Last fall, a high-stakes struggle unfolded inside the red brick walls of an obscure federal agency.
Three companies — each with ties to the Trump family’s business empire — needed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to bless their ambitions in the white-hot field of prediction markets.
A growing portion of the agency’s portfolio, prediction markets allow Americans to bet on everything from whether the United States will take over Cuba to what color tie President Trump will wear next. The moneymaking opportunities were breathtaking, but the companies’ practices were causing a stir.
Senior career officials worried about whether Crypto.com was treating small bettors fairly.
