The White House is expected to bring cryptocurrency and prediction market executives together on Aug. 19, one day before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission holds its first Innovation Advisory Committee meeting. President Donald Trump is also expected to attend, though the White House hasn’t publicly confirmed his participation or the final guest list.
The Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House is the expected venue. Executives connected with Coinbase, Ripple, Gemini, Robinhood, Polymarket, and Kalshi are among those expected in Washington, alongside representatives from more traditional financial companies. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig is expected to attend and SEC Chairman Paul Atkins is planning to be there as well, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick may participate too.
The Aug. 19 meeting remains unofficial, which is worth keeping in mind. Its attendee list and exact format have shifted during preparations, and White House officials still hadn’t publicly announced the event as of Aug. 18. What is confirmed is the CFTC meeting scheduled for the following afternoon, which explains why so many financial and prediction market executives will already be in town.
The CFTC’s new Innovation Advisory Committee has an unusually broad membership. Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan and Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour sit alongside Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, Gemini CEO Tyler Winklevoss, and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, with the gambling industry represented directly through FanDuel President Christian Genetski and DraftKings CEO Jason Robins. Nasdaq, CME Group, Intercontinental Exchange, Kraken, and Crypto.com are among the other companies on it.
Prediction markets are much more than an incidental part of the discussions. The CFTC has set aside 50 minutes of its Aug. 20 agenda specifically for event contracts, covering the division of authority between federal and state regulators, recent state lawsuits, market manipulation, customer protection, and the design of future prediction products. Crypto regulation and artificial intelligence make up the other two major sessions.
The timing is particularly useful for Kalshi and Polymarket. Both are fighting attempts by states to treat sports event contracts as unlicensed gambling, while Selig’s CFTC has taken an increasingly aggressive position that federally regulated prediction markets fall under its jurisdiction. The regulator has already intervened in state disputes involving Kalshi and filed lawsuits of its own as the argument over who regulates sports prediction markets spreads across the country.
That fight has put prediction platforms in direct competition with the conventional betting industry while giving both sides seats at the same regulatory table. FanDuel and DraftKings run sportsbooks under state gambling licenses and taxes, while Kalshi sells sports event contracts through a federally regulated derivatives exchange. Whether those products can keep bypassing the state-by-state sportsbook system is one of the biggest unresolved questions in US betting regulation.
Crypto companies arrive with a different argument but a familiar complaint. The CFTC agenda explicitly raises the patchwork of state licensing requirements, overlapping jurisdictions, and the absence of a comprehensive federal market structure for digital assets. The White House meeting also lands as Congress keeps working on broader crypto legislation, including the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which has stalled in the Senate after getting further in the House.
The Aug. 19 gathering is a policy meeting rather than the announcement of a new regulatory framework. No public agenda has been released, and there’s no indication that binding decisions will be made there. The following day’s CFTC committee meeting is advisory as well, so its members can make recommendations and discuss policy, but the committee can’t rewrite federal law or settle the court fights surrounding prediction markets.
Putting Kalshi, Polymarket, DraftKings, FanDuel, and some of the largest names in crypto and conventional finance around the same Washington discussion is still notable on its own. Prediction markets have spent much of 2026 arguing that they belong in federal financial regulation rather than state gambling systems. A possible trip to the White House, followed immediately by a CFTC session devoted specifically to their future, suggests that argument has considerably more access to Washington than it did a year ago.