#PredictionMarketsCFTCBacking Congress gave the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission "exclusive jurisdiction" over futures, which includes event contracts, the agency said in a court brief filed on Tuesday evening, following assertions from its chair, Michael Selig, that states are overstepping in trying to oversee prediction markets.

The derivatives regulator submitted the amicus — or "friend of the court" — brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in a case involving Crypto.com and the state of Nevada. Crypto.com's prediction-market arm sued Nevada in June, seeking to block the state from preventing it from offering sports-event contracts.

The judge later ruled that sports-event contracts were not within the CFTC's jurisdiction and so could be regulated by Nevada's gaming laws. Crypto.com appealed that decision.

During the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis, Congress gave the CFTC "exclusive jurisdiction," as part of the Dodd-Frank Act, the CFTC said in the brief.

"... Congress did not limit covered swaps to binary outcomes; instead, it expressly encompassed contracts measured by the extent of the occurrence of an event," the agency said in the brief. "This broad language encompasses contracts based on the margin of victory or any other quantifiable result of a sports event."

America is home to the most liquid and vibrant financial markets in the world because our regulators take seriously their obligation to police fraud and institute appropriate investor safeguards," Selig said. "Any erosion of the CFTC’s ability to regulate transactions in commodity derivatives is a direct threat to the markets and investors Congress intended the agency to oversee."