alt Hacker News> “If you commit insider trading on Kalshi, that can and will at some point be a federal crime. It is a federal crime,”
Am I misunderstanding? It seems like two different statements he always conflates.
If it becomes a federal crime at some point, it will become illegal from that point — you can't prosecute people for acts committed before they were crimes.
The only way that this could be a federal crime right now is if the government starts prosecuting it under existing laws without any changes. I don't see that as likely.
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It is a federal crime, but one could be forgiven for assuming federal crimes committed by this administration will not be prosecuted while this administration is in power.
I don't think he's saying people who do that right now will be prosecuted. I think he's just saying that it will become illegal so anyone doing it then runs the risk of being prosecuted.
> The only way that this could be a federal crime right now is if the government starts prosecuting it under existing laws without any changes. I don't see that as likely.
Fully agree, especially since Kalshi just caught one of the editors of MrBeast's videos red handed (he was betting on the "What words will MrBeast say in his next video" market with 100% accuracy) and while Kalshi banned the guy the DOJ has shown 0 interest in doing anything with that.
Schrodinger's felony
IANAL, but my understanding is that they can make it a retroactive crime or clarify existing laws in ways that include prediction markets.
Don't assume safety.
Edit - was curious:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law
So maybe not?
I'd love a judicial scholar's input.
It’s a federal crime once someone gets convicted for it. Without any precedent it will be up to the first case to lay out how existing law applies to new phenomena that may or may not be covered, depending on what a judge thinks of the arguments.