Why This Prediction Market Banned Teens
Why This Prediction Market Banned Teens
为什么这家预测市场平台禁止青少年参与？
Twenty-eight-year-old Jacob Fortinsky has been busy. “I was a groomsman at two weddings this weekend,” he tells me over Zoom. Also, the sports trading company he runs, Novig, launched its prediction market last week, facilitating $18 million in trading volume on its first day. Today, Novig launches a “responsible trading framework” in its exchange rulebook, codifying its guardrails as part of its effort to be seen as a kinder, gentler prediction market player.
28 岁的 Jacob Fortinsky 最近很忙。“这个周末我刚在两场婚礼上担任了伴郎，”他在 Zoom 视频通话中告诉我。此外，他经营的体育交易公司 Novig 上周推出了其预测市场，首日交易额便达到 1800 万美元。今天，Novig 在其交易规则手册中发布了一套“负责任交易框架”，将各项防护措施制度化，旨在将自己打造为一个更友善、更温和的预测市场参与者。
Unlike industry leaders like Polymarket and Kalshi, which allow people 18 and older to participate, you have to be at least 21 to use Novig. Fortinsky says that decision was made in response to “valid concerns” put forth about the susceptibility of younger participants to risky behavior, including lobbying from the NCAA and other professional groups. Fortinsky sees this move as staying ahead of the curve as concerns grow about the negative impact that prediction markets can have on teens. “There’s a broader reckoning coming with the younger traders,” he says. “That group is particularly susceptible to irresponsible behavior and financial ruin.”
与 Polymarket 和 Kalshi 等允许 18 岁及以上人群参与的行业领头羊不同，使用 Novig 必须年满 21 岁。Fortinsky 表示，这一决定是为了回应外界对于年轻人更容易产生冒险行为的“合理担忧”，其中包括来自 NCAA（美国大学体育协会）及其他专业团体的游说。随着人们对预测市场可能对青少年产生负面影响的担忧日益加剧，Fortinsky 认为此举是走在行业前沿的表现。“针对年轻交易者的清算即将到来，”他说，“这一群体特别容易出现不负责任的行为，并导致财务崩溃。”
Novig’s rulebook also prohibits marketing to minors, and lays out guidelines banning other marketing practices, like ads that claim there’s no risk or ads that try to appeal to a prospective participant’s money troubles. That means when it advertises on TikTok, for example, it uses a setting that allows targeting only people over 21. Fortinsky positions these restrictions as part of Novig’s push to be seen as a “serious, legitimate financial product” as it comes onto the scene. “Some of our competitors, I think, have been seen as being a little bit more cavalier in certain regards,” he says. (He declined to name specific rivals.)
Novig 的规则手册还禁止向未成年人进行营销，并制定了禁止其他营销行为的准则，例如声称“零风险”的广告，或试图利用潜在参与者的财务困境进行诱导的广告。这意味着，当它在 TikTok 等平台上投放广告时，会使用仅针对 21 岁以上人群的定向设置。Fortinsky 将这些限制视为 Novig 在进入市场时，努力被视为“严肃、合法的金融产品”的一部分。“我认为我们的一些竞争对手在某些方面表现得有些漫不经心，”他说。（他拒绝点名具体的竞争对手。）
Because Novig only offers sports-themed markets, it doesn’t wade into some of the more hotly contested topics, like US elections and the Iran war. That doesn’t mean it’s avoiding controversy. As a sports-centered platform, the types of speculation opportunities it offers are at the center of an ongoing regulatory war, with prediction markets and federal regulators on one side and state regulators, tribal authorities, and occasionally traditional sportsbooks and casino operators on the other. Dozens of messy legal battles are raging across the US. States are suing Kalshi and other platforms, alleging that they illegally offer gambling; Kalshi is suing right back; the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees the industry, is suing several states, arguing that it alone has jurisdiction over these markets.
由于 Novig 只提供体育主题的市场，它没有涉足美国大选和伊朗战争等争议性更大的话题。但这并不意味着它能避开争议。作为一个以体育为中心的平台，它提供的投机机会正处于一场持续的监管战争中心：一方是预测市场和联邦监管机构，另一方则是州监管机构、部落当局，以及偶尔出现的传统体育博彩公司和赌场运营商。全美范围内正爆发数十起混乱的法律诉讼。各州正在起诉 Kalshi 等平台，指控其非法提供赌博服务；Kalshi 则反诉回去；负责监管该行业的商品期货交易委员会（CFTC）则起诉了多个州，主张其对这些市场拥有唯一的管辖权。
Also, Novig isn’t immune to the general cultural distaste for prediction markets; when the New York Mets announced a recent partnership with Novig, the baseball team received a flood of criticism on social media. Sample post: “This is vile.”
此外，Novig 也无法免受公众对预测市场普遍反感的影响；当纽约大都会队（New York Mets）最近宣布与 Novig 建立合作伙伴关系时，这支棒球队在社交媒体上遭到了大量批评。一条典型的评论写道：“这太卑劣了。”
If sports-related event contracts offered by prediction markets are banned, big players like Kalshi and Polymarket will be in deep trouble, with the majority of the action on their services gone. But Novig’s position is even shakier, since that’s all it does.
如果预测市场提供的体育赛事相关合约被禁，像 Kalshi 和 Polymarket 这样的大玩家将陷入严重困境，因为其服务上的大部分业务将随之消失。但 Novig 的处境更加岌岌可危，因为这正是它的全部业务。
Fortinsky is betting it all on a win, and Novig wasted no time jumping into the legal fray. Within three days of launching, the startup sued New York, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Washington, all states that have taken an aggressive approach to curbing prediction markets. It is trying to block these states from attempting to apply their gambling laws to federally regulated exchanges, which is what it’s licensed as. Sports betting attorney Daniel Wallach tells WIRED that these complaints are a “great marketing strategy” and a way to announce that Novig has arrived on the scene.
Fortinsky 将一切赌注押在胜诉上，Novig 毫不犹豫地跳入了法律纠纷的漩涡。在上线三天内，这家初创公司就起诉了纽约州、马萨诸塞州、新墨西哥州和华盛顿州，这些州都对遏制预测市场采取了强硬态度。它试图阻止这些州将其赌博法律应用于受联邦监管的交易所（Novig 已获得此类牌照）。体育博彩律师 Daniel Wallach 告诉《连线》（WIRED），这些诉讼是一种“伟大的营销策略”，也是一种宣告 Novig 已经登场的方式。
Whether they’ll be successful is another matter. Recent court decisions have largely swung toward state attorneys general. A judge in New York denied Novig’s efforts to get a temporary restraining order, on the grounds that doing so would undermine another decision already reached in a case against Kalshi. “It’s increasingly looking more positive for the states,” Wallach notes. But that could change; Wallach and other onlookers expect the fight to get kicked up to the US Supreme Court before anything is definitively resolved.
至于他们能否成功则是另一回事。近期的法院裁决在很大程度上偏向了各州的总检察长。纽约的一名法官驳回了 Novig 申请临时限制令的请求，理由是这样做会破坏在针对 Kalshi 的案件中已经做出的另一项裁决。“形势正越来越有利于各州，”Wallach 指出。但这可能会改变；Wallach 和其他观察人士预计，在最终定论之前，这场争斗将一直打到美国最高法院。
Until then, Novig is plowing ahead. One of Novig’s appeals to customers is that it offers a different kind of sports speculation experience, one without a house that takes a “vig,” the fee that bookies take for arranging a bet. (“No vig,” get it?) Fortinsky has harsh words for many of the dominant sports gambling players, calling sportsbooks “inefficient, exploitative, and predatory.” He sees the peer-to-peer model that prediction markets facilitate as distinct, since it’s two parties on equal footing going up directly against each other. But if Novig goes how he’d like it to go, those parties won’t always be two average sports fans squaring off. The company is actively courting financial institutions to take sides of wagers, and Fortinsky says Novig is currently onboarding proprietary trading firms and banks. The company is taking steps to make it easier to “trade programmatically,” using algorithms to automate placing money on which team will win the Super Bowl or how many times the Mets will lose, for example.
在此之前，Novig 仍在奋力前行。Novig 对客户的吸引力之一在于，它提供了一种不同的体育投机体验，没有“抽水”（vig，即博彩公司安排投注时收取的费用）。（“No vig”，明白了吗？）Fortinsky 对许多主流体育博彩玩家言辞激烈，称体育博彩公司“效率低下、剥削且具有掠夺性”。他认为预测市场促进的点对点模式与众不同，因为这是双方在平等地位上直接对垒。但如果 Novig 的发展如他所愿，参与方将不总是两个普通的体育迷。该公司正积极争取金融机构参与投注，Fortinsky 表示，Novig 目前正在引入自营交易公司和银行。公司正在采取措施，使“程序化交易”变得更容易，例如利用算法自动下注，预测哪支球队会赢得超级碗，或者大都会队会输掉多少场比赛。
“Something that’s really cool to see,” he says, “is that you have hundreds of these small shops with a couple guys with $100,000 that are now competing against some of the largest Wall Street trading firms in the world and doing quite well.” Good thing the teens aren’t allowed in.
“有一点非常酷，”他说，“你看到数百家拥有几个人、资金仅 10 万美元的小型机构，现在正与世界上一些最大的华尔街交易公司竞争，而且表现相当不错。”幸好青少年不被允许参与。