Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready... Who will be the next White House press secretary? What movie review score will the new Avengers film get? Will it rain tomorrow?
Those are all outcomes people around the world can bet on today through prediction market websites like Kalshi and Polymarket. But it’s a darker set of questions that have prompted moral outrage, public safety concerns and calls for regulation from lawmakers recently.
As wildfires tore through Los Angeles in January 2025, eventually destroying more than 16,000 structures and killing 31 people, Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market platform, took in more than $1.2 million in bets — on how many acres would burn, which neighborhoods would be consumed and when firefighters would contain the blazes.
A now-defunct website called, Wyldfyre, offered simulated bets under the tag line “you can’t predict wildfire,” “but you can trade on it.”
“It’s morally repugnant,” said Will Abrams, who lost his home in Santa Rosa’s 2017 Tubbs Fire. “It undermines the public good in all sorts of ways, and if there’s a place not to bet this is one of them. Where are the bounds?”
“We definitely do not need incentives for doing harm to the public and burning down communities,” Abrams said.
Fears that these bets could encourage arson for a payout led nine U.S. senators, including Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff of California to write a letter last month to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees prediction markets. They urged the agency to explicitly prohibit betting on wildfires as part of current regulations being considered to rein in markets that “go against the public interest.”
“These markets risk creating perverse incentives, undermining public trust and commodifying human suffering in ways that warrant careful scrutiny,” they wrote to commission chairman Michael Selig.
A spokesperson for Polymarket said the letter created “a misleading narrative based on markets we haven’t offered for nearly 2 years.”
Wildfire betting markets are reportedly no longer available to Polymarket’s U.S. consumers, but are accessible on international platforms.
Kalshi, another leading prediction betting site, has never offered such markets, according to a company representative. “We don’t allow these markets because they create perverse incentives,” the representative said.
A number of wildfires this year have been connected to arson, although none have been connected to betting markets. But the stakes are high.
Cyndi Foreman, division chief fire marshal with the Sonoma County Fire District, said she’s not aware of evidence showing markets have resulted in arson, and neither is the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, according to spokesperson Sgt. Juan Valencia.
But, “from a fire service perspective, there are certainly concerns with creating a financial incentive tied to the growth, spread or destruction caused by a wildfire,” Foreman said. “Introducing a financial motive into something that can be intentionally influenced by human behavior is concerning from both an ethical and public-safety standpoint.”
The prospect of betting on wildfires raises a number of ethical issues, according to Ann Skeet, senior director of leadership ethics at Santa Clara University.
Beyond incentives for bad actors, “as soon as you place a contract on a certain event that involves the potential loss of life, you’re kind of monetizing human life, and in a way that reduces its value,” Skeet said. The other concern is what it “does to a sense of community. Once people start to feel like potentially their neighbors are betting on their demise or harm to their property, it reduces that sense of well-being that comes from neighbors looking out for one another.”
Outside of wildfires, in Kalshi’s “climate” category recently, a user could bet on the number of major Atlantic hurricanes this season, whether 2026 will be the hottest year — a winning $50 “no” bet could yield $142.59 — or the chance of an 8.0 magnitude earthquake before 2027.
“The west coast is very active,” one commenter wrote. “Now with the 7’s in Mexico, Venezuela and now Colombia, I’m very convinced it will happen soon.”
Polymarket had markets available on power grid emergencies and a range of possible pandemics, covering Ebola to a new Covid-19 variant to measles cases.
Evolution in the betting field
It isn’t the first time officials have wrestled with the ethical and regulatory dilemmas these prediction markets raise.
At the turn of the century, a national intelligence community-supported project, FutureMap, explored whether market-generated predictions could improve forecasting and intelligence gathering. The experiment was originally created with a focus on political outcomes in the Middle East, and would have allowed for betting on events including terrorist attacks and assassinations.
“Congress shut it down because they were not comfortable with the idea. They sort of found their moral compass,” Skeet said. But, now there’s commercialized prediction markets that could be “promoting that same kind of behavior.”
Polymarket and others have touted the potential forecasting benefits from prediction markets, including for climate-related events and risks. A group of researchers recently posited that betting in these markets could shift people’s views on climate change as they track the outcomes and severity of temperatures or storms in real time.
“People turn to the news for commentary and they come to Polymarket for information,” a company spokesperson told CNN. “While we are not blind to the risks, removing these markets does not prevent a tragedy but makes the most accurate information less accessible to the people who need it most.”
But, when it comes to wildfires, Foreman of the Sonoma County Fire District said, “I don’t see prediction markets providing firefighters with information that improves upon the tools already available to us.”
“Fire agencies rely on trained personnel, real-time intelligence, weather information, fuel conditions, topography and sophisticated fire behavior modeling to anticipate where a fire may go,” she said. “Ultimately, wildfire forecasting for the fire service is about protecting lives, communities and firefighters, not predicting an outcome for financial gain.”
Cal Fire and the U.S. Forest Service have taken similar positions.
Range of applications, regulations
Robert Eyler, an economics professor at Sonoma State University can imagine some people trying to use prediction markets as a form of insurance, especially in areas prone to wildfires with limited traditional insurance offerings.
“It provides an enormous number of ethics questions and true public safety concerns absolutely, but the underpinnings are the idea that I might be using a market as a very poorly managed but possible way of a hedge against the risk I have,” he said. “Derivative markets, insurance, and the evolution of these prediction markets all have very similar underpinnings.”
These markets will continue to evolve, especially if corporate players get involved, in ways that need to be considered, tracked and potentially regulated, Eyler said.
As a fledgling industry, prediction market betting has exploded in popularity, with the global trading volume on Kalshi and Polymarket, the two leading platforms, shooting up from less than $5 billion in September 2025 to roughly $24 billion in April 2026.
Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm is set to be a top investor in Polymarket. The president’s son also has a stake in Kalshi where he has served as an adviser.
In the meantime, concerns and evidence of insider trading have recently driven the introduction of state and federal legislation and legal fights. High-profile cases have included a U.S. Special Forces soldier who allegedly used classified information to place a Polymarket bet about the removal of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro or former U.S. Rep. George Santos accused of trading on his own appearance at this year’s State of the Union address, earning him a life-time ban on Kalshi.
Various bills would crack down on elected officials and government employees using insider information, limit bets on illegal activities and elections or death, war and terrorism.
In March, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order including prediction markets in bans that prevent state officials from profiting off insider knowledge or helping others do so.
New Jersey asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Sep. 2 to review a case that could decide in part whether the federal government or states can regulate prediction markets. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has the ability to regulate and prohibit certain types of prediction markets, and with their letter, senators asked wildfires be part of any pending rule changes.
The commission did not respond to a list of questions from The Press Democrat. A representative for Padilla’s office said that as of Aug. 27, the agency had not responded to senators’ inquiry either despite a requested deadline of Aug. 14.
Skeet noted that four of the agency’s five commissioner positions are currently vacant. Right now, “it’s one person” — Commissioner Selig — who “can make decisions,” she said. “There isn’t any reason really not to have a very prompt response to this request.”
Kalshi’s spokesperson said the company would “welcome” making a wildfire bets ban “industry standard.” Polymarket did not respond to a question about its stance on such regulation.
The current political climate in many ways “has converted everything into a transaction, into a means for making money, often for personal gain,” Skeet said.
“That’s what’s happening here: we’re converting everything that happens to society into a means to make money, and eroding a sense of goodwill and trust in in communities, all to the benefit of making a quick buck.”
You can reach senior reporter Marisa Endicott at 707-521-5470 or marisa.endicott@pressdemocrat.com. On X @marisaendicott and Facebook @InYourCornerTPD.