Blockchain.com Applies for the Two Licences That Would Let It Run Its Own Event Market

Blockchain.com has applied to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission for two registrations, a designated contract market licence and a futures commission merchant licence, CNBC reported. The first would let it operate a regulated exchange for event contracts in the United States. The second would let it act as the broker carrying customer accounts and margin for them.

Together the pair would remove the company's dependence on overseas partners for prediction-market products, Decrypt reported. Running both the venue and the brokerage is the structure Kalshi uses, and it is the reason a platform can list a contract, take the customer's money and settle the outcome without a third party in the middle.

The filing arrives mid-argument

The timing puts the application into an unresolved legal fight. The CFTC has proposed a rule that would formally treat certain event contracts as swaps subject to its oversight, which would put platforms like Kalshi squarely under federal jurisdiction, CoinDesk reported. The same proposal carves casino-style wagers out of the swap definition, The Defiant reported, on the agency's stated reasoning that including them would threaten prediction markets.

Pulling the other way, the NFL has filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to take up New Jersey's case and to find that sports event contracts are gambling regulated by states rather than swaps regulated by the CFTC, The Block reported. The league's intervention matters because sports contracts are the volume product. A ruling for the states would leave federal licence holders with a national venue and a patchwork of places they cannot offer their busiest market.

What a licence does and does not buy

A designated contract market registration is permission to operate, not permission for any particular contract. The venue still has to self-certify each product, and the agency can challenge one. So the application is a bet that the federal route survives the litigation, made by a company that would otherwise keep routing US-adjacent demand offshore.

Blockchain.com is pursuing the registrations ahead of a planned $500m initial public offering, The Block reported. Regulated US venues are an easier thing to put in a prospectus than offshore partnerships, which is a plain commercial reason to file now rather than after the Supreme Court decides.

What to watch

Two dates matter more than the filing itself. One is whether the Supreme Court grants review in the New Jersey case, which would settle the state-versus-federal question for sports contracts. The other is the close of comment on the CFTC's swap proposal, which fixes the definition the whole industry will be drafting around. A registration granted into either outcome is worth a very different amount.