtual private networks, that could allow consumers to disguise their location and get around the ban.
Oh noooooo not the cottage industry propped up by YouTube shills that misled an entire generation about how technology actually works what will we dooooooo?
Texas isn’t forcing you to use prediction markets so how are you affected?
they keep doing what we need to do here and the damn state regime stomps down any progressive or practical solutions the blue cities try.
Aside from all the other negatives of living in the nasty shit hole that Texas is?
I feel like if we could just organize and sythesize a list of the best blue state laws and enact them nationally we could have a pretty good country. I mean I would say like cali and minnesota and illinois but like new mexico to has some nice stuff along with the old guard east coast. EDITED ugh. just realized from another commenter the poison pill in the law.
Minnesota comin in hot
I’m glad this slipped in before the session ended. These markets are super easy to manipulate and are basically gambling. They should be regulated like one
Walz wins again!
Bet they didn’t predict that happening.
Shit yeah! 49+fed to go! Pls
