By Kevin Hendricks, The Paper.
U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., led a dozen Senate Democrats in a July 17 letter urging leaders of two Senate committees to add tribal and state gaming protections to pending cryptocurrency legislation, arguing the bills as written would let prediction markets offer sports and casino-style betting nationwide while sidestepping tribal sovereignty and state law.
The letter, sent to the chairs and ranking members of the Senate Banking and Agriculture committees, targets the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act and the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act, both under active negotiation. Heinrich and his co-signers argue the bills’ exemptions for decentralized finance platforms would let prediction markets classify sports and event wagers as financial derivatives rather than gambling, letting them bypass the licensing and revenue-sharing requirements tribes negotiated under the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
The senators pointed to IGRA’s track record, citing federal data showing reservation household income has climbed sharply since 1990 and that reservation child poverty rates dropped from more than 47% in 1989 to 27% by 2018. Prediction markets, they wrote, threaten to divert wagering revenue away from tribal governments that rely on gaming income to fund healthcare, housing, public safety and education.
The letter asks committee leaders to add two provisions to the legislation: a savings clause explicitly preserving IGRA and existing tribal-state gaming compacts, and a ban on entities registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from listing contracts that mirror sports bets or casino games. An addendum attached to the letter includes draft statutory language amending the Commodity Exchange Act to bar CFTC-regulated platforms from listing sports or casino-style contracts and to clarify that nothing in the crypto legislation preempts IGRA, the Wire Act, or state and tribal gaming law.
Co-signers include Sens. Tina Smith, Maria Cantwell, Richard Blumenthal, Mark Kelly, Patty Murray, Tammy Baldwin, Alex Padilla, Jacky Rosen, Adam Schiff, Brian Schatz and Gary Peters. The letter is backed by the Indian Gaming Association, the National Congress of American Indians, and 17 tribes and pueblos, including Santa Ana, Sandia, Zia, San Felipe, Jemez and Cochiti, as the CLARITY Act and DCIA continue moving through committee negotiations.