Kalshi's Court-Ordered Time-Out in Michigan Comes With a $120K-a-Day Meter Running ⏱️

A Michigan judge has temporarily blocked prediction market Kalshi from offering sports-event contracts to state residents, citing alleged violations of gambling law. Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina issued a 14-day temporary restraining order against the platform, which expires on July 13. The order carries a $120,000 daily fine for each day Kalshi fails to comply with its geolocation requirements, according to a Monday court filing in State of Michigan vs. Kalshi. Aquilina wrote that Michigan residents would suffer irreparable harm from being "exploited by Kalshi's sports betting operation masquerading as an investment opportunity."

Michigan is the second U.S. state to impose a court-ordered prohibition on Kalshi's sports event contracts, following Nevada's temporary ban issued earlier in March. On June 17, Kentucky sued five prediction market platforms, including Kalshi and Polymarket, alleging they operated unlicensed sports betting platforms. More than a dozen other states have filed suits against prediction market operators, while the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has countersued several states, arguing that federally regulated event contracts fall under its exclusive authority.

Sports betting activity on prediction markets has risen sharply since the FIFA World Cup began on June 11. Daily taker volume — measuring contracts bought or sold by traders filling existing orders — hit a record $713 million on June 20, according to Dune data. On a monthly basis, sports betting led both major venues, climbing 40% to $9.5 billion on Kalshi and 175% to $5.3 billion on Polymarket, per Defirate figures. A June 11 Bernstein report projected the 2026 FIFA World Cup would generate more than $3 billion in incremental sports betting handle and between $5 billion and $10 billion in additional consumer prediction market volume. The World Cup winner contract alone has generated over $3.5 billion in trading volume on Polymarket, according to platform data.

The surge has also positioned Polymarket as an entry point for new cryptocurrency users, with a Bitget Wallet study of 857,000 users — shared with Cointelegraph — finding that roughly 60% of World Cup bettors interacted with the blockchain for the first time during their prediction market activity. Cointelegraph has reached out to Kalshi for comment on how the platform will respond to the Michigan ruling.