The Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) says that Crypto.com will stop offering trading on sports event contracts in early November. The move comes after a federal judge denied Crypto.com a preliminary injunction that would have allowed the platform to continue offering the contracts as its lawsuit fighting Nevada’s cease-and-desist order works its way through the court.
In a letter sent Friday and addressed to “all licensees” in the state, NGCB chairman Mike Dreitzer said the board confirmed that Crypto.com will no longer let users in Nevada trade on any sports prediction markets beginning next week. The letter was first shared by Nevada Independent reporter Howard Stutz on X.
“The Board has confirmed that after Nov. 3, 2025, and until the resolution of its appeal, Crypto.com will not be offering sports event contracts to Nevada residents,” Dreitzer wrote in the letter. “That means Crypto.com will no longer hold open positions in sports event contracts for Nevada residents and will not permit new contracts to be opened.”
Crypto.com first DCM to restrict access in a specific state
When Crypto.com blocks Nevada users from trading sports event contracts, it will become the first Commodity Futures Trading Commission-approved designated contract market (DCM) to prohibit any of its markets from being offered in a particular jurisdiction.
Prediction News has reached out to Crypto.com to confirm its Nevada plans and will update this story if and when they respond.
Earlier this month, Judge Andrew Gordon denied Crypto.com’s request for a preliminary injunction against the NGCB’s cease-and-desist order.
In his ruling, Gordon’s preliminary determination was that Crypto.com had not demonstrated a likelihood of success in showing that sports contracts qualify for treatment as a swap. Gordon said that under the Commodities Exchange Act, swaps are defined as the occurrence or non-occurrence of an event, not the outcome of an event. Crypto.com is arguing that federal regulation and oversight from the CFTC preempts state-level regulations and that they should not be forbidden from offering sports event contracts in any state unless the CFTC or Congress says otherwise.
In a similar case, Judge Gordon granted Kalshi’s request for a preliminary injunction in April, allowing the platform to continue offering all of its prediction markets, including those related to sports outcomes, in Nevada as the court case plays out.
Kalshi, Robinhood also fighting to keep sports contracts in Nevada
Nevada has become one of the more active battlegrounds in the fight over prediction market exchanges’ right to offer sports contracts in all 50 states.
In a recent appearance on the Prediction News Update podcast, gaming lawyer Daniel Wallach noted that Judge Gordon will hold a hearing for Robinhood’s request for a preliminary injunction to keep offering its sports markets in Nevada on Nov. 14. That same day, Gordon is scheduled to hear Nevada’s emergency request to have the previous injunction in favor of Kalshi dissolved.
Wallach said that, after those hearings, there will likely be a better sense of how the Nevada cases will turn out.
“By the end of the day on Nov. 14, I think we may have uniformity in the Nevada federal court system,” Wallach said. “The issue of whether the sports contracts issued by Kalshi involve swaps, that will be squarely at issue at the Nov. 14 hearing. I think before the end of November we may get legal clarity as to which way these cases are headed.”
Kalshi previously argued geoblocking select markets goes against CFTC
Crypto.com currently uses geolocation services to restrict countries in which access to the platform is not available and will presumably do the same with its sports markets in Nevada. In its court cases involving states seeking to restrict its markets in certain jurisdictions, Kalshi has argued that using geolocation services would take months to get up and running and that it would cost the company millions of dollars.
In Kalshi’s court case in Maryland, which also ordered the company to cease and desist offering sports markets, Kalshi appealed the court’s initial denial of a preliminary injunction. In its appeal, Kalshi’s lawyers said that Kalshi has “no current geolocation capacity” and that employing geolocation services to restrict access in the state would “take months and cost tens of millions of dollars.”
Kalshi also argued that restricting access would go against CFTC regulations, which they say mandates that all of its markets must be available to all of its users.
“(Employing geolocation restrictions) would expose Kalshi to liability for violating its contractual obligations to users and undermining those users’ own rights; imperil its reputation; and imperil compliance with the CFTC’s Core Principle that demands ‘impartial access’ to Kalshi’s exchange for all users,” Kalshi’s appeal stated.
