News

The probability of "Magic advancing to the NBA playoffs" on Polymarket has dropped to 39%, down 30% in the last 24 hours. Yesterday, the Magic lost to the 76ers by a score of 97 to 109. Tomorrow at 7:30 am, they will compete with the Hornets for the last playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. In addition, Hornets star LaMelo Ball was fined $35,000 for grabbing Adebayo during the game against the Heat and received a second-degree flagrant foul, but was not suspended. Moreover, Ball was fined another $25,000 for using profanity in a postgame interview, totaling $60,000 in fines. Continue to monitor the prediction markets to see changes before pricing.

BlockBeats reported that on April 17, Thursday, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments between attorneys representing the prediction market platform Kalshi and Nevada authorities regarding the state's ban on the platform's event contracts. This appeal stems from a lower court ruling that, based on the claim that Kalshi requires a license, prohibits it from offering certain event-based contracts in Nevada. The appellate court judge presiding over Thursday's arguments and Kalshi's attorney both acknowledged that there have been several state-level enforcement actions against Kalshi and other prediction market platforms, including criminal charges filed in Arizona. However, last week a federal court blocked Arizona authorities from enforcing the state's gambling laws against Kalshi's event contracts. “I believe that existing case law does indicate that what we need to avoid here is having state and federal courts simultaneously consider exactly the same issue and potentially reach different conclusions,” said Colleen Sinzdak, representing Kalshi. The core argument presented by Kalshi is that its event contracts are "swap" transactions and should fall under the jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, rather than state gambling regulators. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig supported this stance in the case involving a prediction market at an exchange and Nevada authorities. Paul Grewal, Chief Legal Officer of the exchange, predicted that this case may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. “Questions asked during oral arguments are not a reliable indicator of the court’s leanings either way. Regardless, I maintain my longstanding prediction that the Supreme Court will rule on whether sports contracts on designated contract markets are ‘swaps’ subject to CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction.”

ChainCatcher reports that Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson stated that Bitcoin's quantum defense proposal BIP-361 has been incorrectly described as a soft fork, while in reality, it is closer to a hard fork and cannot protect about 1.7 million early BTC generated before 2013, including approximately 1 million attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He said that the zero-knowledge proof recovery scheme in the proposal relies on BIP-39 mnemonic phrases, whereas early wallets used different key generation methods and cannot provide the required proof, so related assets under the current plan may be permanently frozen. The report also notes that BIP-361 co-author Jameson Lopp described it as a rough contingency proposal rather than a final specification.