Mich. Judge Opens Door For Prediction Market Enforcement

By Alex Lawson

Polymarket and Robinhood may soon face enforcement efforts from Michigan regulators after a federal judge ruled Wednesday that he saw little difference between the prediction market platforms' sports contract offerings and conventional sports betting.

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Kentucky AG Says Kalshi And Polymarket Offerings Are Illegal

By Rae Ann Varona

Kentucky's attorney general on Wednesday lodged three lawsuits accusing prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket, and online casino platform VGW, of violating the state's consumer protection and gambling laws by offering unlicensed sports wagering in the state, and running illegal and addictive sweepstakes casino websites.

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SEC Faces Call To Write Rules For Crypto Wallet Apps

By Jessica Corso

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association is calling on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to write rules outlining when companies providing access to cryptocurrency wallets must register as brokers, saying that a recent staff statement on the issue represents "a significant departure" from past agency practice.

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OCC Warns Charter Hopefuls Against Incomplete Applications

By Jon Hill

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Wednesday that it will send back incomplete regulatory applications without a review and will start publishing its denial decisions, putting bank charter hopefuls and other corporate filers on notice.

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FTX Exec's Wife Must Face Campaign Finance Charges

By Hailey Konnath

A New York federal judge Wednesday refused to throw out an indictment accusing crypto lobbyist Michelle Bond of campaign finance crimes, rejecting her argument that prosecutors previously promised her husband, a former FTX executive, that his guilty plea would mean she's in the clear.

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Novig Gets CFTC Designation As Sports Prediction Market

By David Steele

Novig, which began as a sports betting app and evolved into a sports-focused prediction market, now has the official approval of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a designated contract market, the company said Tuesday.

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Bipartisan Sens. Condemn Bankman-Fried's Pardon Bid

By Aislinn Keely

The top members of a cryptocurrency-focused Senate subcommittee on Wednesday introduced a bipartisan resolution condemning Sam Bankman-Fried's bid for a presidential pardon, saying that "under no circumstances" should the convicted FTX founder receive executive clemency.

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Brief

Crypto Mining Firm Gets $11M Award Confirmed

By Spencer Brewer

A Texas federal court confirmed a crypto mining company's $11 million arbitration award after the opposing party failed to show up at an arbitration hearing and then failed to respond or appear before the federal court.

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Visa, Mastercard Say 'Old' Deal Bars 'New' Merchant Suit

By Bryan Koenig

Visa and Mastercard asked a New York federal court to shut down a new proposed class action from merchants seeking to get around the future claims release in the credit card companies' $5.6 billion transaction fees antitrust settlement, arguing the new merchants are clearly bound by the old deal.

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Nasdaq Private Market Says Rival Poached Staff And Secrets

By Katryna Perera

A Nasdaq marketplace for pre-IPO stock has filed suit against a competitor, alleging that it has poached employees and clients, stolen trade secrets and other confidential information, and infringed its patented technology in an effort to acquire what Nasdaq has built without fairly competing.

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A New Wave Of Prediction Market Risk Is About To Break

The convergence of three potential new risks — shareholder derivative suits, evolving disclosure requirements and congressional investigations — means that prediction market exposure has graduated from an interesting hypothetical to a company's audit committee agenda item, say attorneys at King & Spalding.

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Opinion

Rule Of Law Requires Gov't Engagement With Bar, Not Retreat

A federal agency's absence from national and local bar conferences, most recently illustrated by the U.S. Department of Justice's withdrawal from a New York City Bar Association white collar conference, disserves the bar, the government lawyers themselves and, ultimately, the administration of justice, says Muhammad Faridi at Linklaters.

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Full Fed. Circ. To Hear Immigration Judges' Firing Challenge

By Ganesh Setty

The Federal Circuit on Wednesday agreed to conduct en banc review over the firing of two immigration judges, after the Merit Systems Protection Board ruled that they constituted inferior officers who are subject to at-will removal by the president.

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No Discipline For DOJ Atty's 'Lapse Of Judgment' In ICE Case

By Emily Sawicki

A Rhode Island federal prosecutor who knowingly withheld information about a detainee's criminal history at the behest of immigration enforcement, leading to an "unfounded attack" against a federal judge by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement following the detainee's release, violated his duty of candor but will not face discipline, the district's chief judge determined.

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Trump Halts Clayton Director Hearing Over Blue-Slip Dispute

By Courtney Bublé

President Donald Trump directed Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, not to appear for his confirmation hearing Wednesday on his nomination to be director of national intelligence, in part over a blue-slip issue.

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Maya Kowalski Sues Ex-Atty Over Fees, Funding Loan

By Carolina Bolado

Maya Kowalski, the subject of the Netflix documentary "Take Care of Maya," filed a malpractice suit against her former attorney on Wednesday, accusing him of charging excessive fees and improperly orchestrating an advance funding loan after winning a $213 million judgment.

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Sanctioned IP Atty Tells Fed. Circ. 'Integrity' On The Line

By Elliot Weld

An attorney who was sanctioned in a trade dress infringement case due to what a judge said were his repeated misrepresentations has asked the Federal Circuit to lift the penalties against him and his client, saying his "professional and personal integrity, and my family, depends on it."

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Bosch Receives First DOJ Declination Under New Policy

By Sarah Jarvis

German technology company Bosch on Wednesday became the first company to avoid criminal prosecution under a new U.S. Department of Justice enforcement policy after it cooperated with the federal government and agreed to pay $36 million to settle allegations it improperly exported technology products to sanctioned Chinese company Huawei.

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DOJ's Pot Shift Leaves Key Questions For Cannabis Industry

By Sam Reisman

The Trump administration's recent moves to relax federal restrictions on marijuana through the administrative process will have unclear ramifications for all industry players unless Congress steps in to rewrite cannabis law, attorneys heard Wednesday.

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