Crypto.com and Novig sue Missouri; Kalshi and Polymarket wait

Crypto.com's prediction market exchange and Novig sued Missouri officials in federal court on Friday, Oct 16, asking judges to stop the state from applying its sports wagering laws to their sports event contracts. They are two of the six platforms that Attorney General Catherine Hanaway ordered to stop or get licensed; Kalshi, Polymarket, Robinhood and Underdog had not sued as of Sunday, according to court records reviewed by The Block.

What Missouri demanded

Hanaway's letters, sent on Sept 16 and 17, gave each operator 30 days to stop offering sports contracts to Missourians or obtain a licence from the Missouri Gaming Commission and pay the state's 10% wagering tax. Her letter to Crypto.com also said its platform lets users as young as 18 trade, while Missouri's betting age is 21.

The two lawsuits

• Crypto.com: North American Derivatives Exchange, the CFTC-registered venue behind its OG prediction markets, filed in the Western District. It argues the Commodity Exchange Act gives the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction and seeks a declaratory judgment and permanent injunction. It also says the letter went to the wrong company, Foris DAX, and that a licence is impossible anyway: Missouri's constitution allows only two direct mobile sports wagering licences, and both are taken.
• Novig: suing through its exchange operator Ludlow Exchange in the Eastern District, it wants a preliminary injunction while the 8th Circuit hears an appeal on the same question in a Kalshi case from Iowa.

Our take

The holdouts may simply be letting the appeals courts do the work. Federal circuits are already split: the 6th and 9th ruled against Kalshi, the 3rd sided with it, and the 8th Circuit, which covers Missouri, now has the question in front of it. A ruling there would bind Missouri's federal courts whichever company asked first, and a deeper split makes a Supreme Court showdown more likely. Crypto.com's "no licence is even available" argument is the sharpest new point: it turns "get licensed" from a compliance path into an effective ban. For now, the fight is less about crypto than about who regulates event contracts, the CFTC or the states, the same tension behind the SEC's approval of Cboe's binary options and the polling on whether Americans want election betting.