Election Betting Site PredictIt Sues to Block CFTC-Ordered Shutdown

PredictIt, several of its traders and academic users, and technology provider Aristotle International have filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)’s shutdown of the popular election betting site.

The lawsuit was filed on Sept. 9 in U.S. Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas and asks the CFTC to justify its August order to close the site for U.S. users by Feb. 15, which the CFTC said was because administrators hadn’t complied with the agency’s requirements for running the site.

“The CFTC action taken on Aug. 4, 2022, threatens to harm not only the value of modest investments of more than 80,000 PredictIt traders, but the quality of the anonymized data used by more than 200 academic researchers and university educators,” Aristotle wrote in an email to PredictIt traders. Aristotle is the contract service provider for PredictIt.

The CFTC could not immediately be reached for comment.

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