Overview
- Brazil’s telecom regulator Anatel blocked access to prediction‑market sites Friday, a tally first put at 28 and later revised to 27, leaving Polymarket and Kalshi offline in the country.
- The National Monetary Council and the Central Bank narrowed what can underlie derivatives to economic and financial benchmarks such as price indexes, interest rates, and exchange rates.
- The new rules also ban contracts tied to sports, online gaming, elections, cultural events, and other outcomes that do not track an economic measure.
- Officials said these platforms sold yes‑or‑no event contracts as finance but worked like betting, raising risks to savings and adding to household debt worries.
- The crackdown adds Brazil to a growing list of places curbing event markets, with Portugal’s recent limits and actions in several U.S. jurisdictions cited by industry reports.