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- By Chez Oxendine
- Gaming
A Louisiana tribe has struck a partnership with prediction market operator KalshiEX LLC, putting it at odds with tribal gaming organizations challenging Kalshi’s sports-event contracts in federal courts and before regulators.
The Tunica‑Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana announced Thursday that it has formed SaltTrade Derivatives, a new tribally owned venture that will offer a prediction‑market trading app powered by Kalshi’s infrastructure. The tribe, based in Marksville, said the venture is designed to position tribal nations as owners and innovators in an emerging financial market.
“This partnership represents exactly the type of opportunity Indian Country should be pursuing, where tribes are owners, innovators and leaders, not just participants,” Tunica-Biloxi Chairman Marshall Pierite said in a statement.
In a blogpost published Friday on the tribe’s website, Pierite directly addressed opposition from other tribes, arguing that tribes with large gaming operations and those without access to lucrative gaming markets may view prediction markets differently.
Pierite wrote that Tunica-Biloxi expects some tribes to accuse it of “selling out” tribal gaming, but argued that such criticism often comes “from a position of strength that not every tribe shares.” Prediction markets could provide another revenue source for tribes without major gaming markets or large nearby populations, he said.
Tunica-Biloxi is itself a gaming tribe. It owns and operates Paragon Casino Resort in Marksville, which has 500 hotel rooms and suites alongside a gaming floor with slots, table games and a dedicated sportsbook.
Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said Indian Country should have “more paths to economic self-determination, not fewer.”
“The debate can no longer be reduced to prediction markets on one side and tribes on the other,” Mansour said in a statement. “What’s clear is that regulated national infrastructure and tribal entrepreneurship can develop together — and one does not have to lose for the other to win.”
The announcement drew immediate criticism from tribal gaming organizations.
“The Tunica‑Biloxi Tribe made a profoundly disappointing decision today,” the California Nations Indian Gaming Association said in a statement provided to Tribal Business News. “Less than 48 hours after the Ninth Circuit held that Kalshi’s sports‑event contracts are Class III gaming under (the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act), Tunica‑Biloxi chose to stand with Kalshi and help legitimize the same business model that other tribal nations and states across America are fighting to stop … And a business deal does not change the law,” the statement said.
SaltTrade’s launch also comes one day after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a conditional no‑action letter stating it would not recommend enforcement against “passive software providers” that offer tools connecting users to regulated derivatives markets. The relief allows entities that do not handle customer funds or execute trades to avoid registering as introducing brokers.
In his blogpost, Pierite said the partnership will allow SaltTrade to “plug directly into Kalshi’s existing exchange,” with its traders drawing on the same global liquidity pool as other Kalshi participants.
The Indian Gaming Association said the CFTC’s action undermines IGRA and tribal‑state compacts, arguing the relief primarily benefits prediction‑market companies. In a statement, IGA Chairman David Bean said the agency’s move violates the Commodity Exchange Act, or CEA, and the CFTC’s own regulations and “would only benefit crypto wallets, Kalshi and other prediction market companies’ bottom lines.”
Bean urged the CFTC to withdraw the no‑action letter and engage in government‑to‑government consultation with tribal nations, saying the agency should “respect tribal sovereignty, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, and hundreds of existing tribal-state compacts – all of which are being violated by the CFTC’s actions.”
Brian Edwards contributed reporting.
