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The most consequential battles over cryptocurrency’s legal future are not always fought over token prices or exchange collapses. Sometimes they happen in federal courtrooms, in motions filed on a Friday afternoon, over questions that will determine whether prediction markets are gambling, securities, or something else entirely. Three cases moving through US courts right now each carry implications that extend well beyond the individuals named in the filings.
The last FTX domino has not yet fallen
Michelle Bond, whose unsuccessful 2022 congressional run in New York sits at the centre of a campaign finance prosecution, filed a motion on Friday asking the US District Court for the Southern District of New York to exclude evidence related to her husband Ryan Salame’s guilty plea. Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, is currently serving a 90-month prison sentence after admitting in 2023 to making political contributions funded by transfers from accounts tied to FTX.
Prosecutors allege that Salame effectively bankrolled Bond’s campaign through those contributions. Bond’s legal team is pushing back hard on the evidentiary logic of that argument. Their filing stated that Salame’s plea materials “lack any probative value as to Ms. Bond’s guilt, knowledge, or intent,” and that his admission covers only his own conduct, not hers. The filing also requested that the court consider information about Bond and Salame’s concurrent divorce and custody proceedings, arguing that Salame was not functioning as an ordinary individual donor to her campaign.
The case is widely regarded as one of the final legal proceedings directly connected to FTX’s 2022 collapse. Sam Bankman-Fried, Caroline Ellison, and Salame have all been sentenced. Bond’s trial represents the closing chapter of a prosecution effort that has consumed years of federal court time and reshaped how regulators and lawmakers think about crypto’s intersection with political money.
George Santos, prediction markets, and a very short prison stay
In a case that reads more like a cautionary tale than a legal precedent, former New York congressman George Santos was ordered by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission to pay a combined total of approximately US$35,000, comprising a civil monetary penalty of US$17,500 and disgorgement of US$17,570 in profits. The order stems from Santos trading event contracts on the prediction market platform Kalshi, specifically contracts tied to whether he would appear at the 2026 State of the Union address.
According to the CFTC, Santos posted on social media about his attendance plans while simultaneously holding positions in those contracts, making what the regulator described as “material misrepresentations and omissions” that moved contract prices in his favour. Santos has been barred from trading on prediction market platforms for three years.
The Santos case is notable partly because of the broader context surrounding him. He was expelled from Congress in 2023 and sentenced to 87 months in prison in 2025 for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, but served only three months before US President Donald Trump commuted his sentence. The CFTC action is therefore one of the few formal consequences that has actually stuck. It also signals that regulators are watching how public figures use their own statements to move prediction market prices, a behaviour that sits in genuinely murky legal territory.
The case that could define prediction markets for a generation
The most legally significant of the three cases involves Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a US soldier charged in April with making more than US$400,000 on Polymarket event contracts using nonpublic information. According to the US Justice Department, Van Dyke was involved in a military operation related to the potential removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, and allegedly used insider knowledge of that operation to bet on whether Maduro would be removed from power.
Van Dyke has pleaded not guilty. On Friday, his legal team filed a 51-page memorandum in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York arguing for dismissal of the indictment. The core of their argument is that the Commodity Exchange Act, which underpins three of the charges, is legally ambiguous in its treatment of prediction market event contracts as “swaps.” The CFTC under Chair Michael Selig has asserted exclusive jurisdiction over prediction markets on exactly that basis, but Van Dyke’s lawyers contend that if Congress, executive agencies, and courts all find the swap definition unclear, ordinary citizens cannot reasonably be expected to know that placing a wager on a prediction platform triggers federal commodity law.
“If Congress, executive branch agencies, and courts all find the ‘swap’ definition ambiguous, how can ordinary citizens have fair notice that prediction market wagers are covered by the CEA?” the filing asked. “They cannot.”
A trial is not expected until late 2026 or early 2027 based on a scheduling order filed in June. But the outcome will matter far beyond Van Dyke himself. Prediction markets have grown rapidly in prominence, and the question of whether they fall under CFTC jurisdiction as commodity instruments or occupy some other regulatory space has never been definitively resolved. The case has already drawn attention because Trump’s teleprompter operator reportedly earned more than US$100,000 through Kalshi contracts tied to presidential speeches, raising questions about how broadly insider-trading-style rules might apply in this new market category.
Why the courtroom is now where crypto’s rules get written
Taken together, these three cases illustrate something important about where cryptocurrency and adjacent financial technology currently stand in the United States. Legislation like the CLARITY Act is still being debated, regulatory turf wars between the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission remain unresolved, and the boundaries of what counts as a commodity, a security, or simply a bet are genuinely contested. That ambiguity means courts are effectively doing the work that legislators have not yet finished.
For investors and platforms operating in Malaysia and Singapore, where regulators like the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Malaysia’s Securities Commission have taken more structured approaches to digital asset oversight, the US legal uncertainty is worth tracking closely. Prediction market platforms have a global user base, and how American courts define the legal character of event contracts will influence how platforms structure their products and access controls for users across jurisdictions. The Van Dyke case in particular could produce a ruling that either legitimises or severely constrains the prediction market industry as it currently operates, and that outcome will ripple outward well beyond US borders.
Read More: Trump Media Has Quietly Sold 63% of Its Bitcoin. Here Is What the Numbers Actually Show.
