Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour Talks Arizona Criminal Charges
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Tim, take it away. Hey, we're joined by Tarek Mansour. He's the CEO and co-founder of Kalshi. Tarek, good to see you. Thanks for joining us on this. Look, even though other state regulators have taken steps to crack down on what they say is unlicensed betting on Kalshi's site, Arizona appears to be the first to escalate to criminal charges. What is your response to these charges? Look, I mean, these charges have nothing to do with gambling or the merits. If it was about gambling or the merits, they would let the judicial process run its course in the federal courts. You know, five days ago on Thursday, Kalshi filed suit against Arizona in federal courts on the merits on whether Kalshi is subject to exclusive jurisdiction of the CFTC.
And, you know, we're confident in our position and wanted to let the court process play out. And instead of letting that happen, The Arizona Attorney General decided to subvert the judicial process and weaponize it and go to state court and file these criminal charges, which we view as meritless and baseless. We see this as a total overstep, and we look forward to fighting it in court. Well, experts are saying this could be the first of many charges such as these from other states, too. How does it change your legal strategy? Well, this is the whole point of federal preemption. So this is not about gambling. The charges that the attorney general filed are not about gambling. They're not even about sports only.
They're about prediction markets writ large. It's just, you know, attacking the entire business model. And nothing prevents from the same attorney general or others from fighting the same criminal charges against derivatives markets writ large. They could file the same exact charges under the same analysis against CME or ICE or NASDAQ. And that's the whole point of federal regulation of these financial exchanges is to prevent this sort of chaos and these sort of attacks on these businesses that could be political in nature or other. And that's a very important distinction. Well, I read the charging document from the Attorney General.
What criminal charges has Arizona filed against Kalshi?
It has 20 charges. They're mostly about betting and wagering when it comes to sports. There's some election stuff in there. Would you ever consider limiting your business in Arizona or other states to things that these AGs don't seem to have problems with, like economic data, the price of Bitcoin, what markets are going to do, predictions around those things? Look, I mean, the AG also claimed that we have war markets, which is incorrect. It's either flat out a lie or it's misinformed take, which is unfortunate for someone filing criminal charges against the company. What's more important here, again, is this is not about the merits. If it's about the merits, let's let the judicial process run its course in federal courts.
This is about something other than the merits, which is what I'm focused on. I don't know what the AG is focused on, but she is up for reelection. They did some press. It does seem to be making some buzz. But what I'm really focused on is building a great product for our millions of customers, out of which close to 400,000 are in Arizona, and fighting any of these baseless cases in courts, which we're going to continue doing. So you're fighting the cases, as I mentioned, Arizona's not the only state to take issue with your business.
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