Kalshi’s decision to self-certify parlay contracts that combine political and economic outcomes is more than a product launch; it is a live stress-test of how far the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) will let “event contracts” go before they are reclassified as impermissible bets on politics.
Under section 5c(c) of the CEA (7 U.S.C. § 7a-2), a designated contract market like Kalshi can list new contracts via self-certification, attesting that the product complies with the Act and CFTC regulations. Unless the CFTC objects—typically within a 24-hour window—the contract is deemed compliant and can begin trading.
This is the same mechanism Kalshi used for its sports parlays and is now using for a template explicitly labeled “Political Decision / Politics” that bundles elections, legislative votes or executive actions with macroeconomic data releases and central bank decisions.
The legal tension arises because the CEA also contains a powerful limiting tool: section 5c(c)(5)(C), which authorises the CFTC to prohibit contracts involving “gaming” or events that are contrary to the public interest. That authority is implemented in Rule 40.11, which already bans contracts on assassination, war, terrorism and certain unlawful activities. In 2024 the Commission went further, proposing a broad event-contracts rule that would sharply restrict trading on political control of government, elections and some measures of violence. Yet, while that proposal remains unfinished rulemaking rather than binding law, Kalshi is exploiting the existing self-certification pathway to push new political products into the market.
The federal courts have also reshaped the landscape. In its litigation with the CFTC over contracts tied to control of the U.S. Congress, Kalshi successfully argued that the agency’s prior disapproval stretched the statutory concept of “gaming” beyond what Congress intended. The CFTC ultimately withdrew its appeal, signalling both legal vulnerability and internal division over how aggressively to police political derivatives. That outcome effectively lowered the barrier for Kalshi to treat politics as a legitimate underlying for event futures, as long as the formal exchange-trading and clearing framework is respected.
From a market-design perspective, the new parlays are sophisticated. By requiring multiple legs—say, a rate-cut decision by the Federal Reserve and an inflation print above a threshold—the contracts embed correlation views that are familiar to institutional derivatives desks but novel for retail-facing event markets. Legally, however, the sophistication does not neutralise the policy question: should a federally regulated derivatives venue intermediate real-money positions on who wins elections or how Congress votes, even when combined with economic data?
If the CFTC finalises its event-contract rule in a restrictive form, many of these markets could be shut down ex post, stranding business models and undermining regulatory credibility. If, instead, the Commission allows Kalshi’s framework to stand, it will have effectively recognised a new, quasi-securities asset class: regulated political-economic derivatives for hedging and speculation. For now, Kalshi is operating in a law-governed but contested frontier—less a hidden grey zone than a brightly lit edge of what U.S. derivatives law currently permits.
