Americans who want to bet on sports have many options. There’s DraftKings, FanDuel, ESPN Bet, Caesars, and BetMGM. There’s also BetRivers, Hard Rock, bet365, Fanatics, and Bally Bet. But none of those platforms are available in the 17 states where online sports betting remains illegal, including California and Texas.

Kalshi, a prediction market, doesn’t have that limitation. Gamblers can use it to wager on the outcome of sporting events in all 50 states. That’s because, in the eyes of American law, Kalshi is not a gambling company at all; it’s an exchange that facilitates the trading of legitimate financial products. Over the past year, the company has added sports to the range of events that can be wagered on, while arguing that it is beyond the reach of any state-level gambling ban. It maintains that it can be regulated only by the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission. But under the second Trump administration, the CFTC has shown no interest in cracking down. The result is that sports betting is now legal everywhere—even in the states where it isn’t.

Futures contracts have been around in the United States since the late 1800s. Midwestern farmers planted and harvested grain at roughly the same time every year, and then everyone went to Chicago to sell. This sudden abundance of grain would cause prices to plummet. Middlemen swooped in to help. They’d buy the grain and store it nearby, selling it for a profit in the winter. This helped to stabilize prices, but some buyers wanted more certainty: a set amount of grain at a set price at a set date, so they could plan ahead. Middlemen obliged, writing contracts for the future delivery of grain.

Soon after, people began trading the contracts. A bakery might buy a grain contract from a distillery. Farmers could buy the contracts, too, to hedge their bets: A Michigan farmer might buy a grain contract from a Wisconsin farmer, so that if Michigan had a bad harvest, he’d still have some grain to sell. Speculators joined the party.